A Study on Ecocentrism in Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

The novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (published in 2009) by Olga Tokarczuk, winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature, represents a totally different type of work for the author. It is a crime thriller which reveals both the perpetrator of the crime and the motive toward the end of the story. A deeply satisfying thriller cum fairy tale, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is a provocative exploration of the murky borderland between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, autonomy and fate. This study analyzes the theme of the novel and its ultimate message from the perspectives of ecocentrism and ecofeminism. Defined as a ‘moral thriller’ by the author herself, this novel presents a new paradigm in the relationship between humans and humans, as well as between humans and nature, in a contemporary society where humans destroy nature and the strong oppress the weak. Through the dramatic ending, which reveals the main character, Janina Duszejko to be a serial killer, Tokarczuk emphasizes that humans and nature are equal, and awakens people to the many kinds of violence, exploitation and cruelty which humans inflict on animals, and which she believes should be considered serious crimes. The reason that Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead has received such a positive response from readers and literary circles, despite its antinomic, controversial ending, is because it tells a story about a neglected being who empathizes with helpless, weak beings confronted with a violent reality, and offers them a helping hand.