Bangladesh also known as “The Tide Country” to many climate activists around the world is more than just that in the present day, its labeled as “The Sinking Country” instead. Over the years since the 1970’s which is when the novel takes place. The Sundarbans which is a dense mangrove forest home to hundreds of species and the critically endangered Bengal Tiger and 7.5 million people. As time goes by the river is getting closer and closer to the inhabitants of the island and little by little everything is disappearing in live time. The ocean and the rivers dictate life in Bangladesh as they heavily rely on agriculture for their economy.

Life as the people in the Sundarbans know it has drastically been changing because of climate change, Every year the sea level rises more and more and with natural disasters being involved it finally caused the governments of India and Bangladesh to acknowledge climate change as an issue. With the increase of floods many people have to relocate or find new occupations as farming or fishing are no longer stable jobs like it was back in the 1900’s. In Ghosh’s novel Fokir’s job is very unstable because of the rivers and the predators in the forest that also put his life at risk if he does want to fish. A job like Fishermen, or Farmer were very important jobs in a country like Bangladesh because of how it is surrounded by water and rich land for farming which caused it to be the base of their economy which has shifted to fast fashion because of labor and exploitation by the world. As fokir’s job displays instability it also shows the people of the olden life being left behind as they cant adapt to the new changes in the world involving jobs and technology as education is becoming essential, Yet it isn’t accessible to everyone still.

As the world continues to benefit off of Bengali labor, they ignore the consequences the country is having to face on its own. As climate change continues the country of Bangladesh will continue to sink year by year till it is no longer here and the people have all been displaced from the place they once knew as their home. Along with the people many wildlife animals are going to face extinction too as their home is going to be underground or mass fishing or hunting will be the end of them.

In Amitav Ghosh’s “The Great Derangement”, he speaks on climate fiction and what modes of presentation are necessary. In this piece, he denotes science fiction and speculative fiction to what he calls “the literary outhouse”. He feels that providing a dystopian narrative based on survival may not call enough attention to the climate events happening during the present period. While Octavia Butler’s novels do not align with his critique of the genre, there is merit in his own fictional accounts of climate change. Ghosh’s novel “The Hungry Tide” is a climate fiction novel set in the present that explores not only what to do in a great disaster such as the one that falls upon fictional Robledo, but how to coexist with nature.

The novel’s setting allows the reader to see the dangers of nature. There are tigers and giant crocodiles existing alongside the humans inhabiting the territory. One of the subjects the novel follows is Piya, an American marine biologist interested in researching rare, or now rare, dolphin species. She rides along with two unnamed individuals until she encounters a strange fisherman. While traveling with this man, Fokir, she encounters the dolphin species and begins to track their habits. Ghosh is an extremely strong writer who captures moments of epiphany for both his characters as well as his readers. It seems that Ghosh is able to fictionalize the idea of vital materialism successfully. In the story, Piya and Fokir cannot communicate through language but must rely on human nature and body language to convey their ideas to each other. Piya is surprised by this mode of communication and Ghosh says “The two of them, Fokir and she, could have been boulders or trees for all they knew of each other….more honest, that they could not speak? For if you compared it to the ways in which dolphins’ echoes mirrored the world, speech was only a bag of tricks that fooled you into believing that you could see through the eyes of another being,” (Ghosh, 132). Ghosh’s work is poetic but there are moments like this in his writing in which you can see both what the character is thinking and how the writing serves the story, yet the statement transcends what the story is saying and speaks to the nature of humans and their ways of relating to each other or the world around them in a more general sense.

Ghosh goes further towards humans relating to the world around them when he provides the symbiotic relationship that Piya witnesses between the Orcaella and the fishermen. She sees the dolphins drive fish into the fishing nets and then feast on the leftover fish. In this example, Ghosh is setting the reader up for a look into how and in what ways we can work with nature rather than consuming it or actively working against it. While this story may not entertain in the same vein of Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, it provides perhaps more depth into how we exist on this planet and how we could work on coexistence more. Towards the end of the assigned reading, we see a society built by refugees content with living with the planet. Nirmal is amazed in his journals at what these people have done so that they may live in such a naturally dangerous place in harmony with nature. The realistic nature of this novel, and the fact that it is not set further into the future after or during disaster, shows the impact of Nixon’s slow violence, yet still removes the reader from LeMenager’s everyday anthropocene, allowing readers to wonder what it may be like to live in a symbiotic relationship with the planet rather than a predatory impulse to take what we can.

There is a narrative focus on nature versus man on the journey that is embarked by Kanai in the chapter titled “Lusibari” from Amitav Ghosh’s “The Hungry Tide”. Kanai is a businessman that embarks on a journey to recover something he finds value in, searching for a deeper understanding or revelation. Donna Haraway emphasizes the importance of connecting with kinship and rejecting the materialist in “Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene,”. Kanai will have this conflict indirectly presented to him through his adventure. Contrary to Piya who is a cetologist who comes to the Sundarbans to study river dolphins and is in tuned to the life in nature that is non-human. Both through physical and mental glasses, there is an exploration of an intricate and tumultuous relationship between anthropogenic powers and nature.

The chapter encompasses the beauty and peril of the Tide Country, illuminating the unique vicissitudes posed by the landscape, such as shifting tides and the unpredictability of the waterways. As Nilima and Kanai navigate the rivers, the characters are forced to reflect on their own lives, motivations, and the interconnectedness of their fates with the environment around them. Kanai enters a compound and has a recollection of his visit as a child, creating a sense of nostalgia. There are these stilts under the building that are meant to protect it from being blown away during a cyclone, while the bãdh protects the island of Lusibari from the high tide. Both of these manmade structures show how people in the Sundarbans attempt to protect themselves and their livelihoods from the unpredictability and mightiness of the natural realm across the world. I found the exposure to communities of people who need to navigate according to mother nature a moment of sociocultural awareness. This moment must have struck Kanai by deconstructing his world view and peaking his inner curiosity. This nuance expressed through Kanai’s  “surprise, none of the house and bustle of the village seemed to filter into the compound and for a moment he felt as though he were stepping through a warp of time” (Gosh 33). Traveling is recommended to help one gain awareness of the reality of life for others in the world and explore emotional introspectiveness.

The local inhabitants’ intimate knowledge of the region showcased the vitality of their experiences and stories in understanding the ecological dynamics at play. Ghosh intersects themes of displacement, community, and environmental oversight into the journey, underscoring the labyrinthine interplay between personal and ecological narratives. A self-discovery journey that showcases internal and external conflict simultaneously. Kinship and appreciation for the non-human entities around them allow for new and unexplored ideas and perspectives to appear. At one point, Kanai questions who Lucy Hamilton is and is told she had the house built for her before she tragically deceased on sea. There is a grounding, almost humbling, moment for Kanai that takes him back to reality while having his interest peaked at when asking Nilima to know who Sir Daniel MacKinnon Hamilton was. An opportunity to learn is presented to Kanai as Nilima raises a finger to, “point to the heavens” (Gosh 35). Seemingly a mundane encounter, there is a breakdown of any hierarchical stance by listening to the knowledge spoken by a wise woman. At the same time, the fact that one is at the mercy of the environment directly contrasts Western beliefs that vehemently view that humans have dominion over nature.

Overall, this universal theme of human and non-human is delved into through the narrative of this specific chapter. Many moments where, as a reader, one is exposed to human dependence on nature and finds momentaneous nuances where Western beliefs are broken down. The story at this point in time follows Kanai, placing all of these self-reflective and observant moments onto his experience simultaneously as the plot develops.

I hope everyone gets some R&R this week and curls up with a good book. Here’s a charming piece on how to sustain one’s reading life amid all the distractions that plague us:

10 rules for reading from someone who does it for a living

Where to read, when to read and why you need a pencil in hand: The Post’s Michael Dirda offers some advice from his years as a critic.

See you Monday!

Five minutes to read/jot

Five minutes to chat in pairs…

You probably remember Donna Haraway’s slogan, “Don’t Make Babies, Make Kin,” as well as her emphasis on shrinking “spaces of refuge” for “human and other critters.”  What are some ways that both of these themes appears in this novel, some 25 years before Haraway’s essay? How does Butler posit “kinship” as something to be “made” or “constructed” rather than as a function of biological reproduction as “family” or “race”? How do these constructed “kinships” aid in finding refuge in a forbidding landscape? Find a couple of quotes from the text to support your answer.