CULTURAL FEATURES OF TIDECOUNTRY IN AMITAV GHOSH’S “THE HUNGRY TIDE” Amitav Ghosh’s “The Hungry Tide” has been published in 2004 and this book has won “hutch crossword award” and it is known as one of the best work among English fiction. This book is a “unique combination of Anthropology, migration, travel, ethnography etc”. There are many colonial and post-colonial references regarding the history of Sundarbans. The novel the setting is largely covered by sundari trees or mangroves. That’s the Island is known as Sundarbans. In this novel Ghosh says about the history of morichjapi settlers, which is considered by many critics as the study of “anthropomorphological study of migration, movement and settlement”. In Amitav Ghosh’s novel the setting plays an important role. Here in this novel “The Hungry Tide”, Sundarbans is a vast archipelago largely covered by mangrove and there are many small villages which are covered by seas. It is very difficult to live in such a place. Ghosh is amazing in the knowledge of anthropology, ecosystem of Sundarbans in his novel “The Hungry Tide”. …show more content…
It is very difficult to survive in such a place. The river will be hungry always. It has taken away many lives, and the women in the villages are almost widows. There are many harmful animals and insects which may destroy the lives of the people who live there. Even though there are many dangerous situations, Amitav Ghosh portrays beautifully and describes the forest Sundarbans, two thirds of Sundarbans are in Bangladesh and one third is in India. This is the place where the sea water and fresh water mingles and the rare species of Irrawaddy dolphins, which survive in this
Thomas More’s “Utopia”, Bartolomé de Las Casas’s “Destruction of the Indies”, and Michel de Montaigne’s “Of Cannibals” have the commonality of discussing mysterious territories which have certain conditions in several aspects of life which their present audience is unaware. The three authors describe foreign places with vastly different values and social standards, but they all describe the treatments or relations of the indigenous people by Europeans and outsiders, as well as the natives’ reaction to these treatments. More, Las Casas, and Montaigne reveal their personal views through descriptions of the different groups of indigenous people, and all suggest that their “advanced” societies are not necessarily better than those with different
The region of the northwest coast was blessed with an abundance of natural recourses for human existence and made it possible for the area to thrive. As a result of this unusual abundance, the area could sustain large populations and a complex social order for many Indian groups. Because of the level of sustainability, the cultures had more time for artistic and intellectual activities and endeavors and over time, art became very important and vital to the complex social structures of the groups of the northwest coast.
Save the Whales, Screw the Shrimp is an essay written by Joy Williams, about the overwhelming complacency that todays culture shows towards nature.Williams argues in a very satirical way, that todays culture has all but completely lost touch with what nature really is, and that unless we as a nation change our morals regarding the role that nature plays in human existence, we may very well be witnessing the dawn of our own destruction.
Within this paper, a glimpse into the Yupiaq society will hopefully be accomplished by answering a few questions. First question, what is the Yupiaq worldview? Next, what are the core values that are essential to the success of Yupiaq society? And finally, how are those values expressed in their approach to subsistence behaviors and knowledge of their environment?
Although the ancestors of the Anasazi’s were nomadic people, the Anasazi began to settle and live in one place. Making it harder for them to roam and tend to their gardens and crops at the same time, farming became a staple of their ...
...d issues of post-colonialism in Crossing the Mangrove. It is clear that Conde favors multiplicity when it comes to ideas of language, narrative, culture, and identity. The notion that anything can be understood through one, objective lens is destroyed through her practice of intertextuality, her crafting of one character's story through multiple perspectives, and her use of the motif of trees and roots. In the end, everything – the literary canon, Creole identity, narrative – is jumbled, chaotic, and rhizomic; in general, any attempts at decryption require the employment of multiple (aforementioned) methodologies.
In John M. Barry’s book, “Rising Tide", Barry provides a comprehensive if not extensive overview of the Mississippi. He begins by describing the efforts that Americans went through to control the Mississippi River, explaining the Mississippi delta culture and the river itself, along with explaining the enormous influence banking families had over decisions affecting New Orleans. With each chapter, Barry shows the reader how the futile attempts to control nature ended a way of life and marked an end of the driving force of powerful banking establishments in New Orleans.
The great Sir Paul McCartney once said, “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian” (Richards). One person who would agree is David Foster Wallace. In one of his articles, named “Consider the Lobster”, he takes the reader to a Maine Lobster festival. The lobster festival is held during July in the hub on Maine’s lobster industry. An ungodly amount of lobster is cooked, some 25,000 pounds’ worth. While he is there he reports that the lobsters are boiled alive, which is the most common way to prepare lobster, and reminds the audience that, unlike the Lobster Festival programs says, lobsters can feel the pain they endure. In the end of the article, Wallace questions why people even eat the lobster meat
Eden Robinson is a Haisla writer who was born at Haisla Nation Kitimaat Reserve on 19th January 1968 (“Eden Robinson” 2007). She has a Haisla father and a Heiltsuk mother and spent both her childhood and her adolescence in the Reserve (“Eden Robinson” 2007). Robinson obtained a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts at the University of Victoria and also earned a master’s degree in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia (“Eden Robinson” 2007). Monkey Beach is her first novel and was published in 2000 (“Eden Robinson” 2007).
People are privileged to live in an advanced stage of development known as civilization. In a civilization, one’s life is bound by rules that are meant to tame its savage natures. A humans possesses better qualities because the laws that we must follow instill order and stability within society. This observation, made by William Golding, dictates itself as one of the most important themes of Lord of the Flies. The novel demonstrates the great need for civilization ion in life because without it, people revert back to animalistic natures.
The drowned giant is a unique work of art by the amazing author J.G. Ballard. He illustrates science fiction and compares the human beings to mythical creatures. The existence of a being better the human race was never heard of, nor seen. He also makes the main character reflect upon the human kind and their unusual behaviors put in specific context. This short story also shows the fear of mankind towards the existence of a superior being. From the perspective of the speaker, the giant represents a symbol of superiority and perfection compared to the town people and that’s why they disrespect his body in various ways.
Ecological imperialism is an idea introduced by Alfred Crosby in his seminal work Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 which refers to the efforts of colonialists to introduce their animals, plants and even diseases in the native’s land to felicitate their rule. But that concept of Crosby has a renewed interest in postcolonial world especially in light of the growing popularity of capitalism and globalization. Capitalistic and colonialist invasions focus not merely on the subjugation of native but the land in which he lives. This conquest seems to have some ecological aspects. Voluntarily or involuntarily each of these conquests has an adverse impact on the land they conquered. In industrialist and capitalistic societies, such invasions into indigenous communities will result in an erosion of natural resources and deforestation. The new face of ecological imperialism and its impact on postcolonial indigenous communities can be seen in many of the works of postcolonial literature. A focus on Thomas King’s Green Grass Running Water and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead hopes to reveal the complex fabrics of relations between the oppressed land and its inhabitants.
Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s This Earth of Mankind is an allegorical novel describing the growth of protagonist Minke during the pre-awakening of colonized Java. Set in 1898 during the period of imperial Dutch domination over all aspects of Javan life, the novel provides a clear image of the political and social struggles of a subjugated people through the point of view of a maturing youth. Using several of his novel’s major characters as allegorical symbols for the various stages of awareness the citizens of Java have of Indonesia’s awakening as a modern nation, Toer weaves together an image of the rise of an idyllic post-colonial Indonesia with modern views of Enlightenment ideals.
Imagine a land with lush jungles blooming fruit, flowers, and weeds providing a cool shade from the scolding sun and calming breeze flowing from the turbulent Ganges River. The Ganges River you say? Your mind start churning like a rusted bicycle belonging to adult who long ago stop greasing the gears as he transitioned out of a child, trying to remember your countless spoonfuls of geography from K-12 you realize I am talking about northern India and henceforth this is where our epic The Mahabharata unfolds. Dating 400 B.C. to A.D. 400 this epic like many epics evolved over many hundreds of years starting from a oral tradition told over an starry night around a warm communal fire transcribed into being written down in Sanskrit, the native and most popular language in India at that time. It is one of the longest epic ever written narrated from our book stating:
For the most part, they are sustained completely by the ocean, but not stopping there, this tribe lives on the ocean as well. Although today many are adapting and beginning to live on land, still the tribe’s dependence on the sea is not lost. Their children are introduced to the sea at a young age – many are even born at sea - and grow accustomed to living and playing among the ocean environment. Due to living so close and among the water, the Bajau have become well skilled in the marine ecosystem and farming, thus fully explains why the Bajau people are true sea fearers.