Environmental crisis and human vulnerability in “A árvore mais sozinha do mundo”

between the exploitation of the earth and the illness of individuals

Abstract

This study aims to analyze A árvore mais sozinha do mundo (2024) by Mariana Salomão Carrara from an ecofeminist and ecocritical perspective, investigating how the novel links environmental degradation to the erosion of human bonds. The narrative subverts anthropocentric logic by giving voice to non-human narrators, such as the tree, the Ford Rural, and other objects, transforming them into sensitive witnesses to the familial and ecological crisis. The study engages with authors such as Vandana Shiva and Maria Mies (1993), Françoise d’Eaubonne (2025), and Geni Nuñez (2023) to demonstrate that the same patriarchal and productivist rationality that exploits nature also permeates bodies, affections, and subjectivities. The research highlights that tobacco monoculture functions, in the novel, as a metaphor for a system of exhaustion that captures life in all its dimensions. The tree’s degradation mirrors the family’s physical and emotional wear and tear, revealing a shared experience of vulnerability. Silence, apathy, and the inability to imagine other forms of existence permeate the domestic space, contaminated by both literal poison and the logic of continuous productivity. It is thus evident that the novel denounces the interdependence between the socio-environmental crisis and the affective crisis, pointing to the urgency of rethinking the relationships of care between humans and non-humans.