John Steinbeck’s Ecological Dynamism in To a God Unknown Yong-ki Kang (Chonnam National University) The two concepts of god and their ecological entailments motivate Steinbeck’s early novel To a God Unknown; a Christian god worshipped by Burton is juxtaposed against an ‘oak tree,’ a pantheistic deity vindicated more vehemently by Joseph than anybody else. The concept of Joseph’s god is generated through an epistemological process of ‘non-teleological thinking’ whose detailed explanation is offered in Log from the Sea of Cortez while ‘teleological thinking’ supposedly underpins Burton’s evangelist god. Although the two concepts of god are presented seemingly dualistic in this novel, in fact, the non-teleological god is implied to articulate the teleological god, the textual evidence of which is provided by Father Angelo’s deconstructive response to Joseph’s concept of god. Also, Joseph’s non-teleological thinking is travestied through a paranoiac ritual of ‘the old man.’ The concept