The Hungry Tide And Ella Hickson's Oil

Superior Essays
The intention of this essay is to investigate the Western relationship with colonisation, which shall be explored through Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide (2004, THT) and Ella Hickson’s Oil (2016). Both texts raise questions about governance and colonisation in relation to environmental change through their use of character portrayal. Although neither text aims to provide an immediate solution they instead inform the reader and provoke thought on real issues whilst acknowledging that situations differ depending upon your own world-views, which is shown through a use of multiple perspectives. In doing so they fulfill the marxist ideology of Georg Lukács whom views literature to be a transcendence of the ‘merely common-sense apprehension of things’, in other words, they work as a ‘special form of reflecting reality’. This …show more content…
Columbia Edu generated a report on corruption within governance and claims that because of the power that institutions have obtained they have the ability to configure social norms for the public. Therefore corruption within these structures can lead to public frustration and also apathy, both of which enable the degradation of the environment alongside its inhabitants. THT attempts to reflect this issue by portraying the government in a negative light through using Piya’s guard to represent the institution, as well as Piya’s own experience with it. In the chapter ‘The Launch’ the reader is placed instantaneously into a state of anxiety involving governmental figures when the atmosphere is suddenly shifted from feeling ‘giddy with joy’ towards more ominous tones as ‘’[h]er face fell in dismay’ due to the requirement for an assigned guard to accompany her through the Sundarbans. Ghosh uses these created connotations to emphasise his

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