In Ghosh’s novel, weather plays an important role to the point its even depicted as a character in the book. In the other novels we have read in class, what role does weather play? is the weather treated as a character by the other authors as Ghosh does in the Hungry Tide?

Bibliography:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alexa-Weik-Von-Mossner-2/publication/269520259_The_Home_the_Tide_and_the_World_Eco-Cosmopolitan_Encounters_in_Amitav_Ghosh’s_The_Hungry_Tide/links/54986d2d0cf2eeefc30f977f/The-Home-the-Tide-and-the-World-Eco-Cosmopolitan-Encounters-in-Amitav-Ghoshs-The-Hungry-Tide.pdf

https://journals.openedition.org/angles/1175_A_Sea_Of_Violence_and_love: Precarity_Eco-fiction_And_The American_Factor_in_Amitav_Ghosh’s_The_Hungry-Tide/Maria-Sabrina_ Draga_ Alexandra

http://www.unishivaji.ac.in/uploads/journal/humanities/may18/final%20pdf%20%20Volume%2049.pdf#page=53/Ecological_Perspectives_in_Amitav_Ghosh’s_The_Hungry_Tide/Fulswange_Sunil_Uttam

https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/24331/Eco-Fiction:_Bringing_Climate_Change_Into_ The_Imagination/David, Sophia_06/24/16/

When reading Jones, it became evident that achieving a kind of utopia in dystopian times is an idea quite deviant from traditional notions of utopia. The traditional image of utopia is more fixed and permanent. There is a specific place and specific people who come together with a common goal. I think it is also notable to say that in this specific place, specific people come together to turn away from something that has become commonplace, yet harmful to their state of being. As Jones points out, the utopia that has been seen in the novels we have read in this class is not fixed or permanent. In fact, I think it is quite fluid. It flows, stretches, and adjusts according to the people within the community and their goals.

First, I want to speak on this in relation to Butler’s Robledo in Parable of a Sower. When Lauren gets together her gang of people, we see a range of ages, races, and abilities. This shows fluidity as there isn’t a specific “type” that can be part of the utopia. Anyone looking for a place to turn away from outside chaos, like a climate change crisis, and willing to work together towards the same goals is able to be a part. This also speaks to something Clausen was saying in his article about mutual aid. Clausen highlights what he calls “grassroots mutual aid.” It is basically a group of people uprooting themselves from one place, and rerooting in a place where they can work together towards the common good. Combining the ideas of both Clausen and Jones, Butler’s novel can be seen as a modern utopia. We see people leaving a chaotic outside world to form a microcosm of society, but not in a way that is fixed or permanent. In fact, the utopia in Sower moves around a lot as the group seeks out better environmental conditions, such as less drought. People come, people go and while they are traveling, their hope in finding a home keeps things more utopian than actually having a place to call home.

Secondly, I want to speak about this in relation in Ghosh. Ghosh’s novel presents this idea of utopia more in a turning away from traditional chaos sort of way. This traditional chaos being the force of colonialism, which serves as a historical background to the novel due to some of the events taking place in that region during that time. What Pia, Kenai, and Fakir do when they are out on the boat, doing their work turns away from colonial expectations. We have sort of an interesting dissonance going on between western and eastern, civilized vs. uncivilized amidst the barrier of language. Both Pia, as a woman in STEM from the U.S, and Kenai, as a businessman and translator represent western views of what it means to be successful. Some of the ways this is shown is in the dress of Pia and Kenai, how it differs from Fakir at first, and how it changes throughout the novel. It is also seen how sometimes having more education or “knowledge” can still leave someone helpless in a situation. This is shown as Fakir is able to save Pia numerous times and not Kenai, even though Kenai is the one who is portrayed and carries himself as the “smart guy.” Out on the boat, they are doing work that the government does not exactly agree with and governing themselves by their own rules. I find this to be sort of utopian as being free from formal order and having the liberty to somewhat create your own rules is sort of what it’s all about. But also the importance of turning away, from systems that you don’t agree with, don’t serve you, or actually harm you.

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Ghosh, Amitav. The Hungry Tide. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005. 

• ‘The Hungry Tide’ by Amitav Ghosh serves as the foundational text. All sources will be concerning the novel, serving as evidence for both individual arguments in the following sources; and as a whole toward my literary analysis of the novel. 

Griffiths, Gareth. “Silenced Worlds: Language and Experience in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide.” Kunapipi, vol. 34, no. 2, 2012, pp. 105–112.

• The journal, “Silenced Worlds: Language and Experience in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide.”, by Gareth Griffiths, analyzes the historical and geographical repetition of history that extends beyond what is recorded. This direction of analysis helps ground the geographical memory of the Sunderbans, and its mirroring of its inhabitants and visitors. To put it simply, instead of directly diving into the use and interpretation of memory in the novel, integrating the contributions of the elements in the formation of memory allows a closer analysis of the author’s choices and use of literary devices. 

Pilia, Nicola. “Dwelling, Dispossession, and ‘Slow Violence’ in the Time of Climate Change.” Il Tolomeo (Online), vol. 22, no. 1, 2020, https://doi.org/10.30687/Tol/2499-5975/2020/22/024.

• The journal  “Dwelling, Dispossession, and ‘Slow Violence’ in the Time of Climate Change.”, by Nicola Pilia interacts with the refugee lives and the physical history embodied in their struggle against their ‘forced eviction’, through the use of Nirmal’s written memory. This is one of the few sources that directly relate to the use of memory as a device to represent the unescapable loop of repetition as natural disasters and deaths maintain their positions as two sides of the same coin. This approach is not only directly beneficial for me as a reliable source, but it also delves into the differences between historical and ecological memories. 

Prabhu, Gayathri. “Retelling Nature: Realism and the Postcolonial-Environmental Imaginary in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide.” Transnational Literature, vol. 7, no. 2, 2015, p. 1–.

• The journal  “Retelling Nature: Realism and the Postcolonial-Environmental Imaginary in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide.”, by Gayathri Prabhu analyzes the formation in a more ‘present’ formation of memory. This source not only provides a referential timeframe in the process of memory formation and its recognition but also addresses the meta-textual elements that successfully aid the novel to do so, helping me use the source effectively and directing me as a reader of the novel in answering my research question. In doing so, the interaction with the primary text and the source goes beyond ‘close reading’, but to identifying emergent patterns and how and why they are used by Ghosh. 

Prabhu, Gayathri. “Retelling Nature: Realism and the Postcolonial-Environmental Imaginary in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide.” Transnational Literature, vol. 7, no. 2, 2015, p. 13–.

• The latter segment of the journal  “Retelling Nature: Realism and the Postcolonial-Environmental Imaginary in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide.”, by Gayathri Prabhu answers the employment of narrative techniques in the novel. This realm of research helps me understand the specificity of these techniques, and how I in turn identify them to understand Ghosh’s ways of framing memories and distinguishing them through the use of these techniques. Unlike the above source which deals with timestamps in history, this source elaborates on the structure that allows the content to qualify as a quantifying memory. 

Prasad, Murari. “Interfacing Diaspora with Ecological Humanities in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide.” Asiatic, vol. 14, no. 1, 2020, pp. 273–85.

• The journal “Interfacing Diaspora with Ecological Humanities in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide.”, by Murari Prasad detaches the physical relation to a region to acknowledge memories. The field of research in this journal helps stitch the various relations of ‘belonging’ in a world that is changing at massive rates. The journal takes a step back looking at the multitude of relations between person, place, and the memory attached to it instead of analyzing on a singular level, therefore successfully increasing the probability that the answer to their question manages to grasp the scope of diasporic memories and relations. 

Rath, Arnapurna, and Milind Malshe. “Chronotopes of ‘Places’ and ‘Non-Places’: Ecopoetics of Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide.” Asiatic, vol. 4, no. 2, 2010, pp. 14–33.

• In the journal “Chronotopes of ‘Places’ and ‘Non-Places’: Ecopoetics of Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide.” by Arnapurna Rath, the analysis encapsulates the formation disjointed from physical locations. A rather unique source that has a refreshing approach to combining the mind and locations. It also interacts with two notable characters in relation to memory: Nirmal, and Kanai, therefore covering extensive ground on the role of intergenerational memory alone. This not only makes the source useful as evidence to support my answer to my research question but also directs the recognition of memory beyond physical space. 

Tomsky, Terri. “Amitav Ghosh’s Anxious Witnessing and the Ethics of Action in The Hungry Tide.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 44, no. 1, 2009, pp. 53–65, https://doi.org/10.1177/0021989408101651.

• The journal “Amitav Ghosh’s Anxious Witnessing and the Ethics of Action in The Hungry Tide.” by Terri Tomsky stands behind the characters to understand the input of information as influenced by personal factors that result in the formation of memory. It helps understand the absence of a uniform collective memory and its incorporation in Ghosh’s writing of the novel. This source bridges the gap between the character’s memory as an independent creation devoid of personal influence that shapes the character’s memories and its perception. 

• Tasnim, Zakiyah. “Transformation of English Language in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide”.  Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 2018, Vol. 9 (3), p. 145.  Footscray: Australian International Academic Centre PTY. Ltd (AIAC). https://www.proquest.com/docview/2188079590?accountid=27495&parentSessionId=Q%2FGmgSfCB5B0IehfM7qhkh9z%2FPWY4tmm2bc3Jflt8QA%3D&pq-origsite=primo

• Pradittatsanee, Darin. “Conditionality, Non-Self, and Non-Attachment in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide: A Buddhist Reading”. Manusya: Journal of humanities, 2018, Vol. 2018 (2), pg 1-26. The Netherlands: BRILL. https://brill.com/view/journals/mnya/21/2/article-p1_1.xml 

• Some, Anjan. “A Search for Ontological Identity Through The Characters of Nirmal and Nilima in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide”. Vol. 8, Issue-I (Feb. 2017), pg 1-9. The Criterion: An International Journal In English. https://www.the-criterion.com/V8/n1/002.pdf 

• Kalaiarasan, M and R. Sowmiyalatha. “Trans-Cultural Communication in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide”. Language in India, Vol. 19, no. 7, 2019, pg. 323. Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA). https://web.p.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=3&sid=a100423b-88c9-4b1b-943e-c29a972f7995%40redis    

• Chowdhury, S. “Women In Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide: Their Struggle Against Norms And Desperate Attempt To Transgress Gender Roles”. Vol. 6, Issue 4 (2018), pg 54-58. Quest Journals: Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Science. https://www.questjournals.org/jrhss/papers/vol6-issue4/J06045458.pdf 

 In trying to make this simple bibliography, I used both Hunter College’s online library page and old reliable Google. In both cases I typed in keywords such as “Ghosh” and “The Hungry Tide”, as well as “languages”, which gave me some results such as the first two and the fifth source(s) stated above. I also looked at some of the bibliographies that people posted that seemed to have similar themes as the research question I posted, which led me to the Anjan and Kalaiarasan articles. 

In Butler’s Sower, Lauren’s disability of hyperempathy is an integral element of the novel. Through the lens of her disability, Lauren is able to actually feel the pain of other beings and even animals. Her hyperempathy can be seen as both a superhero quality as well as a disabling one. On the superhero note, Lauren is able to act with a special intuition as she knows not only how someone else will feel in the situation but also how she will feel as a conduit for their pain. On the disabling note, Lauren is sometimes unable to act because she knows how much pain it will cause, even when it comes to matters of her own safety such as practicing gunmanship. 

In Lerner’s 10:04, the reader is quickly introduced to the idea of life altering diagnosis. The main character is diagnosed with Marfan’s disease, a cardiac condition that can have life threatening implications without intervention. We as the reader see how his life changes after his diagnosis, and how that interacts with the environment around him of impending doom and destruction as a result of climate change. 

Lerner’s novel is not like the other two novels that we have read in this class in terms of climate change. For one, our other novels were written a few decades ago, whereas Lerner’s novel was published in 2015. Another way Lerner’s novel is different is that it falls beneath the genres of metafiction and autofiction. As the novel is being crafted, the reader is not removed from this process. Rather through this lens, the reader sees some of the stylistic choices contemplated upon by the author throughout the novel. As for autofiction, the events of the story are based upon events that actually took place in the author’s life. 

Though there are many differences between our other two novels in this course and Lerner’s work, I did want to highlight something that I saw as somewhat of a similarity between Butler and Lerner. This similarity is the intersection between disease and disability. I find it interesting that a disability is not always a disease, but a disease is more likely than not a disability. In Butler, we have a character with a disability. In Lerner, we have a character with a disease. Even though disability and disease can be two different things, they are one in the same by the way in which they change someone’s outlook on life. In Butler, as Lauren gets older, she is able to channel her hyperempathy in ways that increase her chance of survival. In Lerner, we see the main character changing some of his stances in life over the fact that he feels as though he is facing impending death. An example of this is when he gives the sperm sample. I also find it interesting that disease and disability are partnered with the climate change crisis. Even though disease and disability can be seen as negative, they also have some plus sides in how they alter our perception of life. This altered perception can be crucial to survive in times of ecological turmoil, or turmoil in general.