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The Hungry Tide Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com The Hungry Tide to decline. Ghosh himself has also said that while tigers INTRODUCTION certainly pose a problem for people in the Sundarbans, their true enemy is crushing poverty. BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF AMITAV GHOSH Amitav Ghosh was born in Kolkata, India to a Bengali Hindu RELATED LITERARY WORKS family. His father was an officer in the Indian Army prior to Indian independence. Ghosh attended a boys' school in India The Hungry Tide draws heavily from two literary works: the and then attended college in both India and England at Delhi Bengali folktale The Glory of Bon Bibi, and the German poet University, the Delhi School of Economics, Oxford, and St. Rainer Maria Rilke's 1923 epic poem, The Duino Elegies. The Stephen's College. He began to write novels during the 1980s, Duino Elegies was and still is extremely influential in the literary and his first novel, The Circle of Reason, immediately garnered world; the British poet W.H. Auden makes references to Rilke international acclaim and interest. Several of his novels have and The Duino Elegies in several of his poems, and Thomas won international awards, and he famously withdrew his 2000 Pinchon's 1973 novel, Gravity's Rainbow, also draws imagery novel, The Glass Palace, from the Commonwealth Writer's Prize from the Elegies. Several other novels by Indian authors take on the grounds that the English language requirement was place in the Sundarbans, including Salman Rushdie's Midnight's unfair. Ghosh has taught literature in the United States at Children and short story author Kunal Basu's "The Japanese several universities and was named a Ford Foundation Art of Wife." The Hungry Tide also mentions the Mahabharata, a Change Fellow in 2015. He and his wife, fellow author Deborah Sanskrit epic and seminal Hindu text. Ghosh has said in Baker, have two children and live in New York. interviews that he's especially interested in the area around the Bay of Bengal and as such, many of his novels take place in the HISTORICAL CONTEXT region and explore the consequences of England's colonial rule over India. These novels include The Shadow Lines, which Although the island of Lusibari is a fictional place, many of the explores the events of the partition of India and their historical events that the novel mentions actually happened. Sir consequences, as well as his Ibis trilogy, which explores the Daniel Hamilton was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1859. He earlier colonial history of the area. was successful in developing a cooperative estate on the Sundarbans island of Gosaba, though the estate fell apart after Hamilton's death in 1939. The 1979 Morichjhãpi massacre was KEY FACTS a consequence of the partition of the colony of British India in • Full Title: The Hungry Tide 1947. During partition, a number of poor Hindu people • When Written: 2002-2004 attempting to enter India from East Pakistan were settled in a refugee camp in central India, rather than allowed to settle in • Where Written: New York the Indian state of West Bengal. The refugees attempted to • When Published: 2004 settle in West Bengal in 1978, but the new Left Front • Literary Period: Contemporary government declared that the refugees couldn't be considered • Genre: Environmental fiction; postcolonial Indian literature citizens of West Bengal. About 40,000 refugees then marched • Setting: The Sundarbans, 1950 to the early 2000s south and settled on the island Morichjhãpi in the Sundarbans, which was protected forestland. After several months of • Climax: The cyclone hits Garjontola and Lusibari, killing blockades and violent police action, the Indian government Fokir in the process. began to forcibly evacuate the refugees in May 1979. Though • Antagonist: The Forest Department and Dilip Choudhury ; the true death count remains unknown, it's possible that up to a more broadly, poverty, sexism, the government, and the thousand people were killed after being brutalized by the natural world police. As Nirmal and Piya both notice and mention in the novel, • Point of View: Third person and first person the Sundarbans suffer ecologically from farming, overfishing, and poaching of native species. Attempts to curb tiger attacks EXTRA CREDIT have been overwhelmingly unsuccessful, and as many as fifty Tiny Man-Eaters. Though the Bengal tigers of the Sundarbans people still die every year. However, the Bengal tigers are a are considered to be the same species as the Bengal tigers that protected species, and there's a total ban on killing or capturing populate the rest of India, they tend to be much smaller—while wildlife in the Sundarbans, save for some fish and other Bengal tigers can weigh upwards of 700 pounds, tigers from invertebrates. Despite these attempts, biodiversity continues the Sundarbans have weighed in at a petite 160-330 pounds. ©2018 LitCharts LLC v.006 www.LitCharts.com Page 1 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com Scientists speculate that their small size has to do with the Piya obtains her permits from the Forest Department and smaller prey available in the Sundarbans, and might also begins her survey with a forest guard and a boat pilot named suggest that they've adapted to the specifics of their mangrove Mejda—both men are unhelpful and condescending. Piya spots forest habitat. a fishing boat and asks them to approach it so she can ask the fisherman about the dolphins. The forest guard does as she Symbiotic Relationship. Irrawaddy river dolphins have been asks, but Piya soon realizes the guard just wants to fine and known to cooperate with fishermen, driving fish into nets in intimidate the fisherman and his son. The fisherman mimes to exchange for some of the fishermen's catch. In some cases, Piya that he sees dolphins in the area often. As the Forest individual dolphins or pods of dolphins work closely with Department boat pulls away, Piya tries to give the fisherman particular fishermen or fishing villages again and again. Legal money and falls into the river. The fisherman saves her and reports from the late 1800s state that dolphins often jumped pulls her into his boat, and Piya, afraid of going back with the ship and helped rival fishermen, leading the dolphin's "regular" Forest Department, asks if he'll take her to Lusibari. He agrees, fishermen to take their rivals to court in hopes of recovering a and the forest guard lets Piya go. The fisherman introduces share of the fish that "their" dolphin helped to catch. himself as Fokir and his young son as Tutul. He treats Piya with exceptional kindness and respect and the next day, he takes her to a place called Garjontola where a pod of seven Irrawaddy PLOT SUMMARY dolphins are swimming. Piya is shocked, as the dolphins don't behave as they're supposed to—she believes the dolphins On the train to Canning, Kanai, a wealthy translator from New migrate daily out of the pool instead of twice a year. She spends Delhi, meets Piya, a young cetologist (a biologist who the next day with Fokir, observing the dolphins and mapping specializes in marine mammals). They're both headed to the the riverbed. Piya is pleasantly surprised that she and Fokir can Sundarbans: Kanai is going to the island of Lusibari for the first communicate so well, and their pursuits are well-matched: time in thirty years to deal with a long-lost packet of his late mapping the riverbed by rowing in straight lines gives Fokir the uncle Nirmal's writings, while Piya plans to conduct a survey of opportunity to fish for crabs. After Piya almost loses a hand to a the Gangetic and Irrawaddy river dolphins that live in the area. crocodile, she and Fokir row for Lusibari. Once there, Nilima Before they get off at Canning, Kanai invites Piya to come visit invites Piya to stay in the guesthouse with Kanai, and Kanai Lusibari. Kanai meets up with his aunt Nilima in Canning and agrees to help Piya talk to Fokir the next day. discovers that Nilima is still very disturbed by Nirmal's death, Over the course of the next several days, Kanai reads Nirmal's which happened twenty years ago. notebook. It tells the story of how Nirmal became involved with Once on Lusibari, Kanai explores the landmarks he remembers the settlement on Morichjhãpi after he retired from teaching. and thinks back to when Nirmal told him about Sir Daniel In his youth, Nirmal was a renowned Marxist in Calcutta, but he Hamilton, who successfully set up a cooperative society on the had to leave the city after he was arrested and suffered a islands in the first part of the twentieth century. He's shocked mental breakdown. He spent 30 years teaching on Lusibari, and to learn that Kusum, who was a friend when Kanai was on the during that time, he wrote nothing. However, he remained a island in 1970, died long ago. Her son Fokir, however, now lives firm believer in Marxist theory, much to Nilima's chagrin—she on the island and is married to one of the nurse trainees, spent those years developing the Babadon Trust, which Moyna. Upstairs in Nirmal's study, Kanai opens the packet. It provided healthcare and other services to the locals. She also contains only a notebook that appears to have been filled over developed a Women's Union to help the many widows on the course of a few days in May 1979, on the island of Lusibari, as it's common for men to die while out fishing. Morichjhãpi. In a letter addressed to Kanai, Nirmal explains After his retirement, Nirmal began visiting schools with the that he's with Kusum on the island and simply wants to make help of Horen.
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