Soni, Amit Kumar – “Depiction of ‘Slow Violence’ in The Hungry Tide” (2022)

• According to Soni, The Hungry Tide depicts “slow violence,” which is trauma that occurs gradually over time as opposed to all at once. He focuses on how people’s lives in the Sundarbans are slowly destroyed by poverty, migration, and environmental degradation. This is especially important to my theory because it shows how ecological disaster is directly tied to social and political problems. Conflicts over politics and fatalities result from the gradual destruction of land, food sources, and safety. This source is important because it clarifies how Ghosh links long-term political violence, on both historical and personal levels, to environmental damage.

Anand, Divya – “Words on Water: Nature and Agency in The Hungry Tide” (2008)

• Anand argues that nature in The Hungry Tide is not only a setting, but a driving force that changes human lives. She argues that rivers, tides, storms, and animals impact human decisions and conflicts. This relates to my argument since it demonstrates how environmental factors directly influence the novel’s political developments and personal struggles. The Sundarbans’ dangerous environment forces people to make decisions about migration, conflict, and survival. This matters because it indicates that the environmental issue is not independent from political violence; it helps produce it.

Anand, Divya – “Locating the Politics of the Environment and the Exploited” (2007)

• Anand argues in the article that Ghosh demonstrates how neglected and deprived individuals suffer the burden of political and environmental abuse. She describes how ecological problems become political violence in the Sundarbans due to the government’s handling of refugees and immigrants. This demonstrates how land and survival struggles result in state violence and human suffering, which directly supports my claim. This source is important because it clarifies how inequality, migration, and governmental power turn ecological crises into political conflicts.

Jones, Brandon – “A Postcolonial Utopia for the Anthropocene” (2018)

• According to Jones, The Hungry Tide shows the close connections between politics, migration, and climate change in a postcolonial society. He focuses on how natural disasters force people to move, which ultimately leads to disagreements with governments and nations. This relates directly to my argument because it shows how climate disasters lead to political violence and displacement on a large historical scale. This source is significant because it helps position Ghosh’s work within the context of the Anthropocene, indicating that environmental damage and political struggle occur together globally.

Weik, Alexa – “Eco-Cosmopolitan Encounters in The Hungry Tide” (2006)

• According to Weik, The Hungry Tide shows how people from all cultural backgrounds can come together around common environmental issues. She focuses on how people, animals, and the land interact in the Sundarbans. This highlights how the ecological disaster impacts both the local villagers and foreigners, causing stress, conflict, and shared responsibility, which supports my argument. This source is important because it reveals how the book’s environmental concerns are linked to global politics and the natural world rather than being isolated.

Soni, Amit Kumar. “Depiction of ‘Slow Violence’ in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide.” International Education & Research Journal (IERJ), vol. 8, no. 7, July 2022, pp. 48–50. IERJ, ierj.in/journal/index.php/ierj/article/view/2872.

Anand, Divya. “Words on Water: Nature and Agency in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide.” Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, vol. 34, no. 1, Mar. 2008, pp. 21–44.

Anand, Divya. “Locating the Politics of the Environment and the Exploited in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide.” Essays in Ecocriticism, edited by Nirmal Selvamony and Rayson K. Alex, OSLE-India / Sarup & Sons, 2007, pp. 156–171.

Jones, Brandon. “A Postcolonial Utopia for the Anthropocene: Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide and Climate-Induced Migration.” MFS: Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 64, no. 4, Winter 2018, pp. 639–658. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/mfs.2018.0047.

Weik, Alexa. “The Home, the Tide, and the World: Eco-Cosmopolitan Encounters in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide.” Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies, vol. 13, no. 2, 2006, pp. 120–142.

For my research, I focused on finding peer – reviewed scholarly articles about The Hungry Tide that connect the environmental crisis with politics and history in the Sundarbans. I mainly used Google Scholar because the Hunter library one search was confusing for me and wasn’t giving me any good articles at first. On Google Scholar I tried combinations of key words like “The Hungry Tide slow violence,” “Amitav Ghosh postcolonial ecocriticism,” “Sundarbans environmental justice,” “The Hungry Tide climate change,” and “The Hungry Tide political violence Morichjhapi.” From those results, I chose sources that directly discussed ideas related to my research question, such as slow violence, conservation politics, refugee displacement, ecocriticism, and the Anthropocene. For the Brandon Jones article, I used the Project MUSE link provided on commons, through Hunter’s library proxy to get the whole article. Overall, I prioritized sources that analyze The Hungry Tide and link environmental crises with state power, refugees, and colonial/postcolonial history, since that’s what my research question is really about.

How does Ghosh show that the environmental crises and political violence in the Sundarbans have a connection, acting together at personal and significant historical scales?

Jenny Offill portrays a world dominated by information in Weather (2020). The first sixty-seven pages show how digital excess — emails, podcasts, news alerts, and trivia—shapes both public debate and private thought through Lizzie Benson’s intelligent, disorganized narration. Offill organizes the book like the internet itself — quick, scattered, and constantly changing — instead of sticking to a traditional plot. The outcome is a new sort of realism for the twenty-first century, one that shows how paying attention changes as we live in a world of constant data. Lizzie works in a university library, which is often seen as a place of knowledge and authority. However, the questions she answers there demonstrate the opposite. “How do I get gum off my shoe?” and “What should I do before the world ends?” are just two examples of the weird mix of questions that people ask her. Once an area of carefully chosen knowledge, the library is now a mirror of digital chaos. Offill uses situations like this to demonstrate a divide between valuable information and irrelevant content. Now that information is unmodified, Lizzie serves as a metaphor for the modern-day reader, who is always on alert and distracted. The novel’s criticism of the media intensifies as Lizzie begins helping her former instructor, Sylvia, answer letters from the climate-collapse podcast Hell and High Water. Every letter she reads represents a different area of the internet: arguing facts from scientists, experts giving survival tips, and sad people admitting their anxieties. These short passages are similar to online discussion sections: quiet voices, desperate to be heard yet lost in the crowd. Offill depicts this interaction as digital garbage —bits that resemble the rhythm of scrolling —rather than as a continuous narrative. The mind jumping from one alert to the next is what the structure itself does. Some have described Weather as a “novel of fragments,” yet it might be more accurate to define it as a novel of attention to detail. Each little line seems to be an emotional tab left open, documenting how much input it takes for consciousness to break down. Offill illustrates how complicated technology is rather than simply criticizing it. The smaller phrases and empty spaces represent the current state of cognition, characterized by brief interruptions and periods of focus between tasks. Parenting advice, climate data, library research, jokes, and prayers coexist side by side in Lizzie’s consciousness, which reads like a search engine history. With this approach, Offill portrays the internet as both a cognitive state and a tool. Weather makes a significant connection between the overload of information and the failure of larger systems. The digital chaos that surrounds them is reflected in the environmental stress that affects the podcast and its listeners. Human attention is running out in sync with the planet’s resources. Because they are both overstimulated and on the verge of burnout, Lizzie’s disorganized thoughts serve as a metaphor for an overheated world. Offill argues that our compulsive, continuous media consumption reflects the same unsustainable trends causing climatic catastrophe. However, there is a subtle criticism of how individuals confuse knowledge with comprehension. Lizzie keeps reading, scrolling, and responding to emails, but nothing gets resolved. Knowledge creates more questions than it provides assurance or peace of mind. In this way, Weather presents data limitations as a means of redemption. The book suggests that knowing everything is not the same as knowing what to do. By page 67, Offill had turned everyday screen life into a work of literature. Lizzie’s chaotic narration clearly conveys that her world is overrun with data but lacking in concentration. Weather turns into a book on how we think these days, partly online, half offline, torn between curiosity and exhaustion. Offill gives an overload of information structure and rhythm, but she doesn’t provide a way out. By doing this, she turns the noise of modern existence into art, demonstrating that a certain clarity may still arise despite the static.

Ghosh slows the book’s momentum in the middle chapters, from “Memory” to “Kratie,” allowing memory to become one of the primary roles. We start to understand that the past is not distinct from the present through Piya, Kanai, and Nirmal’s memories; instead, it continually resurfaces, influencing the characters’ perceptions of themselves and one another. Kanai reads from his uncle Nirmal’s old notebook in the chapter “Memory,” demonstrating how remembering can be both positive and terrible. The mangrove forests, the settlers’ challenges, and the conflict between nature and human survival all come to life in Nirmal’s memories of the Sundarbans. For Nirmal, remembering is an act of resistance rather than just an understanding of the past. He wishes to preserve a period and a group of people, particularly the refugees who battled for existence in Morichjhãpi, that the world has attempted to forget. He uses memory to grant them respect. Ghosh demonstrates how memory unites strangers. When Kanai reads the notebook decades later, he begins to see his uncle as someone with deep compassion and moral complexity, rather than as a researcher. Reminding Kanai and us that remembering people is an ethical act, the words from the past overcome time and geography.
On the other hand, forgetting might be perceived as a betrayal. Piya’s memory functions differently. Distance has influenced her past; she was raised in America and barely remembers India. The scent of the air, the sight of dolphins, and the tales Fokir tells her bring back something she didn’t know she had lost while traveling through the tide region. Piya’s recollections are vivid yet hazy and incomplete. We witness how memory can be both a breakthrough and a return through her eyes. Fokir, on the other hand, has an oral tradition passed down through generations rather than being written down. His mother, Moyna, and the rhythm of everyday life on the water are the sources of his knowledge of the river’s organisms and tides. His memory is useful, embodied, and active; therefore, he doesn’t require notebooks or maps.
We witness a profound relationship between memory and geography as he leads Piya through the rivers. Fokir flows through the river as effortlessly as breathing because it recalls every turn, every current, every threat. The concept of memory becomes increasingly complex as the book approaches “Kratie.” Kanai’s account of Nirmal’s last days shows how unsatisfied goals and remorse can haunt memory. Nirmal recalls his early idealism, his respect for Kusum, and his embarrassment at his own passivity. His memories are filled with aspirations for redemption, justice, and purpose. The more Kanai reads, the more he understands that memory is about facing who we were and who we have become rather than just remembering facts.
Furthermore, the Sundarbans reflect the fragile nature of human memory with their changing tides and decaying islands. Our memories cannot remain untouched, any more than the land can. They move, blur, and occasionally disappear. Nevertheless, they always manage to return, much like the tide. In conclusion, by the end of this chapter, we realize that The Hungry Tide is a meditation on memory as well as a novel about people and dolphins. In this book, memory connects, divides, grows, and destroys, much like the water that characterizes the tidal nation. Ghosh demonstrates that memory is both a burden and a gift, a means of preserving the past even when the seas threaten to sweep it away, through Piya’s discoveries, Kanai’s reading, and Nirmal’s words.