In many things before the canny is something that varies and depends from person to person, But in Nayars “The postcolonial uncanny…” the idea of a Indigenous canny is presented which is extremely unique but a rather unfamiliar concept that’s a bit hard to grasp. The idea of a canny describes something that feels familiar but unfamiliar at the same time as described by Freud, The idea of home and house are connected but they’re not the same thing as both evoke different feelings.

The Home is somewhere a person has the feeling of belonging and return to but a House is a place where someone just lives its like the blurring of familiar and unfamiliar. The indigenous cany that’s described by Nayar is something that’s described as a familiarity that people have when they’re connected to the place they live in the idea of a home is something that’s supposed to be stable but like in Ghosh’s novel the stability doesn’t exist in the Sundarbans. Fokir in the Novel is in a way used to show the Indigenous canny as someone whose used to the instability and adjusts their life to it. He grew up in the Sundarbans so he’s been with instability his whole life and got used to the way of life there which shows Indigenous canny. While Piya’s perspective is shown as the uncanny in the Sundarbans because of how the Bengali culture and language is familiar to her and like home but she isnt very connected with it so she feels like a outsider whose visiting a new place at the start of the novel.

The Indigenous in my opinion shows a different way of life that many are used to because they adapted to the place they live in instead of depending on migration to a new area to seek better conditions to live in. But when you accept a life that’s like the Indigenous canny its just depending on instability and your own ability to adapt to the changes the environment throws at you but your life isn’t always guaranteed and can be taken away by a slight change even. Fokirs life was taken like that but that’s how many peoples lives are still when they choose the Indigenous canny as nothing is stable in a land where everything is unpredictable and a surprise. Adapting helps you get used to it but its never something you’re 100% used to as change is surprise to us humans.

I think it makes sense to preface with the obvious, which is that this novel so far hardly mentions the environment. It focuses more so on the everyday life of an average person living in the daily presence of the Anthropocene. The narrator is a college librarian who speaks and describes life in a very dull way. Everything she says and how she says it is presented passively and a pretty boring way. Personally, I like it it just kind of feels like i’m reading someone’s thoughts. Her life is dull, she completes her tasks , her job, takes of her son and her husband, has dull conversations and honestly seems a bit depressed. I might be overthinking this but, I’m connecting her dullness and depressing narrative as connected to the name of her boss or the person she is assisting ; Sylvia.

Anyways, so the dull and depressive attitude of the narrator is tied to the anthropocene I believe and the general mood created by anthropocenic destruction. As the novel progresses, there are like elements of environmental concern sprinkled in. However, her reaction is very deadpan and monotone, not sure if those are the right words but that’s how interpret it. The first instance I noted was when she was eating a ham sandwich and an animal activist started yelling at her, “Pigs are more trainable than dogs” to which she responded with “Who asked you anyways? i think, but I leave and eat it my desk” (Offill 15). Her entire mood is set as indifferent, and when she observes any types of negative feelings, that’s all she does; observes. Another example that stood out to me that I think can be related to climate change is her “#1 fear [of] the acceleration of days” (Offill 16). Again, maybe this is far fetched but acceleration is an element of climate change and environmentalism in the way that as the days go by faster, the earth becomes more irreversible. And to some, that is what needs to happen in order for the earth to purify itself from the anthropocene – this can be understood as accelerationism which basically believes the current capitalist system should intensify until the destruction of practically everything to just kind of get it over with.

Lastly, i’m pretty sure we’ll see more direct connects to that of climate and environmentalism as the novel goes on because the person that she works for has a podcast called “Hell and High Water.” From the small details given so far, it’s safe to assume it is a podcast about climate change. The narrators interaction with environmentalism and climate change will continue to grow and will give us more insight into the important of understanding the anthropocene, as well as it’s presence in media including literature but also podcasts like the one spoken about in the novel.

Olivia Butler uses a dystopian society, a world on the brink of climate change, poverty, violence, and social injustice, underlining the fact that ecological disasters are always felt first and foremost by subaltern communities. Lauren Olamanina moves within a disintegrating society, but her survival journey reflects a critical awareness of the social cost of environmental collapse. Butler’s work brings a different view of the Anthropocene because she emphasizes how climate change widens current inequalities, especially for marginalized communities. Lauuren’s vision of “Earthseed” here is one of survival through change, opening urgent possibilities for human action in the instant of ecological disaster.

However, when we look at the hungry tide it engages on the Anthropocene rather more directly. the novel starts with the Sundarbans mangrove forests, a profoundly intricate ecosystem generated by natural forces as well as colonial history. Gosh’s novel contrasts human and non-human perspectives even as it depicts human beings as completely embedded within threatened ecosystems. He virtually contests the anthropocentric vision of nature, underlining interdependence instead. Having Kanai as a protagonist someone who is so different from Lauren Olamina since Lauren grew up with the struggles of the results of climate change as opposed to Kanai who is very disconnected from his environment until he meets Pia when Kanai arrives to meet Nilima she explains to Kanai that she took a different route due to seasonal flooding, which made the usual paths impassable. This moment underscores the constant challenges posed by the Sundarbans’ shifting landscape, highlighting the area’s vulnerability and the need to adapt to its unpredictable waters. Which Kanai being so disconnected didn’t know or expect.

Offill describes the Anthropocene through the dislocated, anxious mind of Lizzie who is facing the climate change dread and societal instability. She writes about her experiences, and what goes on around her giving it a more relatable insight into the everyday struggles of climate change anxiety instead of a survival guide like butlers or Gosh’s work. Offils work critiques how climate change discourse often fosters helplessness, indirectly arguing for individual awareness and resilience.

Together, these three authors draw upon science and speculation to critique the Anthropocene’s devastating social, psychological, and ecological effects. While Butler and Gosh surely stress the direct physical toll of the Anthropocene on already marginalized communities, Offill captures an emotional atmosphere that pervades the era itself.

In Jenny Offill’s book titled Weather, there is a humorous approach to climate fiction that is both creative and effective. Unlike Ghosh, who relied on the uncanny, or Octavia Butler, who depended on speculation, Offill sets her main character up as an actress within “the everyday Anthropocene”. She takes an interesting and humorous approach to climate and world issues, allowing her main character to make jokes about the end of the world. Offill’s fiction is creatively done and approaches the issue in a unique way. Offill sets up a main character working in a library. The woman in question has societal duties that extend to her children, family, and husband. While the main character takes a humorous approach to issues regarding end of the world speculation and politics, readers are able to laugh along at the state of the world.

Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower is a science fiction novel that details the collapse of society. Against Ghosh, who believes that science fiction is not an effective way to speak about climate change because of its doomsday ideas, Butler writes a piece that is set in 2025 in a development called Robledo. In Butler’s work, there is the Earthseed religion and mutual aid that brings people together to save or perhaps simply survive this apocalyptic event. This approach allows the novel to tell a story, one of relative success, within the genre of climate fiction. Butler’s speculative fiction contrasts Ghosh’s realistic fiction, yet neither does something similar to Jenny Offill’s Weather.

In Ghosh’s work, there is a juxtaposition of indigenous people with values within their community, and more Western individuals who have Western beliefs operating within the unfamiliar community. Nayar connects this to indigenous canny and the uncanny. From this lens, Ghosh and Nayar speak on the details provided that give a sense of uncanny such as the ever changing landscape and the wild wildlife present in the tide country. We see individuals like Piya and Kanai coming across the uncanny in the form of crocodiles, tigers, and muddy rivers. These individuals are juxtaposed with the character Fokir, who grew up in the tide country and feels more at home on the water than in his home on land. Ghosh also sets up a comparison between humans versus animals. In this he pits environmentalists attempting to displace refugees to save wildlife, with people who have nowhere to go and need a home. With this juxtaposition, readers are able to see the boundary and belief system that the uncanny and indigenous canny operate behind regardless of conflict. In the end the uncanny becomes canny for Piya and Kanai as they create a project in honor of Fokir. This approach with realistic fiction is successful and effective for readers to consider these two points of view and attempt to understand Ghosh’s implications. Ghosh’s fiction differs from Offill’s based upon this idea of the uncanny. He depends upon the uncanny to tell a story outside of the everyday Anthropocene, while Offill creates a world within this Western everyday life.

Offill’s work is quite different because a significant portion is almost humorous. While in all three novels there is a clear threat to the planet, Offill’s work attempts to poke fun at the everyday while our planet declines slowly. The main character produces humor within small brief glimpses into her life. Her mentor, Sylvia, runs a podcast talking about essentially the end of the world. While the main character introduces humorous moments, there is also an underlying dread of our worlds’ decline (As I write this I have an underlying dread based upon the election results). Sylvia gives talks on evolution in which she says “ the only reason we think humans are the height of evolution is that we have chosen to privilege certain things above other things,” (Offill, 46). This is followed by a lighthearted comparison of the things humans do not measure against animals that is designed to make readers chuckle and think. Offill creates an interesting approach to climate fiction that is unlike that of Butler or Ghosh. It seems that while Butler and Ghosh were arguing about the value of science fiction as a genre, Offill produced a type of comedy piece surrounding climate change.

Peter Barry addresses structuralism which looks at the psychoanalytical nuances within literature to uncover deeper depths of storytelling and characters. Karl Marx touches upon historical materialism which dives into historical events and political contexts in order to understand social phenomena. Jones approached Gosh’s work in a postcolonial and ecocritical light through structuralist analysis in order to understand the uncanny. Nayar focused on historical materialism as he unpacks much of Western ideological aspects that fueled the uncanny. I would argue that both analyses complement each other, capturing the full picture of migration and colonization.

Jones addresses interconnectivity of postcolonialism and ecology by emphasizing the vitality of understanding the interrelations between postcolonial issues and ecological concerns, particularly in the context of climate change. Jones argues that Ghosh’s work offers a vision of a postcolonial utopia through Nirmal’s utopianism, where diverse cultures and ecological awareness coexist harmoniously, challenging traditional narratives of progress and development through, “longer temporal frame”(Jones 15). Jones conveys Gosh’s ability to examine how cultural memory and embrace shapes responses to displacement and adaptation in the face of climate challenges, highlighting resilience among marginalized communities. Jones situates Ghosh’s narrative within a global context by mentioning the emergence of Anthropocene-inspired films that reflect the broader implications of climate change and migration for contemporary society. Jones argues that viewing climate impacted refugees as solely victims of the environment erases the political aspect and exacerbates, ”…the victimization tendencies of apocalyptic narratives that rob refugees of agency and subjectivity” (Jones 12). Displaced populations should have a say on their relocation and will to do so, which could mean, “…measures should be taken to ensure that refugees can use their own knowledge practices to negotiate where, when, and how they are relocated” (Jones 13-14). The idea of indigenous canny is inclusive and allows for the reader to embrace a fantastical read that addresses societal vicissitudes and realities for people across the world. In, Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory, by Peter Barry, there is discourse on structuralism as a means of understanding the abstract significance of linguistics. Gosh in his writing achieves the breakdown of, “The structures in question here are those imposed by our way of perceiving the world and organizing experience, rather than objective entities already existing in the external world” (Barry 40). Gosh goes past the imagination and uses a story line to embrace motifs and contrasts.

Nayar highlights the hybrid identities formed in this postcolonial setting, showing how characters are being utilized to embody various cultural influences. Piya becomes one with the environment and experiences a revolutionary realization of viewing the world around her as more than a mere perception. As reinforcement, Nayar states, “It is about the experience of the land rather than simply perceiving it as a scene” (34). Understanding the landscape more than as a facade and untouchable mere image, and instead as a breathing and living force which is accomplished by personifying the environment through the characters. Hearing the stories of the people and history of the environment humanizes the experiences of disasters rather than glorify them or make them fantastical imaginations of the Anthropocene. There is a non-linear storytelling in Gosh’s work that conveys the faulty in postcolonial experience that is so often presented. This emphasizes the negative residue of colonial forces and the ongoing vicissitudes for justice and recognition. Narration therefore is the focal power towards these disproportionate uncanny narratives that often overshadow factual history. Nayar states that, “The novel. I suggest moves from the postcolonial uncanny to an indigenous canny, where local knowledge and expertise finally triumph, and renders the place more like home” (31). Piya in, “Words” experiences a moment of inner turmoil towards her cultural food’s scent reminiscing how, “Her response was to fight back, with a quietly ferocious tenacity, against them and against her mother, shutting them away with closed doors, sealing them into the kitchen” (81). Unpacking the past addresses much of the oppressed negative afflictions caused by Westernization. Historical and material contexts provide introspectiveness that if otherwise ignored, would not uncover the human experiences that provide a canny and educational perspective. Raymund Williams in “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory” in, The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, describes this piece of work as contribution to the, “…capacity to embody and enact and perform certain meanings and values, or to create in single particular ways what would be otherwise merely general truths…” (1347). I would argue that this view of literature is an output, a Marxist influenced idea of base and superstructure. Socioeconomic realities being reflected in literature through a structural and strategic form of storytelling which is what makes Gosh’s work so effective and moving.

Intertwining historical context erases ignorance towards the humanity of the indigenous canny with structural components effectively uncovering the psychological effects of colonialism. Understanding that environment and home looks different for people globally, which is acknowledged through Nirmal, Piya and various other characters. Westernization views the uncanny in a rigid manner that excludes groups of people and their experiences. Gosh breaks this down through the structuralist and historical mix in his story telling, however, deconstruction would have glued his argument. Deconstruction would have addressed issues such as progression, human relations with non-humans and the environment, and identity crises. Any loopholes that can be reached should have been squashed, in other words, by integrating argumentative rebuttals. Other than that, reading The Hungry Tide was a moving and educational experience due to the usage of potent literary theories.