Internal Colonialism and the Wasteland Theme in Ron Rash's Serena

  1. Constante González Groba
Journal:
Atlantis: Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos

ISSN: 0210-6124

Year of publication: 2020

Volume: 42

Issue: 2

Pages: 119-137

Type: Article

DOI: 10.28914/ATLANTIS-2020-42.2.06 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openDialnet editor

More publications in: Atlantis: Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos

Abstract

Ron Rash’s Serena (2008) is about the clash between northern industrialists who cut timber in southern Appalachia and conservationists who want the area converted into a national park. Set during the Depression, it also addresses our own times of unchecked greed and environmental holocaust. This article relates the situation of internal colonialism, which turns the region into a sacrifice zone, with the theme of the wasteland. The latter is related in the novel not only to T. S. Eliot’s poem but also to other works that Rash acknowledgesas influences, including Moby-Dick, The Great Gatsby and Christopher Marlowe’s tragedies about the will to power. Characterized by what Erich Fromm calls the exploitative orientation, Serena Pemberton wields hard power and embodies the rapaciousness of economy, in contrast to a local female character, who stands for ecology and soft power.

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Funding information

8 The research for this article was funded by the research network “Rede de Lingua e Literatura Inglesa e Identidade III” (ED431D2017/17, Xunta de Galicia) and the research group “Discourse and Identity” (ED341C, 2019/001, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela).

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