Nature as a Character: An Ecohumanist Study of Richard Power's The Overstory

Abstract

This research paper aims to analyze Richard Powers’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel titled The Overstory, published in 2018, by considering it through the lens of ecohumanism. This text investigates how Powers subverts anthropocentric epistemology through engagement with storytelling and emerges with an innovative solution to environmental issues. This paper relies on textual readings and the principles of ecocriticism, assessing how Powers dismantles the anthropocentric human-nature opposition, challenges the framework of time frameworks beyond human control, and sketches the framework for a new environmental ethic. The study shows how tonal and epistemological variations in The Overstory make it a literary work and a form of ecocritical activism that may change how readers approach the more-than-human world and embrace non-anthropocentric modes of interacting with it.