Essay - Swamp Thing

The concept of the Pastoral is a literary longing for the return of rustic English values and lifestyles, and a lamentation of the rapid industrialisation of the world. I studied the Pastoral at A Level in English, and it has been an important part of English development for hundreds of years, and I feel that it is still present today in the form of concern for our planet as a living natural thing independent of the human race.
A piece of Illustration that I feel captures the modern representation of the pastoral is Alan Moore's Swamp Thing.

The overriding theme of Alan Moore's run on the Swamp Thing comics is that of the natural world eventually overriding our technological and industrial constructs. As social responsibility concerning the environment is something that was not considered an important issue in the post war world that was trying to pick itself up and advance technologically, Swamp Thing was an exploration of the importance of nature, and the perceptions we as a society hold towards it.