An Anthropocentric Comparison of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian and Renato Baretić’s Osmi povjerenik (The Eighth Commissioner)
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Abstract
A geological era may be marked by a crucial agent of change whose influence on other species is incontestable. The current era, referred to by some as the Anthropocene, views humans as the main geological agents of change. Therefore, the relationship between humans and nature has been placed, more strikingly than ever before, at the centre of literary studies. In this paper, the inevitability of the Anthropocene will be shown in two novels with extremely diverse cultural backgrounds: Renato Baretić’s Osmi povjerenik (The Eighth Commissioner) and Han Kang’s The Vegetarian. Despite both novels being products of different literary traditions that are seemingly unrelated to the current era, their stories are nonetheless anthropocentric at their core, displaying a new way of looking at the humananimal relationships, through the point of view of observers who are powerless to form these relationships themselves.