Copyright©2019 P-ISSN: 1978-8118 E-ISSN: 2460-710X 87 Lingua Cultura, 13(2), May 2019, 87-92 DOI: 10.21512/lc.v13i2.5287 CONSIDERING ALL (NON) LIVING THINGS: A BIOCENTRIC ORIENTATION IN BLAIR RICHMOND’S THE LITHIA TRILOGY Ida Farida Sachmadi1; Yudi Permadi2; Trisha Adelia3; Nolly Liviani4 1,2,3,4Department of Literature and Cultural Studies, Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Universitas Padjadjaran Jl. Raya Bandung Sumedang KM. 21, Jawa Barat 45363, Indonesia 1i.farida@unpad.ac.id; 2yudi.permadi.08@gmail.com; 3trishasasing98@gmail.com; 4nollyLiviani@gmail.com Received: 12th March 2019/Revised: 27th March 2019/Accepted: 08th April 2019 How to Cite: Sachmadi, I. F., Permadi, Y., Adelia, T., & Liviani, N. (2019). Considering all (non) living things: A biocentric orientation in Blair Richmond’s The Lithia Trilogy. Lingua Cultura, 13(2), 87-92. https://doi.org/10.21512/lc.v13i2.5287 ABSTRACT This research elucidated the perspective of The Lithia Trilogy (Out of Breath, The Ghost Runner, and The Last Mile), written by Blair Richmond, towards the environment. It was executed based on ecocriticism, a research method which focused on the exploration of environmental issues in literary works. The theory was taken from Laurence Buell on the meaning of ecocriticism. From the analysis of the structure of the novels, it was found that the trilogy presented the idea of biocentrism, an assumption that the earth and all of the living things on it had the right to fulfill their needs. Biocentrism was the opposing concept of anthropocentrism, both of which were studied in environmental ethics. Two issues of conflicts were presented in this trilogy: herbivores versus omnivores and environmentalists versus capitalists. The result of the research reveals that the novels suggest not to eat animals to save fauna and introduce the Gaia hypothesis to save all living and non-living things on the earth. In other words, the novel tends to have a biocentric orientation. As one work of young adult literature, this trilogy explicitly teaches those suggestions to the readers, especially young readers. Keywords: biocentric orientation, young adult literature, ecocriticism INTRODUCTION In this research, the writers presents the results of a study of young adult literary works, entitled The Lithia Trilogy by Blair Richmond, based on ecocriticism. This research uncovers the perspective of the narrator in these young adult novels on environmental issues. These three novels are analyzed by applying the ecocritic approach. It is developed by Laurence Buell in the 1990s, who has stated that this approach is intended to explore the environmental dimensions in literature in order to care about environmental problems so that literary researchers could contribute to people’s understanding upon the healthy environment. Laurence Buell, a professor of English Literature at Harvard University, in Buell, Heise, & Thornber (2011) has explained the definition of ecocriticism that literature and environment studies are commonly called ‘ecocriticism’ or ‘environmental criticism’ in analogy to the more general term literary criticism—comprise an eclectic, pluriform, and cross-disciplinary initiative. It aims to explore the environmental dimensions of literature and other creative media in a spirit of environmental concern not limited to any one method or commitment (Buell, Heise, & Thornber, 2011). The purpose of this research approach, according to him, is to contribute significantly to the understanding of environmental problems (Buell, Haise, & Thornber, 2011), hoping that people would be aware of the certain danger to their environment and consequently try to save it. Glotfelty also defines the term ‘ecocriticism’. It is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment (Noda, 2018). Literary and environmental studies develop rapidly, which are then divided by critics into two waves. The first wave is in the 1990s, with the tendency of the ecocritical researchers to assume that the environment is nature. So their research is focused on; (1) the depiction of the natural world in literary works; (2) respect for nature conservation and human love for nature; and (3) biocentric ethical reinforcement. The second wave, which developed in the 2000s, has more attention in; (1) the metropolis and industrialization; (2) socio-ethics by emphasizing environmental justice; (3) a combination with postcolonial literary studies and ethnic minority literary studies (Buell, Haise, & Thornber, 2011). However, it does not mean that those three topics are not studied today; they are still, despite the different trend. The first focus in the first wave is that ecocritical 88 LINGUA CULTURA, Vol. 13 No. 2, May 2019, 87-92 research describes natural landscapes in a particular area over a period of time in a literary work. One example of these kinds of research is carried out by Crane (2014) who has analyzed Andrew McGahan’s The White Earth and J. M. Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K. She has studied the pastoral transposition on those two fictions and has shown how various interpretations of pastoral concepts are influenced by the politics of the novels. Another researcher talks about naturalness in children’s literature is Noda (2018) that has discussed the symbolism of wilderness in the best stories of Severino Reyes, which is connected with the intrinsic wildness in children. The second focus is that literary critics begin to explore natural conservation efforts, not just about the depiction of nature as a setting, but presented in literary works. Contemporary teen novels address many problems of natural damage, for example, a study on The Road (2006) by Cormac McCharty which is executed by Johns-Putra (2016). She said that McCarthy is presenting people’s anxieties on the climate-change and the inhumanity of human beings on the earth and its future (Johns-Putra, 2016). In the third focus, several novels begin to raise the issue of biocentrism. This term is a kind of response from the existence of other terms that emerged earlier in the field of environmental science, especially those related to environmental ethics, namely anthropocentrism. This is an assumption that this world and its contents are intended for humans, both for economic interests or fulfillment of their culture. However, biocentrism opposes this assumption by saying that people have to view life, including nature and humans, in a more holistic conception (Kopnina et al., 2018; Waldmüller, 2015). Waldmüller (2015) has said that, “[…] life itself – including interaction between humans and nature, metabolisms and ecosystems, and natural periods of arising and passing of all that is living – is put at the forefront of consideration.” The concept of biocentrism disagrees with the way capitalism view the world. Capitalism is an economic model which is designed to make people change natural resources into commodities and monetary wealth so they can improve the quality of life (Park, 2015). In other words, capitalists believe that all natural resources on the earth are only for human interests, so they exploit nature without considering that other living things also need the existence of nature, such as animals and plants. People have to change their focus on development planning, not only for the sake of human well-being but should be for human-nature well being (Waldmüller, 2015). Literary critics research the concerns of literary writers on living things in various topics of analysis. Zhengwen (2018) has discussed the binary position of nature and capitalism in a poem entitled A Monk Walks along Orchard Road written by Rodrigo V. Dela Peňa. He concludes that the poem shows that this famous street in Singapore is a cosmopolitan landscape inherited from ‘the imagistic residues of its agrarian past’ (Zhengwen, 2018). The theme of vegetarianism also appears in literary works, such research on fantasy stories by Kérchy (2017). From these stories, she has revealed the idea to respect for all creatures, so that sometimes humans can maintain the lives of all beings on earth and save the world. Kérchy (2017) has said, “The valuable lesson we can learn from these fantastical stories is that if humans finally become aware of the immense stakes and consequences of their automatized suppression of other species, the exploitation of their natural environment, and all the “biological annihilation” … we might eventually be capable of bringing about a change: to facilitate the peaceful cohabitation of all species and save life on Earth.” Adkins (2017) has studied how James Joyce portraits livestock, meat, and vegetarianism in Ulysses. Joyce criticizes the politics of cattle raising and the industry of animal slaughter at the turn of the 20th century in Ireland, besides demanding the ethics of meat eating in order to make humans being responsible for the lives of other creatures (Adkins, 2017). An Indonesian researcher, Sukmawan (2018) has also revealed that oral literature of the inhabitants of the slopes of Mount Arjuna in East Java shows appreciation for animals and plants because of their unique culture. He has found that they held personal dialogue with nature, listened to natural signs, and discussed ecological events. In ecocriticism, there is one hypothesis saying that the earth can regulate itself. This concept is called Gaia, which is formulated by James Lovelock in 1979. Barry (2014) has explained, “The Gaia hypothesis holds that the Earth System is in some ways analogous to a living, self-regulating organism – with air, land, soil, and oceans as her organs; plants and animals as cells; and water as blood, cycling nutrients and energy to sustain life.“ This hypothesis states that the earth has a resemblance with the biological organism and she can regulate and sustain her own life (Barry, 2014; Monzavi et al., 2017). This hypothesis is then presented in fictions, for example in movies, Erb (2014) has discussed the ecological dimension in Avatar, and in literary texts, some problems appear in The Lithia Trilogy, written by Blair Richmond. From various topics of analysis on the natural environment, this research bases its research on the question of how The Lithia Trilogy views environment problems and how it delivers solutions to young readers. METHODS This research executes two literary approaches; ecocriticism theoretical orientation and intrinsic elements of the literary text. The ecocriticism is used to find the issues about the environment; meanwhile, by the intrinsic elements, the novels are analyzed from the perspective of the narrator towards the environment. Ecocriticism approach used in this research is taken from the theory developed by Laurence Buell in 1990s. On unearthing the perspective of the novels, the intrinsic elements used are plot, characterization, setting, and perception of the narrator. Besides those elements, there are metaphors leading to find the narrator’s perspective towards the environment. The data is taken from The Lithia Trilogy written by Blair Richmond, which consists of three titles; Out of Breath (2011), The Ghost Runner (2012), and The Last Mile (2014). 89Considering All (Non) Living Things.... (Ida Farida Sachmadi, et al.) RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS This trilogy reveals the effort to save nature and all living things in it. Referring to Buell’s classification of researchers’ focus on studying ecology in literature, it is found that these novels show a biocentric orientation by strongly suggesting not to eat animals and opposing capitalists, who exploit nature for their own sake. Therefore, the discussion of the novels covers two issues; that herbivores are better than omnivores and that capitalists through their industry could destroy the physical environment and all living things relying on it. In all three novels, Richmond has told the readers very explicitly to change their life to be a vegan. He gives many explanations on the reasons and benefits, and opposes strongly against carnivores and omnivores. Katherine, the main character, is a vegan. In the first novel, Out of Breath, she admits openly she is a vegan and says, “[…] Like David said, I want to be with someone who loves animals the way I do, who cares about the planet, who doesn’t eat meat because he believes, like I do, that every meal really can make a difference.” (Richmond, 2011: 75-76) It takes eight pages for the author to explain the reasons to be a vegan. It shows how important for him to give reasons to be one of them through the utterance of the narrator. In another part of the novel, Katherine explains what difference she can make, “Well, it’s made me a vegan, which means I save the lives of close to a hundred innocent animals a year. I sleep better every night knowing that.” (Richmond, 2011: 112). Biocentrists argue that vegans do not eat animals not because they think it is not healthy for their body but because they care for the life of other creatures, as Katherine says, “[…] My diet saves lives. Your diet takes lives.” (Richmond, 2011: 112). She opposes against the animal slaughtering to feed humans. Katherine does not eat meat and takes other food, which she calls ‘cruelty-free food’ (Richmond, 2011: 111). For replacing protein from animals, she gives many examples of non-meat food like tempeh, tofu, nuts, bread, soy milk, and vegetables (Richmond, 2011: 72). Eating animals makes a vegan feels guilty, like Katherine and Alex, one of Katherine’s vampire friends, think, “Well,” he says, “ I used to be like Roman. I used to think I was born to live a certain way, that my life, such as it was, depended on the death of the others. I accepted this life as fact, but I was miserable. The guilt, I can’t even describe it.” “I know what you mean. That’s why I don’t eat animals, either.” (Richmond, 2011: 159). Alex is a vampire in this novel, but he has changed his food from sucking human blood to drinking sap from trees. Richmond tries to assure readers by presenting Alex, a vegan vampire, to show that carnivores and omnivores could change to be vegans. Biocentrists also try to save flora, and it will raise a question that these vegans indeed do not kill animals, but they kill plants. To answer such question, Richmond has prepared a short explanation from Alex, ”We have learned to take as little as necessary from a tree, and to drink from many trees […]” and “Everything in nature takes what it needs and nothing more.” (Richmond, 2011: 204, 205). They take food from trees but only as much as they need. The discussion of being a vegan continues in the second novel, The Ghost Runner. There are two main characters who are very strong in promoting the vegan lifestyle as an anti-violence lifestyle (not killing animals as living beings that deserve to live) in this novel; Katherine and Alex. The campaign of changing to be vegans goes on. Despite being preoccupied with the problems of land ownership and the world of the theater, Katherine is also still a teenager who is troubled by her love relationships. Even though she has a romantic relationship with Alex, she occasionally still remembers the shadow of Roman, her ex- lover who refuses to become a vegan and to stop killing to meet his food needs, and it makes her sad. Meanwhile, she has to face Victor, an ancient vampire, who refuses to completely change his mind to follow the vegan lifestyle and is firm in its stance that he is born as he is: a human bloodsucker. Alex is the first vampire to become a vegan who replaces his food source with a sap tree. He is once mocked by Roman as a sapsucker. Katherine decides to stop her relationship with Roman because he, at first (in novel one), refuses to change her lifestyle at all. Katherine thinks that Roman does not consider his lifestyle as a crime, but only as a habit or tradition that seems completely irreversible. According to Katherine, it is like what omnivorous people think; eating animals is a habit. Therefore, she suggests to change it, that their food must be not from living beings because animals also deserve to live as humans have the right to live, as said “He (Roman) has never been his victims as human beings; they were just food - the way people don’t see cows and chickens and pigs as living, breathing creatures but only as food. But each life means something to someone else - each life is important.” (Richmond, 2012: 111). Finally, Roman decides to go back to Katherine and proclaims the change of his lifestyle to become a vegan vampire who will not suck human and animal blood: “I’ve given up on killing any mammal.” (Richmond, 2012: 190). The contraposition of herbivores and omnivores continues through Katherine and Alex against Victor. It does not merely show a conflict between those two different ways of eating, but also a contradiction of the old lifestyle of the ancestors as meat eaters and continue until now as a tradition and the new lifestyle offered by these plant eaters. The narrative in this second novel challenges meat eaters or omnivores to requestion what people have received so far as a tradition. And this novel also tries to open our minds to solve our temporer problem, that is the destruction of nature and evil against all creatures on earth, which is the only place to live for all living things; humans, animals, and plants. The last novel, The Last Mile, still centers on changing the old tradition of humans eating habit to the new one. This novel presents the on-going war between vegetarians and carnivorous and omnivorous habits as the omnipresent conflict. The recurring theme of pro-vegetarianism is apparent in the novel. Many times, the narrator puts carnivorous or omnivorous acts as an undesirable habit of the human race. She opposes the acts of killing animals for their meat, claiming it as a savage way to live, and implies 90 LINGUA CULTURA, Vol. 13 No. 2, May 2019, 87-92 that it is better to eat just from plants. Katherine explains how the carnivores look at their food, “To Victor, people are nameless; […] The same way a human may look at a burger and have no concept that it was once a beautiful cow, a living being as sweet as a dog.” (Richmond, 2014: 58). The narrator tries to give an analogy to human’s perception towards animals. For a vampire, people are food and not living things that have the right to live. It is analogous with people who see animals. They see cows, chickens, and fish as food, not as creatures that also have to live their life on the earth. In many parts of the novel, Richmond expresses the idea of changing the eating habit and assures readers that they can change their lifestyle; “I suppose him giving up meat, going vegan like me, was an assign that anyone can change.” (Richmond, 2014: 41). Hurting or abandoning an injured animal is also shown as an inhumane action in this novel. As narrated by Katherine in the scene where she and Roman hit a deer with their car; “[…] drivers aren’t supposed to leave an animal they’ve hit […] even when people do the right thing, the animals are often put down.” (Richmond, 2014: 182). Besides saving animals from being killed, the novel also glorifies plants in general, applying positive and calmness-inducing words to the description of trees. This is how the narrator views plants. “They were just standing there, like they had for centuries, living their lives, not bothering a soul, cleaning our air, giving nests to birds, making the world a better place just by being alive.” (Richmond, 2014: 43) The novel tells that a change—adaptation, evolution, revolution—is good while keeping the conventional ways— traditional, unadapting, refusing to change—is not always preferable; it may even lead to destruction. The novel argues that changing, in this case, is turning into a vegetarian, stop killing humans, animals, and trees are the best action a man can do for the world. A case of the unadaptable versus adaptable people is shown in the dialogue between Katherine and Victor at the beginning of the novel. In this scene, it is clear that Katherine represents an adaptable person, while Victor holds tight his tradition. [Victor] “Me? Drink the blood of trees instead of people? Oh, please.” […] “I am far too set in my ways to change now. Besides, I have a tradition to uphold.” “Calling it tradition doesn’t make it right.” “Traditions are how we honor our ancestors. Traditions bind us. Traditions ennoble us.” “Some traditions, sure. But what you’re doing is violence—plain and simple.” (Richmond, 2014: 154). Katherine explicitly states that everything and everyone has to change to survive, as cited: “That’s where you’re wrong. Everything evolves, or at least has the potential. Everything and everyone. It’s how we survive. And you and your kind will never survive unless you evolve. You’ll have to change.” (Richmond, 2014: 9-10) These examples show that this novel presents the ideas of pro-vegetarianism—which includes reserving nature, animals, and plants. At the end of the novel, it is narrated that Victor is dead, and it shows very clearly that his tradition as a carnivore has also passed away. The vegetarians survive. The author’s suggestion on this problem, as a matter of fact, does not consider how nature regulates herself. In ecology, it is known the term ‘food chain’: plants as the primary food source are consumed by plant-eating animals, which then eaten by flesh-eating animals; when they die they are food for microorganisms and the remnants could be nutrition for plants (Sampaolo, 2018). Nature has her own regulation. When humans cut off this chain, life on the earth might be disturbed. Richmond collides the perspective of treating the earth from the environmentalist and capitalist. The main character, Katherine, is the former, and Ed Jacobs the latter. In the first novel, Out of Breath, the main character and narrator, Katherine narrates the natural conditions of a small town called Lithia, in the state of Oregon, United States. In certain parts of the novel, the narrator celebrates the nature, “I follow close behind, breathing deeply the whole time […] clean feel of the air, rich with oxygen.” (Richmond, 2011: 192), and when she is walking in a forest nearby, she says “It’s so beautiful here I could walk forever. It’s like being in a cathedral of nature, ancient, and sacred.” (Richmond, 2011: 193). The novel does not describe the town as a hot and arid region, or a destroyed area like in The Road by Mc Charty; instead, the town has parks, housing, markets, just like common towns in the United States today. However, there is a narrative about a mine that has been closed, and only a few people dare to go through it, let alone enter it, which indicates a rejection of industry, in this case, mining. The description of people’s fear of approaching the mine implies the narrator’s opposition to the mining industry, as follows. “The Lost Mine Trail is a trail that hosts up the side of Siskiyou Nationl Forest and continues for hundreds of milets. [...] But even this part of the Lost Mine Trail is also for dedicated (or crazy) runners, and it’s pretty desolate; we’ve seen no one else since leaving town.” (Richmond, 2011: 30) The narrator even mentions that people who dare to do exercise, in this case running, towards the mine as crazy. The danger of the mine is evidenced by the disappearance of Stacey, Katherine’s friend when she broke his promise to his fiance not to run too close to the mine. With this story, the narrator expresses his view that industry (mining) is dangerous for the earth and humans as well. The industry is owned by a businessman who exploits the earth for the benefit of humans only, not considering the nature itself. When the earth is destroyed, human beings will consequently get the impacts. The opposition to the mining industry continues with a narration saying that those who dare to roam the mine area and who later turn out to kidnap Katherine’s friend are vampires. It is commonly known that vampires are human blood-sucking creatures, or can be classified as carnivores. There are two meanings that emerge from the stories of vampires as characters in this novel. First, the meaning of having vampires as the important characters in the trilogy is related to the issue of vegetarianism, which has been discussed in the previous part. Second, they are ‘eaters’ of other creatures, the same as capitalists, who do 91Considering All (Non) Living Things.... (Ida Farida Sachmadi, et al.) their business for the sake of humans only and ignore the life of other living things. As mentioned in the Introduction, biocentrism is against capitalism. Biocentrists argue that all organisms should unite to make one identity as a ‘greater self’, which means they all must respect other’s life. The author does not take a side to capitalism by making the mining industry and the housing development opposed by the heroine, who is an environmentalist. In the years the trilogy published, there is a debate on the issue of whether capitalism has given bad effect on nature. In her article, Bell (2015) has studied this problem by showing that capitalism has caused environmental crises because it proposes a concept that natural resources can be produced to be tradable commodities which then make them wealthy. This concept makes companies compete to make a lot of profits from their market and ignore the impacts on the environment. She has suggested that people have to minimize the negative effects of capitalism and even to stop it altogether (Bell, 2015). Another researcher, Park (2015) has discussed the relationship between climate change and capitalism and said that by exploiting nature, it results in pollution and wastes which endangering climate. He concludes that to solve this environmental problem, people have to end capitalism, “The way to a brilliant, sustainable new future certainly exist, but it does not lie down the beaten path of capitalism that we currently tread” (Park, 2015). However, other researchers have more positive thinking about capitalism. They try to create programs which can make capitalism deliver a healthy environment for all creatures. Tienhaara (2014) has said that from 2008 to 2012, there are many proposals suggesting to create a ‘green capitalism’, which means a program for the state to regulate the market and financial sector without ignoring ecological impacts. Richmond through his trilogy disagrees with capitalism and suggests to stop it without giving alternatives on how to replace commodities or products needed by people. The mining industry, for example, has to be closed but he does not give a solution to replace metals or fuels. The second novel from The Lithia Trilogy, The Ghost Runner, also shows opposition to industry, this time to the housing industry. Katherine tries to protect her inheritance so that it is not annexed by Ed Jacobs’ company and converted into housing. Katherine who is openly an environmental activist this time strongly opposed Ed Jacobs’ wishes. This novel campaigns the concept of saving the earth called the Gaia Hypothesis. Richmond uses the hypothesis here in his trilogy by giving a long lecture with a bulk of explicit information. Through a character named Prof. Lindquist, who teaches in the environmental studies class, Katherine learns a lesson about how the Earth has the ability to regulate the life in it and be able to defend itself, “The earth will defend itself,” (Richmond, 2012: 20, 23). One example says that with natural disasters, the earth can flatten almost all life on its surface, as seen. “If humans hurt the planet, the planet will defend itself. Let’s take global warming. Heat up the planet’s humans, which in turn leads to more severe storms, which in turn kill humans.” (Richmond, 2012: 24). This power is called the strength of Gaia: “The Gaia hypothesis says that the earth is self-regulating, very much like our bodies [...]” (Richmond, 2012: 23). Prof. Lindquist has also explained the power of Gaia which is not necessarily a natural disaster which is considered as the power of the Earth to defend itself from the exploitation of humans on Earth. “Gaia isn’t just about natural disasters. It’s about you and me. It’s about people working to make the world a better place.” (Richmond, 2012: 88). Before, Katherine herself admits that she is an environmentalist, “You know, I’m an environmentalist.” (Richmond, 2012: 55). However, the earth needs humans as an extension of Gaia’s strength. Organizations and activists who care about the environment and want to dedicate their time to defend the survival of flora and fauna in it are also said in this second novel as one of Gaia’s strengths. Katherine, in this case, is extending the handling of Gaia or the power of the Earth to save her from the attack of the home construction company owning by Ed Jacobs. When Katherine gets the chance to sell her late father’s land on the Lithia hill filled with trees and living things, she shows her deep concern for the sustainability of the entire ecosystem there. She tries to do it although she has to struggle to divide her time for her lectures, theater, and the effort to save her land from Ed Jacobs’ captivity. This is indicated by Katherine’s thought; “That I now have the power to prevent Ed Jacobs from building any more homes.” (Richmond, 2012: 138), and “In an instant, my priorities have shifted from education and drama to saving thousands of trees, and animals and birds that rely on them, and the people who have grown accustomed to gazing up at them.” (Richmond, 2012: 170). In fact, when she is fighting with her boyfriend Alex, she mediates the fight by saying that anything happened to her relationship with him, her main concern still has to be focused on Lithia’s land from the threat of Ed Jacobs’ company, “No matter what happened between us, the land still has to be protected. We have to do our part.” (Richmond, 2012: 133). This second novel also talks about actions and reactions between humans and the earth in terms of natural management through the Gaia hypothesis. If humans exploit nature, then the earth will do the regulation, as mentioned through the lecture from Prof. Lindquist. Through the lecture of the professor and Katherine’s struggle to prevent the conversion of land functions, the novel wants to relate the Gaia hypothesis and real actions in saving the earth. This is conveyed by Prof. Lindquist to link his lecture material in class with Katherine’s struggle which is considered as an extension of Gaia’s handling of protecting the earth; “Fortunately, we have people who like you who can have as much of an impact as earthquake.” (Richmond, 2012: 88). The real action of this teenage girl turns out to have a big impact on forest conservation in Lithia. Thus, by this story, the author argues that people must not disturb the earth through any exploitation of natural resources, and let the earth find her own way to survive. In the third novel, The Last Mile, the conflict between the environmentalist, Katherine in this case, and the capitalist, Ed Jacobs, continues. However, the novel ends the plot by making Katherine win her land. This, of course, shows that this trilogy stands up with the environmentalist (Richmond, 2014). CONCLUSIONS This trilogy delivers two problems of the environment; killing animals for food and destroying nature for the industry. The solution for the first problem is given very explicitly, that young people must change their lifestyle to be vegetarians and leave the old tradition as 92 LINGUA CULTURA, Vol. 13 No. 2, May 2019, 87-92 the meat-eaters behind. This suggestion does not consider that nature can adjust herself, especially in the system of the food chain. For the second problem, the trilogy gives a solution by demonstrating a certain way to view the earth through the explanation about the Gaia hypothesis, that the earth can balance herself. The proposal from the author to believe in Gaia hypothesis is in contradiction with the idea of being vegetarians. While allowing the earth to regulate herself, Richmond does not let nature organize herself by disturbing the food chain. Most of the arguments which support this main idea are expressed through many debates on changing the lifestyle of being omnivores to herbivores from the narrator’s perception. In addition, the trilogy also describes the opposition to capitalists who destroy the environment by developing an industry without considering other creatures. The characterization of the narrator/main character is very clear as an environmentalist who is fighting strongly against the omnivores and capitalists. Meanwhile, the plot supports the narrator’s perspective on the environment. At the end of the story, the carnivores are dead, and the capitalists fail to build (mining and housing) industry. Considering living and non-living things is the important idea offered by Richmond in these three novels. The trilogy presents biocentric orientation on viewing the world, which means that it tends to put into consideration the needs of non-living and living things on the earth. As one of the young adult novels, this trilogy has taught its reader target, young people, to consider the environment and all creatures on the earth, in accordance with the purpose of ecocriticism that Buell has stated; giving the contribution to make people understand that they can save the earth. However, the solution is problematic and debatable; being a vegan and opposing industry also could create negative impacts. This research is both limited in the research method and the topic. By using ecocriticism as the research method, this article discusses a specific topic in environment studies: biocentrism. For future researches, the same topic could be unearthed in other novels focusing on environment problems. Besides discussing global warmings or other natural disasters in literary works, perhaps it can be found novels motivating young adults to find an integrative solution to save the earth. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This research is funded by Unpad Internal Grant (Hibah Internal Unpad) from Universitas Padjadjaran, Bandung, West Java. REFERENCES Adkins, P. (2017). The eyes of that cow: Eating animals and theorizing vegetarianism in James Joyce’s “Ulysses”. Humanities, 6(46), 1-15. doi:https://doi.org/10.3390/ h6030046. Barry, G. (2014). Terrestrial ecosystem loss and biosphere collapse. Management of Environmental Quality: An International Journal, 25(5), 542-563. doi:https:// doi.org/10.1108/MEQ-06-2013-0069. Bell, K. (2015). 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