Nature, Empathy and Concern: Colin Thiele’s "Storm Boy" in the Perspective of Ecological Humanities

Abstract

This article Nature, empathy and concern. Colin Thiele’s “Storm Boy” refers to the issues of ecological humanities. As shown in the analysis and interpretation of the work, Thiele’s short story, as a text representative of the post-anthropocene era, fits perfectly into discussions on building environmental consciousness in a young audience, organizes the contemporary imagination and stimulates action. The individualization of the feelings of the child hero untainted by civilization, his sincere, naïve and innocent understanding of the world, the aestheticization of descriptions of nature and the fixation of its images present in the narrative paradoxically somewhere “between” the two points of reference: on the borderline of the extraordinary power, horror, dynamism and strength of nature and its delicacy, fragility and subtlety, as well as its “humanization” (the pelican thinks and feels like a human), provokes the reader to a kind of “intervention” in the text and encourages empathetic reading. Thiele’s story, due to the involvement and “causality” of the protagonists (the boy and his father) present in the story, as well as a peculiar intersubjective reality of the polysensory narrative, can build an ecocentric vision of the world, accentuate the formation of values and habits, attitudes of a pro-ecological worldview oriented towards solidarity between different forms of life, and influence the construction of conceptual structures necessary for the realization of an ecocentric future.