In many ways the past has effects on the future, whether that be thorough actions of the past changing the future or the future mirroring events of old. Many people may not even realize just how much their lives are affected by things of the past or how much their lives may mirror someone else’s. The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh explores the relationship between people and the place in the Sundarbans.He demonstrates in his novel that the past and present are not as separate as one may think but instead are interconnected forces that shape one another. Ghosh suggests that human history repeats itself, echoing patterns clearly seen.

One of the most obvious repetitions occurs in the connection between Nirmal and Kusum in the past while the present day was between Fokir and Piya. The love story of the past is repeated in the present day, even with some descendants of the original love triangle. Both Nirmal and Piya were people of the modern day, educated individuals who want to make a change in the world. Meanwhile Kusum and Fokir, mother and son, are both not nearly as educated in the typical sense but have a great affinity to nature and the world they live in. However in both stories there is also something that divides the two people. In the case of Nirmal his ideology and political passion blind him to Kusum’s suffering, while for Piya they may have a deep emotional connection but are separated by language and their worldviews. Both pairs show an attempt to bridge divides between intellect, culture, and emotion. 

In the end, both these stories end in tragedy. Like that of the past there is a cyclone in the future around their times of death. For Kusum she is killed in the massacre like so many others on that day, “‘And Kusum and my uncle? What happened to them?’ ‘No one knows for sure, but what I’ve heard is that a group of women were taken away by force, Kusum among them. People say they were used and then thrown into the rivers, so they would be washed away by the tides. Dozens of settlers were killed that day. The sea claimed them all.’” (Ghosh, 231). Kusum died trying to defend something that had grown dear to her, even if it was in vain. She wasn’t going to just abandon her new home which cost her her life. Reflecting this, her son also died when a  cyclone hit. He and Piya were in a tree to try and wait the cyclone out, Fokir refusing to let Piya get in harm’s way. Even when she tried to shift so she was behind him he didn’t budge. Ultimately this cost him his life as the cyclone blew a stump at them, crushing them against the tree and hitting Fokir hard enough that he slowly died behind her, still trying to protect her even in his final moments (Ghosh, 323). Both members of this family fought for what they held dear in their hearts and laid down their lives for it. This is a prime example of how the present mirrors the past in many ways, from love stories to cyclones to death. 

Ultimately, The Hungry Tide presents the human experience as something that is forever repeating, reshaped in many ways but nerve quite erased from this earth. Stuff of the past will survive and linger in the present day, resilient until the end. The lives of Nirmal and Kusum echo through Piya and Fokir, showing the idea that even with the change of the characters, history will never stop turning.

Language is an important part of mankind. It enables the ability to share ideas, express emotions, and build relationships between people and groups. It is a force that both connects and divides people. It has the capacity to be used to talk to a loved one and give praise or it can be weaponized to cause uproar. However, there is also the unspoken language. Gestures, signals, writings, and expressions can all convey emotions or thoughts without the need to ever utter one word. Sometimes things that are left unspoken and conveyed through gestures can have a similar or even stronger effect than if it were spoken aloud. In the first part of The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh language plays a vital role in both Kanai and Piya’s journey. In this novel language plays a vital role, both the spoken words and unspoken ones, to help the protagonists connect with others and understand the complex world of the Sundarbans. 

From the very first chapter of this novel Ghosh shows how language is important in these people’s lives, whether that be great mastery of the language or none at all. We are introduced to Kanai who is a multilingual translator and who takes pride in his verbal skill and mastery. It gives him confidence and makes him think he’s better than most others because of his intellect. On the other hand you have Piya who speaks only a few words of Bengali and is left isolated since she has no real way to speak the language. However, this has never stopped her and she has still gone to many places and was able to get the results she desired through other means of communication. This contrast shows immediately how language can both empower and alienate. 

However you will come to see that while Piya may not be able to speak to most of the people around her she is still able to communicate through other means such as body language. She is still able to get by and communicate what she wants through gestures and drawings. Not long after we meet her she makes her way to get permission to go out into the water to look for the dolphins she seeks. Things go south and she ends up with a man named Fokir. They speak two different languages and thus are unable to hold any verbal conversation yet they are still able to share knowledge and inquiries with each other. They are able to develop a rhythm of cooperation that transcends words. Through patience and gestures she is able to get answers to most inquiries she makes,  “She tried to ask Fokir the name of the fabric, but her gestures of inquiry elicited only a raised eyebrow and a puzzled frown…But she persisted, making signs and gestures until finally he understood. ‘Gamchha,’ he said laconically, and of course that was it, she had known it all along: Gamchha, gamchha.” (Ghosh, 77-78). This is just one example of her using non verbal methods to convey a message. In almost all her attempts to communicate something to Fokir she is successful, showing that perhaps language barriers are not as restricting as one may think. Gestures are not the only way Piya communicates with Fokir. Later on she makes a drawing of the shore and shows their position to ask if they would be able row the boat in parallel lines over a quadrant she drew (Ghosh 116). Piya uses various methods of communication showing that while mastery of a language like Kanai can be an easier way to communicate questions and ideas there are still other methods that for some people can yield a better result such as for Piya. 

Thus, Ghosh elevates nonverbal communication to be as meaningful as spoken words and maybe even more honest and meaningful than polished speech. The connection Piya shares with Fokir challenges the assumption that verbal language is the only means of communication. Their connection shows that ways of communication through action, observation and gestures can create a rhythm that transcends speech. Both Kanai and Piya reveal the strengths and limitations of language. Through them Ghosh reminds readers that to truly understand one another it depends not only on what you say but on your willingness to listen, observe, and connect beyond speech.

In the first five chapters of Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood builds up the world of a distant future, one where technological advancements far beyond what we have today exist and seemingly dominate the world. A world that eventually turns into ruins with seemingly almost no humans left and the cause of this collapse in society is still left unknown to the reader. However, even if there are hardly any humans left in this future animals still roam the earth and are seemingly thriving. These creatures are all human made hybrid of animals we all know, the rakunks being a mix of racoons and skunks, wolvogs a mix of wolves and dogs, and the most interesting of the bunch being pigoons which are a mix of pig and human DNA. All these creatures, most apparent in the pigoons, represent the blurred lines between nature and commerce, the consequences of genetic engineering by humans, and human arrogance. They are each prime examples about the dangers in the commercialization of biotechnology.

In these opening chapters one of the talked about significant animals is the pigoon, pigs with human DNA that were engineered to grow organs for human transplantations, “The goal of the pigoon project was to grow an assortment of foolproof human-tissue organs in a transgenic knockout pig host—organs that would transplant smoothly and avoid rejection” (Atwood, p.15) In Snowman’s childhood they were seen as the next cutting-edge product, a consumer object that was made to “better the lives of everyone”. Yet even if the pigoons were a useful product, the nature of their creation is unsettling. They crossed many ethical boundaries: a pig that is infused with human DNA, maybe even their own, sold as a product. Later in Snowman’s future these very same pigoons are still alive, but they’ve changed. The pigoons Snowman now encounters have grown dangerous, now bearing tusks like nature intended for them, “One was a male; he thought he could see the gleaming point of a white tusk. Pigoons were supposed to be tusk-free, but maybe they were reverting to type now they’d gone feral, a fast-forward process considering their rapid-maturity genes.” (Atwood, p. 20). Symbolically, they can represent the failure of humans attempts to control life through science. Even when they were modified to have no tusks so they could easier be used as a commercial product for organ transplants, they were still able to go against what humans tried to weed out of them. Furthermore, even with the presence of these genetically engineered animals that were made to save humanity, society still collapsed. They represent humanity’s reliance on new scientific “solutions” that can lead to unpredictable dangers later.

The pigoons seem to be a critique on corporate science, representing human hubris in believing they have the power to control life through the use of engineering without consequences. They also highlight the greed in humans through the commercialization of biology, even going as far as selling organs as if they weren’t an intimate part of the body. They are central metaphors in this story that show the dangers of reducing life to mere profit. Their mere existence reveals how the pursuit of progress when used in an unethical manner, stripped of humanity, can spiral to a destructive force that will in the end cause more harm than good for humanity.

We are currently in a time of anthropocene, a time where humans are the main determinant factor for the changes we see in our environment. This isn’t something that sprung up out of nowhere, scientists have seen the change in our climate for years now yet people didn’t believe the facts or chose to ignore them since it wasn’t affecting them on a great scale. Yet now more than ever everyone can see the effects climate change has on our world, yet some people still choose to be ignorant on the matter. With how important this issue is you’d expect more authors to be writing on the matter in all genres. Yet this isn’t true, and why is that? It’s not a lack of material for in this day and age there is an abundance of papers written on climate change. It is that modern artists and in turn modern fiction, especially realist novels, are unable to fully represent climate change in a way that would be believable to the people. This is covered in Amitav Ghosh’s book, The Great Derangement. As stated by Amitav Ghosh’s “the climate crisis is also a crisis of culture, and thus of the imagination.” (Ghosh 8) In other words, authors believe that the modern form of literature that shapes the very essence of modern story telling is ill-equipped in capturing the unpredictability and monumental scale that is the phenomenon of climate change. 

One of Ghosh’s main points that he discusses is that realist novels have shifted their focus to the mundane everyday that is more probable to the human mind and more on scale with what we can imagine as actually happening to us. The unheard of is moved towards the background while the everyday is moved to the foreground (Ghosh, 17) This form of writing struggles to make space for situations that are unlikely such as mass extinction, tornados and floods. Thus, the writing of the improbable is more often than not used instead in genres such as science fiction or fantasy. In these genres it is not expected for one to believe or relate these events to real life since it is set in a world that is far detached from our world. A fantastical world where anthropomorphic beasts live among humans or where technology is so far advanced we are able to have flying cars. If climate change is integrated into a story with one of these genres it is hard to relate the events occurring to our current times since the world we are reading about is nothing like ours.

A great example Ghosh uses in explaining how hard it is to write the unlikely into realist novels is to that of meeting a long lost childhood friend. In Ghosh’s words, “Within the pages of a novel an event that is only slightly improbable in real life—say, an unexpected encounter with a long-lost childhood friend—may seem wildly unlikely: the writer will have to work hard to make it appear persuasive. If that is true of a small fluke of chance, consider how much harder a writer would have to work to set up a scene that is wildly improbable even in real life.” (Ghosh, 23) To meet an old friend in real life after a great amount of time has passed is a scenario that is unlikely to us as humans, but still if it happened to any one of us it wouldn’t be so shocking. To write something like this in realist novels may be hard, but it would still be possible. On the other hand, something such as climate change which is already a hard to grasp concept by many people would be ten times harder to write into their stories since it is already a very difficult idea to conceptualize. I agree with Ghosh that this is an issue of modern authors. Most attempts at incorporating climate change into their novels will often fall back on genres such as fantasy and scientific fiction where they can build more dystopian worlds to fit their narrative. Never or very rarely will you see authors write about climate change in realist novels since it will not be taken seriously. 

Ultimately, Ghosh’s beginning chapters summarize why climate change is often a topic not covered by literature unless it is in fiction genres where it could easily fit the narrative without seeming unthinkable. We need to expand our narrative forms in a way that allows our imagination to comprehend the improbable in genres like realistic fiction.