Analysis Of The Hungry Tide

The world has a habit of defaulting into binary ways of thinking. Binary thinking, or the dichotomization of two concepts, is extremely limiting in that it does not allow room for the possibility of two seemingly opposite points to communicate and work in tandem. Commonly thought of binaries are man vs. woman, old vs. new, and fact vs. fiction. Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide tackles the rethinking of several binaries, including the theme of past vs. present. The idea of pitting the past and present against each other is slowly dismantled as the novel creates dialogues between the different timelines and characters. Even the way the story is physically arranged with its alternating perspectives forces connections that break through a pre-thought …show more content…
Instead of having distinct chapters, the novel is comprised of smaller sections, each with its own title, that flow directly from one to the next. The point of view rotates between Kanai, Piya, and Kanai’s uncle, Nirmal. Kanai and Piya’s passages operate in the present day, while Nirmal’s are set in the past, since he is deceased. One of the signature elements of Nirmal’s sections is referencing German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, or simply, the Poet. Having a man living in the Sundarbans of India living by the words of a German poet is already a global tie in itself, but it is strengthened by how the poems themselves relate and reflect what is happening in Nirmal’s life. The major event Nirmal’s viewpoint reveals throughout the novel is the details of the massacre that took place on Marichjhapi, an island in the Sundarbans. When Nirmal is describing the time he and Kusum, Fokir’s mother, traveled to the island of Garjontola, which housed a shrine for Bon Bibi, a worshipped goddess within the tide country, he recalls how dolphins began to appear. He writes of these dolphins that “where [Kusum] had seen a sign of Bon Bibi, I saw instead the gaze of the Poet…‘some mute animal/raising its calm eyes and seeing through us,/and through us. This is destiny…’” (195). Despite Nirmal and Kusum seeing different things, and the tale of Bon BiBi and Rilke’s poems coming from completely different cultures and origins, they evoke the same feeling of witnessing something of a greater power. In this instance, Nirmal utilizes a part of a Rilke poem to help him wade through the foreignness of Kusum’s beliefs as a means to reach a greater understanding. Rilke is also utilized by Kanai in the letter he writes to Piya in which he translates “The Story of Dukhey’s Redemption”, concluding, in a Nirmal-like fashion, with words of poetry, as a way