Ecocriticism and postcolonial theory, at initial view, don’t seem to necessarily intersect or interact. Ecocriticism concerns the “trees and plants,” and postcolonial concerns “the third ld.” Yet this initial impression is naive and reductive. We see this sort of opposition in the book itself, with the conservatory efforts of the state being in conflict with the settling of Dalits in the Sundarbans. The book points out, and as many critics have, that one cannot separate the two spheres. That is to say that if one is to be ecocritical or speak of the environment, of the “natural world,” one must engage with postcoloniality. Critic Brandon Jones states this accurately when he remarks

Mark McGurl writes that the Anthropocene as geological present “exacerbates and magnifies the dilemma of human agency, locating the blowback of the waste products of modernization on the blurry line between intention and accident” (383). What this means in the case of The Hungry Tide is that through the lens of geological deep time, one of the novel’s central conflicts becomes how consciously to reconcile modern colonialist responsibility for human violence and environmental exploitation in South Asia with the accidental consequences of stratigraphic encroachment and global climate change. (Jones 2018)

The novel presents seemingly accidental “hand of god” type climatological phenomena as not isolated happenings. The type of happenings that we in globalized society have all grown accustomed to, yet here this is not the case. The book in very a elegant and tragic way historizes these phenomena as being wrapped in the social and political lives of the Dalits. Hence, space in the novel is not empty or dead but carries with it in very postcolonial fashion significations towards the past and present. This can be seen throughout the novel, but especially in the ending, as Forkir’s presence in time is sprinkled throughout the Sundarbans as routes on a GPS.

Time and history play a role in novels likewise, in as much as they seem to always find their way into the lives of our characters. The book is driven in part by Kainai and Piya, who have conscious and unconscious reasons for taking part in this adventure. On the surface, it’s purely pragmatic. Piya is going there because it’s her job to study dolphins, and Kainai is going begrudgingly to retrieve something. Yet as the novel descends deeper into the history of our characters, we find not just personal revelations but historical ones. By the end of the novel, the sphere of the personal and political is disrupted. For instance, what seems to Kainai as the ramblings of an old socialist turns into a beautiful and tragic account of a seemingly forgotten history. It points to the way globalized, postcolonial societies intertwine temporalities and spaces to erase the consequences of colonialism.

In Jenny Offill’s book, Weather, the main narrative, Lizzie, whose name we find out later, gives us glimpses of her days with entries of thoughts that seem almost poetry like. For the first few pages, Lizzies name was withheld from the readers in order to develop her as a person and identity. We find out she is a mother, a wife, and a sister. Lizzie is empathetic and real in the way she cares for those around her. Lizzie’s relationship with her brother is complex because he is a recovering addict that Lizzie feels responsibility for. In the book, a character name Margot even describes their relationship as enmeshed where Lizzie is so involved in her brothers that it’s hard for her to detach from it. Lizzies relationship with her husband Bob is interesting to analyze as well since their relationship seems to be stable yet a bit strained and distant possibly due to Lizzies thoughts. As the book continues we will be able to see the relationships in her life develop and the type of connections she has that plays a part in her life.

Lizzies character is complex in the sense that she doesn’t seem like the stereotypical protagonist. She’s relatable in a way by not seeming to have much motivations and she’s just living day by day. Through Lizzie, we see her thoughts and fears about climate change but very swiftly. Lizzie sprinkles in bits and pieces of her thoughts involving the world but they get put on the back burner through the other thoughts she has. Because of her new job working for Sylvia, Lizzie is tasked to answer questions like, “When are the Days of Tribulation? Did Noah’s flood cover the whole earth or just the places where people lived? Can pets be saved in Christ and go to heaven?” and “Does extinction matter since we know how the Bible ends? Who invented contrails? How will the last generation know it is the last generation?” These questions revolving climate change and the end of the world can play into Lizzies anxieties and amplify her own fears of the end of the world. Lizzie later on says, “My # 1 fear is the acceleration of days. No such thing supposedly, but I swear I can feel it.” This quote resonates with how I feel as well with the state of our world. Her fear of how fast yet slow the world is moving is so valid and is a scary feeling.

This book differs from Parable of the Sower and The Hungry Tide because to me, there seems to be no exact timeline. Lizzie’s thoughts are, in my opinion, kind of all over the place. In Parable of the Sower, Lauren would also have journal entries but more fleshed out and in more detail compared to Lizzie’s entries. In The Hungry Tide, it was also more coherent where we followed along Kanai’s point of view and Piya’s point of view which both seemed straightforward. There was plot and conflicts that moved the stories along. Whereas in Weather it is more confusing because we don’t have any idea how the story is going to go. We only get snippets of Lizzie’s life and sometimes the thoughts she has gets cuts off and moves onto the next. It will be interesting to see how Lizzies thoughts get more established and to see what develops.

Weather by Offill has an interesting narration that presents the narrator’s thoughts on daily interactions. The narrator’s thoughts were cut off without finishing. The book’s tone is dull, and passive, and has negative perspectives towards life as it jumps between different encounters. It’s a bold way of writing a novel because tone is essential in the beginning to catch the reader’s interest. Furthermore, the readers could struggle to understand the plot of this book’s formation. If I bypassed this book, I would most likely drop it off because I wasn’t able to understand the plot from the beginning. This makes me question whether I am reading this book for entertainment or education wise? What is the line drawn for Si-Fi to be more fiction or science-based? Should Si-Fi be limited by these two option or could be more creative?

Secondly, this book offers a different narration from Bulter and Ghosh’s book where it doesn’t have a visible plot, romantic relationships, or a visible connection to the environmental crisis. One connection between Butler, Ghosh, and Offill’s book is references to religion. In the books of Butler and Ghosh, religion is portrayed in a positive light that symbolizes community, guidance, and hope. However, in this book, the references are from the bible is being interrogated. For example, “Does extinction matter since we know how the Bible ends?” (Offill 27). This example offers a different mindset towards anthropogenic destruction where people have knowledge from the bible of the extinction of humans and accept it to happen just in a matter of time. Another example is, “When are the Days of Tribulation? Did Noah’s flood cover the whole earth or just the places where people lived?” (Offill 35). These are the questions that I encounter from believers and non-believers as we see more frequent news of natural disasters and wars between countries erupting. This reflects that the questions are realistic and can be situated in our day-to-day lives. Moreover, the questions present the fears and depressive perspectives of the environmental crisis worsen although there is no exposition of environmental concern in the book. It could be implied in any situation, not just in the past or the future.

Lastly, this book could connect to Haraway’s idea of a deeper connection of kinship between humans and other critters. One example to present this idea is, “I tell Eli I will take him out to eat at the dinner. NO ANIMALS ALLOWED, the sign outside the restaurant reads. ‘But we are animals, right?'” (Offill 34-35). This proves humans are no different from other critters and should be responsible for the environmental crisis as we are all refugees on Earth.

The way this book is written immediately caught my eye. In a way, the writing style of this book can reflect Lizzie as a character and her emotional state. Lizzie has so much going on. She is a middle-aged woman who lives life with a sense of unease. She is a Librarian at a university and is an “assistant” for Sylvia. She has a son named Eli, a brother who she is very close to, and a husband. However, the relationship between Lizzie and her husband seems kind of distant and incompatible. This marriage seems like a routine in a way.

So far in the novel, Lizzie comes off as emotionally detached from the situations she faces, and sometimes she finds herself facing them with dark humor, which can be awkward. As she deals with both her personal life and the state of the world she lives in, her thoughts/observations are shown in very brief and “broken up” sentences, which is a reflection of Lizzie as a character. This style of writing is interesting and makes the book more relatable. This reflects the life of an average person. As someone who works a job, takes seven classes and attempts to go to the gym every other day, my thoughts are very “all over the place” as well. There is so much going on in the world that I sometimes feel overstimulated, which is the vibe I get from Lizzie so far in this novel. The novel reflects/mirrors the chaos and scatteredness of life, where people are very often forced to manage multiple emotional/intellectual situations all at once.

Lizzie’s quiet/passiveness can also suggest to the reader that she is still figuring out the meaning of life or for meaning in the world, which feels meaningless to her now. She does not have any clear goals for herself, which forces her to simply go through life dealing with small tasks while being aware of the larger existential crises that go on in the world. She is very disconnected from the world, and this is shown through her relationships as well, not only with her husband but with her brother as well. These relationships’ tension and awkwardness broadly reflect her emotional detachment from others. She often avoids people and does not like to engage in much conversation with others. This aligns with this book; the themes of dreading existential crises in this case climate change and the difficulties of navigating a world full of personal situations.

The novel, “Weather” by Jenny Offill surrounds the life of Lizzie, who is a librarian at a college campus and works a side job at answering letters that are submitted to a podcast titled, “Hell and High Water”. In comparison to the protagonists of “Parable of The Sower” and “The Hungry Tide”, Lizzie is the “most normal” protagonist that we have encountered in our novels that we’ve read in this course. Lizzie’s character is the embodiment of the average American citizen, Working Class, and a Parent. This makes it so Lizzie is more relatable to the reader, giving us a glimpse of how average people would approach these scenarios. However, what separates Lizzie from Lauren and Piya, is also what separates Weather from the other novels; it’s that there’s a very slow progression as the novel focuses on an average person’s life.

Despite all that, there are still little elements of “cli-fi” that are touched upon through the letter submissions that Lizzie encounters and the podcast, and through that we can see how Offill interprets the average person to react to, “climate fiction.” As an example, on Page 46 it reads, “Sylvia tells the audience that the only reason we think humans are at the height of evolution is that we have chosen to privilege certain things above other things. For example, if we privileged the sense of smell, dogs would be deemed more evolved.” (Offill, Pgs. 47 and 48) This piece of evidence can be connected to Fraizer’s piece on Parable of the Sower, where in it he criticizes the ideology of humans being the “peak” of biological species as this creates a narcissistic attitude towards other lifeforms. This is significant as this critical level of thinking around the subject of human’s and biological hierarchy being formed in “Weather” creates a message that the average person can easily approach this weird relationship that humans have with being evolutionally superior on a hierarchal level without having to be an ecocritical writer and researcher.

Continuing with Offill pushing towards ideas that has been argued in this course by the critical essayists that we’ve read from in this course, one that caught my attention was found on Page 55, where in it, its stated, “…there’s an expert giving advice about how to survive disasters, natural and man-made. He says it’s a myth that people panic in emergencies. Eighty percent just freeze. The brain refuses to take in what’s happening. This is called the incredulity response, ‘Those who live move…'” (Offill, Pg. 55) This piece of evidence connects to the reading that we’ve read from Clausen’s Georgic article; In the article, Clausen references Parable of The Sower, and how Lauren’s experience and diary could be used as a “survival guide” for anyone who finds themselves suffering the consequences of a rundown society at the expense of a disaster. The evidence used from Offill’s novel can be interpreted as some form of foreshadowing, where the advice is needed for an upcoming disaster that is unknown to both the characters and the reader.

In Conclusion, Weather’s ability to create a “common” or “average” model whether it be through characters or progression, develops a common ground between the readers and the critical essayists where they can approach to the same ideas about “cli-fi”, without the reader of the novel feeling alienated.