Thinking Activity: Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh

 

Hello Friends!

I’m a student of Maharaja Krishna Kumar Sinhji Bhavnagar University. So, blogging is part of the study to enhance knowledge so here in this, I’m going to write about Amitav Ghosh’s Novel Gun Island. It is or thinking activity task assigned by Dilip Barad sir.

                 Introduction

Amitav Ghosh is an Indian writer and the winner of the 54th Jnanpith award, India’s highest literary honor, best known for his work in English fiction. for further click here  

Born: 11 July 1956 (age 65 years), Kolkata

Spouse: Deborah Baker (m. 1990)

Genre: Historical fiction

Education: The Doon School, University of Oxford, MORE

Nominations: Booker Prize, International Booker Prize, MORE

Parents: Shailendra Chandra Ghosh, Ansali Ghosh

   Gun Island 

"Gun Island is Ghosh’s ninth novel and is set in the same Sundarbans that he describes in his 2006 novel, The Hungry Tide—an untamed and complex ecosystem of canals and low-lying wetlands in Ghosh’s birthplace of West Bengal that is home to a rapidly disappearing wildlife. Its population of the cyclone and flood-ravaged people are always on the lookout for a storm on the horizon, always one disaster away from ruin. In Gun Island, we return to the Sundarbans, where there is a sense of lost hope and helplessness, of being unable to salvage a land devastated by ecological damage." ( Arushi Sinha & Shilvi J Shah) 

(1)How does Amitav Ghosh use the myth of Gun Merchant 'Bonduki Sadagar' and Manasa Devi to initiate discussion on the issue of Climate Change and Migration/Refugee crisis / Human Trafficking?

Gun island is a kind of complex story through depicts the reality of life. The character of Deen is one of the protagonist characters, which depicts some kind of major theme like climate change, Human Migration, etc. Also, the mythical story of Gun Merchant and Mansa Devi.  if we can ponder upon this so we can get the idea that climate change is the big issue of this current era as we know that now we are on winter season but due to some effect of climate change we are facing the problems of Monsoon so it is coming from the human’s making pollution in the earth. Which affects the environment.

(2)How does Amitav Ghosh make use of the 'etymology' of common words to sustain mystery and suspense in the narrative? There are many Italian words in the novel?

        Amitav Ghosh in his work ‘ The Gun Island’ Very significantly used this ‘etymology’ of common words to sustain mystery and Suspense in the narrative. From the beginning, the whole novel is about the myth of Mansa Devi and Banduki Saagar but it was Cinta who unfolded the mystery of this. With the help of the character of Cinta Amitav Ghose did beautiful use of etymology. It’s Cinta who reveals the whole meaning of Gun Island. In the book, we came to know the name of some places like The Land of  Palm Sugar Candy, Land of Kerchief Island of Chains, and Finally The Gun Island. 

(3)What are your views on the use of myth and history in the novel Gun Island to draw the attention of the reader towards contemporary issues like climate change and migration?

Climate change and migration are the major issues of the novel so the writer has uses purposefully towards to reader to draw attention to the whole incident while we are discussing the characters of Mansa Devi and Gunmerchant, so we feel that it might be the true story of past that give attention readers because we have so many mythical stories like Ramayan and Mahabharata, etc.

(4) Is there any connection between 'The Great Derangement' and 'Gun Island'?

Yes, we can agree with this because it depicts some questions in our mind so we can raise our question from the novel how does literature shape our knowledge from this text? How the theme of migration and climate change has a connection with contemporary time?

Thanks😊