A friend of the earth

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TC Boyle's book A Friend of the Earth (2000, original title A Friend of the Earth ) is a story of environmental degradation . It takes place in 2025 - as a result of global warming and the greenhouse effect , the climate has changed drastically and biodiversity is a thing of the past.

America 2025

Many animal species have become extinct due to habitat loss and the flora has also suffered greatly. Many foods such as beef, eggs, beer, etc. are no longer available. Instead, rice is grown everywhere and sake is the only alcoholic drink available. El Niño is a constant companion of the people of the United States: constant blowing, high winds and heavy annual rainfall lasting several months. It is very hot during the dry season.

Deforestation has occurred for two reasons: on the one hand, through storms that uprooted entire forests, and, on the other hand, through the worldwide limitless destruction of primeval forests, including the tropical rainforest. In addition, science has invented many artificial ways to extend human life, and life expectancy has increased to over 100 years. Accordingly, the earth is overpopulated. In the USA, former natural landscapes have become residential areas. In these residential complexes live people who care little about the environment and who spend their lives in front of their computers and televisions.

TC Boyle never goes into the political situation in his novel, but there are numerous hidden clues in the text. From these it becomes evident that the social security system has collapsed and that many Americans are left to their own devices - without a regular income, many of them without a roof over their heads.

Summary

Earth Friend is the story of Tyrone O'Shaughnessy Tierwater, a US citizen born in 1950, half Irish Catholic and half Jewish. His personal tragedy fits into and complements the gloomy atmosphere of society.

Through Andrea, his partner, Ty becomes a committed activist for the environmental organization Earth Forever! (an allusion to the environmental organization Earth First! ). In the 1980s, he goes to jail for ecoterrorism, but ultimately cannot change anything. He also suffers from the death of his first wife, who died when their daughter was only three years old, and from the death of his daughter who died at the age of 25. The novel begins in 2025. Ty is 75 years old, disaffected and lives on a pop star's property somewhere in California, where he takes care of his private menagerie.

Maclovio Pulchris, the singer, had the idea to protect some of the last surviving animals from different species and to initiate a breeding program at a later date. Above all, he wanted to take care of those animals that no one else would protect. Tierwater had been working for Pulchris for ten years when his ex-wife and stepmother of his daughter Sierra contacted him in 2025 after more than 20 years. She and a friend, April Wind, are moving in with Tierwater - officially to write a biography about his daughter Sierra, who died in April 2001 as an environmental martyr.

The situation worsened over the next few months. The rain and wind destroy the animal cages and the animals increasingly have to be kept in the basement. One morning one of the lions is lost, attacks the singer and kills both him and a number of his employees. As a consequence, the remaining lions are shot and so the species becomes extinct. (There is only one lion left in the San Diego Zoo.)

Tierwater, now without money and without work, has fallen in love with Andrea again. He is expelled from the property by Pulchri's heirs and goes with Andrea to a mountain hut, the Earth Forever! heard. Decades ago the hut served him as a hiding place. They arrive there with one of Pulchri's animals: Petunia, the Patagonian fox, which they now keep as a pet and pass off as their dog.

In the last scene of the book, a young girl walks past the hut, where there used to be only woods. Andrea and Tierwater, who call themselves husband and wife again, have a glimmer of hope that life could be as it was 30 years ago. Despite everything, the book ends on an optimistic note.

criticism

The book review in Die Welt 2001 states: “ 'A friend of the earth is an enemy of mankind' - this Ibsen sentence pervades the text as a paradox, in its inversion it formulates all the nonsense of our time. Once nature had to be subjugated in order to make it kind to man. But this inevitable enmity destroys him in the end himself. [...] Now Boyle is creating the drama of the planet in an almost dignified comedy, which we are ruining with our demands on comfort and luxury. A return to true naturalness is impossible. "

Heinrich Detering wrote in his 2001 review of the novel in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung : “ While the last American heroes are wading through a world that smells of 'end-of-time mold', they think wistfully back to the times when words like Global Warming or El Niño was debated. […] Alternating between before and after, between the inside and outside view of the hero, a gruesome, tragicomic picture emerges. And suddenly Ty's wild story turns into a parable about avant-garde and democracy, morality and power. There is just as little lack of stark realism as there is of grotesque scenarios. "

credentials

Numerous "icons" of the environmental movement are named in the book:

book

TC Boyle: A Friend of the Earth , 2000, German A friend of the earth. Translated by Werner Richter, hardcover, Hanser, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-446-19975-6 , as paperback dtv, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-423-13053-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Going down is so fun! - TC Boyle portrays a true friend of our soon to be ruined planet in his novel . In: Die Welt , March 24, 2001. Retrieved October 1, 2013.
  2. ↑ Friend of nature, enemy of the people · Biomachismo: TC Boyle's horror trip . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , May 19, 2001. Retrieved October 1, 2013.