Myth, Folklore, and Cultural Memory in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide with Reference to Gun Island

Abstract

Throughout history, myth and folklore have played a significant role in shaping the way in which people view the natural world, morality, and group identity. Contrary to being a relic of the past, they are still a dynamic part of cultural memory, especially in socio-politically marginalized and ecologically vulnerable groups. In an attempt to examine the way in which myth is a living moral and cognitive system, Ghosh critiques anthropocentric modernity and offers an alternative environmental ethics of interdependence through the re-interpretation of indigenous myths such as the Gun Merchant myth and the Bon Bibi story. In the analysis, it will be suggested that Ghosh offers myth as an epistemological resource that enables transnational memory, environmentalism, and resilience in the face of climate change, rather than superstition. This paper presents a new and extended interpretation of Amitav Ghosh’s “The Hungry Tide” (2004), comparatively with“Gun Island” (2019), in order to explore the importance of myth, folklore, and cultural memory in survival narratives. Based on a broad use of secondary literature and theoretical approaches, such as the study of bioethical imperatives in speculative fiction by Dr. J. Albert Vincent Paulraj, the analysis of narrative strategies and social conditioning by S. Kandasamy, and the work on posthuman subjectivity by B. Pradeepa, this paper will demonstrate that Ghosh redefines myth as an ethical and ecological discourse. The Bon Bibi myth, folklore, and migratory stories are not only cultural leftovers but also complex systems that mediate human/nature relations, subvert anthropocentric modernity, and sustain indigenous knowledge.