The Stone Gods by Jeannette Winterson - Research Paper Example

College Jeanette Wintersons “The Stone Gods” Due to her comic narratives being defined by them, Jeanette Winterson’s novel which came out last is a poetic lament that is sung to the whole world in what the author describes as the last throes. The Stone Gods is one of the passionate and dazzling science-fiction novels that originate from the throng of a writer who want to transform a mere gene into fine art. The book has a lot of themes that can be seen just at a glance. However the main theme that one can see from the book is the relationship between humanity and the environment (Winterson 23). The fundamental theme of the book is environmental degradation by humans. The book tries to explain that humanity is in the path to destroy its environment. It is expected that they will do this from the small scale of an island to the larger scale of a whole planet. This is the central theme of the book and within it there are lots of other musing, it is our fate that since we cannot learn from our mistakes as a society, the interplay of feminists and masculinity, global politics and capitalism. The style of the book is unique, with three stories combined in one book, and all have the same theme. This describes the extent at which the writer wanted the message to reach the reader. The story of how humans are battling to destroy the very environment that supports them is well defined in this book. The argument that we will discuss in this essay is whether, humans are using the natural recourses’ well or they are misusing them. The book is written to refer to the possible way of life of the future generation and how they will be affected by what we do right now (Winterson 56). The inhabitants of Orbus are running out of their planet, this is due to the effect of global warming and unchecked fossil fuels. These two things that were once seen as political fights have become a reality and everyone can see for himself. From this point which is extracted from the book, we can see the point that humans have used the resources that were available in their planet and now they have nowhere to run to due to the effects of global warming that is as a result of the cutting of trees and unbalanced utilization of recourses’. This has led to a lot of harm on the environment and is now felt with everybody and not only the politicians who used to battle over the protection of the environment. Socially the scenario is worse. From act two, we see that the citizens are artificially beautiful meaning that there is no natural beauty and the beauty that many wants is the artificial beauty or the man made beauty. Older women are competing with younger women over beauty and this has is the only thing that matters most to them. In Easter Island, there are great curving which surround the great island. This shows how capable these people are and how talented they can be to make such curves. However there is a great dissolution over the people who created the curving. In the long run the island becomes barren and there is no more trees to make the curving. Winterson argues here that through the curving, humanity created their gods hoping that these gods of theirs could make them more trees but instead they end up with barren land with little that they can do to save themselves from the wrath of nature. In the end humans remain without anything to do and eat. Starvation is the order of the day and this is all due to the earlier generation who used all the resources’ forgetting that their future children would use the same resources. In chapter two, the women are described to be after beauty and nothing else. The older women compete with younger children over beauty. As a result of this, they end up using man made beauty products which just spoil their beauty instead of helping them. This is also another way that humanity abuses nature. Humans feel that what nature has given them is not enough and so they go out to look for their own way of doing more than nature had done. As a result of this, there are lots of consequences that come with the use of artificial beauty and the women are left with marks that are so ugly but can’t be removed. However bad humans can be, it is not that easy to suspend the disbelief the stone god has brought out. Most of the trope that she uses are outmoded already, while some can’t even be imagined; a good character of a science-fiction. Only the people who are bloody-minded are able to focus on every single misstep that humanity has done. Her use of future history to bring out the humanity of the current generation, strongly stop the otherwise flowing story and she does not deliver her message. The stone God is a little bit imperfect in that it exaggerates the human negativity. The book is written in a world of fantasy where the extent of human nature is exaggerated to the extreme lower end. What this means is that she did not use the right choice of words to describe the full nature of humans (Erwin 78). In conclusion, I would say that I agree with what Jeanette has predicted to happen in the future. The rate at which human beings are cutting down trees is alarming and this without any more explanation shows that the future generation has trouble. Apart from that, it is also evident from how women are behaving with beauty products and hence destroying their natural beauty. All these describe humanity and how they are using the natural resources that they have been given in a bad way to destroy themselves and to also destroy the same environment that they depend on. I therefore agree with the central theme of this book which is that humanity is doing a lot to destroy its natural environment. Work cited Winterson, Jeanette. The Stone Gods. Orlando: Harcourt, 2007. Print. Erwin, Constance H. F. Fair Gods and Stone Faces. New York: St. Martins Press, 1963. Print. Read More