Human Experience in a Time of Climate Change through Literature

Abstract

This paper analyzes two novels set in the current anthropocene1 era that show the complexity of the relationship between human systems and natural systems through specific climactically/environmentally destructive events. Both the novels Flight Behavior and Heat & Light show the intersecting conflicts arising from human relationships/systems, religious systems, and natural systems in the anthropocene through a realistic fiction story. The paper argues that these novels are not a part of traditional environmental novels, which are usually rooted in the science fiction genre, but are a part of a new wave and budding genre of climate fiction – a genre more aligned with realistic fiction, that creates plot lines representative of climactic change and environmental damage already occurring/will continue to occur without societal change. The novels represent how the genre shows climate change as the real and "wicked" problem that it, and this paper works to apply complexity theory to the intersecting conflicts of them.