Amitav Ghosh’s 2004 novel The Hungry Tidecontemplates the complex relationship between humans and the natural world through a series of parallel, intersecting narratives. The novel centers around the research project of Piya, an Indian-American cetologist, who meets Kanai, a translator from New Delhi, and Fokir, a village crab fisherman from the tide country of the Sundarbans in Southern Bengal in which the novel is set. The Sundarbans serve as an ecologically rich backdrop for Ghosh to illustrate the possibility and the way in which humans can reestablish a healthy relationship with nature. The novel is threaded with entries from the journal of the translator’s late uncle Nirmal, which serve to ground the story and provide deep historical insights into the development of the Sundarbans. Similarly, a local folktale runs through the novel and serves as the heart of the novel’s commentary on the connection between humans and nature. As an environmentalist, Ghosh is profoundly concerned with the state of human’s relationship with the natural world. Ghosh argues that the growing disconnect in this relationship exacerbates human indifference toward ongoing ecological destruction (Ghosh interview). In The Hungry Tide, Ghosh uses folklore to demonstrate to a Western audience an ethics of respect for nature and animals that has been lost with the rise of modern society.

The central folklore of the novel is “the story of Bon Bibi, the forest’s protectress” (Ghosh 292). In this legend, the mythical Bon Bibi and her brother Shah Jongoli rescue a boy who has been abandoned on an island by a ship captain. The ship captain exchanged the boy’s life for riches with the demon king Dokkhin Rai who embodies a tiger avatar. In the legend, Dokkhin Rai is said to harbor a hatred towards mankind that is “coupled with [an] insatiable desire: for the pleasures afforded by human flesh” (Ghosh 86). The legend also bestows properties on other local animals such as dolphins, which are said to be “Bon Bibi’s messengers” that “brought [bring] her news of the rivers and khals,” and bees, which are the labors of the demon king Dokkhin Rai (Ghosh 254, 292). Ghosh’s Western audience may overlook the importance of the supernatural qualities of animals in this legend; however, George Holmes, Thomas Aneurin Smith, and Caroline Ward argue local myths have a vital place in arguments over preserving the natural world. The animals in the Bon Bibi legend become what Holmes et al., call “extant-but-magical species” which are species “that are recognized by science but have properties that are not” and have the capacity to “blur boundaries between magic, spirituality, culture, tradition, and politics” (231). This magically imbued worldview facilitates a profound connection between the local villagers, like Fokir the crab fisherman, and nature. This worldview represents the pre-19th century human-nature connection as described by John Berger which has yet to succumb to the breakdown of “every tradition which has previously mediated between man and nature” (3). Berger claims that “animals first entered the imagination as messenger and promises,” which coincides with the villager’s beliefs that dolphins are the messengers of Bon Bibi and that even speaking the word “tiger” is a death wish, a promise for death (Berger 4; Ghosh 127, 254). Here, the anthropomorphism of animals stems from the “continuous use of animal metaphor” and is “integral to the relation between man and animal” and serves as an “expression of their proximity” (Berger 11). This form of anthropomorphism and understanding of animals stands in contrast to that of the cultural outsiders, Piya and Kanai, who hold understandings “that reduce [animals] to the model of a machine” (Berger 13).

Fokir’s deep but nuanced connection to nature, which stems from the myth of Bon Bibi, is the model for an ethics of respect that Ghosh offers his Western and modern audience for reconceptualizing their connection with the natural world. As cultural outsiders who do not embrace a magical worldview, Piya and Kanai have distinct perspectives that inhibit their ability to bridge the human-nature divide in a meaningful way. Kanai, a translator, harbors a deep connection to language, which through Berger’s analysis can be seen as a source for his separation from the natural world. In a letter to Piya, Kanai describes his experience with language stating, “I had always prided myself on the breadth and comprehensiveness of my experience of the world: I had loved, I once liked to say, in six languages” (Ghosh 291). Here, Ghosh suggests that Kanai’s connection to the world is centered in his rich capacity for language. Berger explains that language, which arises from “symbolic thought,” is “what distinguished man from the animals” as it “allows men to reckon with each other as with themselves” (5, 9). That is to say, language has the capacity to bridge the abyss between humans, but no such relationship exists with animals due to animals’ inability to speak. Kanai’s inability to appreciate and connect with nature can be seen in his comments about the Irrawaddy dolphin which Piya is studying. Kanai contemplates Piya’s decision to “come all this way to look at these ridiculous porcine things” and despite Piya’s attempt to convince him otherwise “he could see nothing interesting in the phlegmatic, beady-eyed creatures circling the boat” (Ghosh 241).

Another source of Kanai’s disinterested relationship with nature stems from his class and his mostly urban upbringing. Holmes et al. assert that magical worldviews like those of the Bon Bibi myth are “least likely to be held by younger men, who tend to have a formal, western-informed education” (232). Notably, Ghosh presents this concept through pieces of Kanai’s backstory. As a boy, Kanai was sent to the Sundarbans to live with his aunt and uncle as punishment. Upon hearing an adult reference the myth of Bon Bibi, Kanai was “astonished to think that a grown-up, a big strong man at that, could entertain such an idea.” Indeed, the idea was so ridiculous that he could not “suppress the snort of laughter that rose to his lips” (Ghosh 23-24). In sum, Kanai’s high status and education make him disdainful of myth and disconnected from nature.

Much like Kanai, Piya’s inability to bridge the animal-human divide can also be seen as two-fold. Piya’s inability to fit into Ghosh’s model of an ethics of respect for nature stems from a cultural and educational disconnect with nature; however, Piya’s case is more nuanced due to her deep love for animals. Despite Piya’s appearance and her family’s Indian origins, she shares little culturally with anything Indian. She had little interest in the “history, family, duty, [and] language” aspects of Indian culture that her parents preached to her about. Her father’s belief that “Indians… don’t travel well because their eyes are always turned backward, toward home” prevented her from learning Bengali (Ghosh 79, 207). Consequently, Piya’s Western cultural upbringing shapes her worldview and therefore her connection to animals. Ghosh illustrates this aspect of Piya’s character following the killing of a trapped tiger by local villagers. Piya was horrified by “the scene [that] was incomprehensible” to her (Ghosh 241). Piya begged Fokir and Kanai to stop the villagers’ assault on the tiger, protesting “you can’t take revenge on an animal” to Kanai’s claim that the tiger had already “killed two people and any number of cows and goats” (Ghosh 242). Similarly, Piya’s pleads for Fokir’s help go unanswered as he tells Kanai that Piya “shouldn’t be so upset” (Ghosh 242). Ghosh highlights Piya’s Western view and love for animals when Kanai asserts “we’re complicit in this.” He claims that “because it was people like you… who made the push to protect the wildlife here, without regard for the human costs” (Ghosh 248). Initially, Piya’s pleas to save the tiger seem to suggest that she has a deep connection with the nature; however, Piya’s sentimental fondness for tigers fails to grasp the complexities of life and death in the natural world. Piya’s inability to intuit the future danger the villagers are trying to mitigate by killing the tiger highlights her glorified view of the natural world. In this way, Ghosh demonstrates the disconnect she has with nature due to her Western upbringing. Piya lacks the nuanced ethics of traditional peoples which would characterize this incident as a necessity rather than an act of cruelty.

Ghosh’s analysis of the situation through his characters touches on a key element for an ethics of respect for nature developed by the antivivisectionist Francis Power Cobbe in the essay “The Rights of Man and The Claims of Brutes.” Cobbe forwards the idea of “want” and “wantonness” and their role regarding an ethics of respect for animals. Cobbe asserts that “animals’ lives may be taken for man’s wants, even if those wants be ever so small, but not for his wantonness; nor may they be taken in any case with needless infliction of pain.” (Cobbe 593). Therefore, the killing of the tiger is morally justifiable under Cobbe’s analysis in that the villagers wanted to be safe and not have their livestock killed. Despite the brutal nature of the killing, the root cause of it was not “wantonness”, which Cobbe defines as the “cruel impulses of destruction” that stem from humans’ “gluttonous tastes,” “caprices,” and “indolence” which “have no claims to be weighed against the brute’s life and welfare” (Cobbe 592). The local villagers’ lack of humane killing technology explains the use of spears and fire to kill the tiger and their claims to safety and prosperity are justifiable. Ghosh shows both Fokir and Kanai have the ability to decern between these two moral dilemmas and understand that the killing was not done out of sheer cruelty whereas Piya is clouded by a love of animals that subordinates human life. Piya goes so far as to claim that she would accept death “if I [she] thought giving up my life might make the rivers safe again for the Irrawaddy dolphin” (Ghosh 249).

The other aspect of Piya’s character that fails to bridge the human-animal divide and fit the model of the ethics of respect put forward by Ghosh through the Bon Bibi myth is her scientific approach to animals. As a researcher, Piya observes the animals through the “model of the machine in order to classify animals and their capacities” (Berger 11). This aspect of Piya’s character is demonstrated when she and Fokir find a dead dolphin calf that was struck by a boat propeller. Piya’s first instinct is to take measurements and samples of the animal for her research purposes and only after she finishes does she contemplate her feelings of sadness for the animal (Ghosh 285). Berger’s analysis of the “great zoologist Buffon” explains how Piya’s “tenderness towards animals” fits with her parallel scientific motives. Berger explains that this tenderness comes only after “the animal has been emptied of experience and secrets” which “provokes in man a kind of nostalgia” that “temporarily reinstates them [animals] as companions” (Berger 12).

The character development of both Piya and Kanai demonstrate that returning to a more holistic view of nature, like that offered through folklore, helps to bridge the human-nature divide. Both characters go through separate transformative experiences leading to a profound, meaningful, and balanced connection to nature. Kanai’s experience on the island of Garjontola represents his character’s transformative climax. In the chapter “Signs,” Kanai is left alone at Garjontola after he becomes so aggressive with Fokir that Fokir leaves him behind. This aggression stems from Kanai’s deep-seated class prejudice which he had “compacted into an explosive volatile reserve.” Fokir leaving Kanai behind is symbolic of the myth of Bon Bibi in which the captain leaves behind the young Bengali man. Similar to the myth, upon reaching a clearing on the island Kanai comes face-to-face with a Bengal tiger, the physical manifestation of the demon king Dokkhin Rai (Vescovi 156). For Kanai, this experience coming face-to-face with the tiger humbles him to the power of nature, and “this supernatural and spiritual encounter with the divinities of the forest cures Kanai from his pride and self-centeredness, like it helped Dukhey [the young Bengali from the Bon Bibi myth] to become a man” (Vescovi 156). In his letter to Piya, he writes “at Garjontola I learned how little I know of myself and of the world” (Ghosh 291). Kanai’s admission to his transformative life-changing experience on the island demonstrates his full development as a character who now has an appreciation, connection, and respect for nature that he previously lacked. Similarly, Piya learns valuable lessons on the island of Garjantola from her survival through a cyclone in which Fokir is killed protecting her. Fokir sacrifices himself to save Piya and through this experience, she gains an understanding of both the goodness of humanity and the indifference of nature (Ghosh 324). Ghosh understands that the “earth does not care about us” and that “it’s completely indifferent to us being here or not”(Gosh interview). The earth is not concerned with human wellbeing. Through Piya’s transformative experience she learns this valuable lesson, which she previously did not consider in her love and tenderness towards nature and animals. The transformative experiences of Kanai and Piya both take place on the island of Garjantola underscoring its significance within the novel. This island is home to a shrine of Bon Bibi that was placed by Fokir’s ancestors and has been maintained through generations. Fokir says to Kanai “my mother use to say that here in Garjontola, Bon Bibi would show you whatever you wanted to know” (Ghosh 267). This phrase is emblematic of the experiences faced by Kanai and Piya later in the novel and highlights the significance of the Bon Bibi legend. In this instance, on Garjontola, Bon Bibi shows Kanai and Piya their places in the world and how they are just single pieces in the connected and dynamic landscape of nature.

The character development of Piya and Kanai and the legend of Bon Bibi demonstrate Amitav Ghosh’s use of folklore to offer his Western audience a different way to conceptualize an ethics of respect for nature and animals that has been lost in the modern age. The ecologically rich yet increasingly endangered Sundarbans function as a vivid backdrop as Ghosh tackles the complicated issues of class and culture and shows how each of these elements shape one’s ability to connect with the world around them. Alongside the contemplation of the human-nature connection the novel details the rich human-human connections that have the power to transcend history, culture, country, and class. These human connections should be explored further in great detail for their contribution to an ethics toward human beings.

Works Cited