Gun Island Group Presentation

Prepared by
Jignesh Panchasara
Latta Baraiya
Chandani Pandya
Kishan Jadav
Bhavyang Asari

Table content
❖About Author
❖Key Facts
❖Characters
❖Summary
❖Themes
❖Title of the Novel
❖ Narrative Technique
❖ Review of Author
❖ Critics View
❖ Learning Outcome
❖ References

Amitav Ghosh
❖ Born : 11th July, 1956 (age 65) in Calcutta, West
Bengal, India
❖ Grew up : India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
❖ Study : Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria.
❖ Occupation : Writer
❖ Nationality : Indian
❖ Notable Awards : Jnanpith Award(2018), Sahitya
Akademi Award(1989), Ananda Puraskar(1990), Dan
David Prize(2010), Padma Shri(2007)

—Amitav Ghosh
“The Government to you is
what god is agnostics-Only to
be invoked when your own
well being is at stake”

Work Cited
❏ “Amitav Ghosh.” 2011, Amitav Ghosh - Official
Website, https://www.amitavghosh.com/.
❏ Keswani, Pallavi. “Amitav Ghosh Conferred
Jnanpith Award.” The Hindu, The Hindu, 13 June
2019, https://www.thehindu.com/books/books-
authors/amitav-ghosh-conferred-jnanpith-
award/article27892765.ece.

❖ Title : Gun Island
❖ Author : Amitav Ghosh
❖ Published : 2019
❖ Literary Period : Contemporary
❖ Genre : Historical Fiction
❖ Point of View : First person Narration
❖ Pages : 289

OVERVIEW DIAGRAM
Major characters
Dinanath Dutta
(Deen)
Piyali Roy
(Piya)
Giacinta
Schiavon
(Cinta)
Rare Book Dealer
Protagonist or Narrator
Born in Calcutta
Works in New York
Researcher,
Professor, venice
American
Girl,Research on
Dolphin

Americanised young
fellow, good with dealing
technology
Tutul (Tipu)
Caretaker of the shrine,
Grandson of Majhi,
Migration to venice
Rafi

Minor characters
● Kanai ( Friend of Deen)
● Nilima Bose (Aunt of Kanai)
● Moyna (piya’s Friend and helping her on Research)
● Horen Naskar (Boat man)
● Durga (Lover of Deen)
● Lisa ( Piya’s roommate of College)
● Gisella ( Niece of Cinta)
● Imma (Gisella’s Partner)
● Lubna Khala (Lady From Bangladesh)
● Munir(Husband of Lubna)
● Bilal ( Working Under Lubna & Roommate of Rafi)

● Majhi -Muslim Man,Care taker of shrine
● Lucia - Daughter of Cinta
● Alice - Cinta’s Mother
● Fozlul Hogue Chowdhary (Palash) - Working under
Lubna khala
● Larry - Research on Spider
● Marco - Watchman
● Sandro di Vigonovo - Admiral In Europe
● Fokir - Tipu’s father

Mythical Characters
● Mansa Devi -Goddess of Snake
● Gun Merchant-Atheistic Person
● Ilyas -Captain
● Ambrosio Bembo- Traveller

PART ONE: The Gun Merchant
➔ Calcutta
➔ Cinta
➔ Tipu
➔ The Shrine
➔ Visions
➔ Rani
➔ Brooklyn
➔ Wildfires
➔ Los Angeles
➔ Gun Island
HERE IS THE SLIDE
TITLE! Contents
Gun Island describes the quest of
Deen, a scholar and collector of rare
books, who returns from New York, his
city of domicile, to the Sunderbans in
West Bengal to unravel the mystery
and legend of a seventeenth-century
merchant, Bonduki Sada-gar,
translated “The Gun Merchant,” and his
persecution by Manasa Devi, mythical
goddess of snakes.

HERE IS THE SLIDE
TITLE!
PART TWO: Venice
➔ The Ghetto
➔ Rafi
➔ Strandings
➔ Friends
➔ Dreams
➔ Warnings
➔ High Water
➔ Crossings
➔ Winds
➔ The Lucania
➔ Sightings
➔ The Storm
Contents

Myth
❏ Deen believes that the myth recurs in his life in reality.
❏ He saw an enormous king cobra which is believed to be the Manasa Devi encountered by the gun
merchant too, when he visited the very shrine.
❏ Manasa Devi haunts him in his dreams. It is the myth of Manasa Devi chasing a gun merchant for his
ill doings in Gun Island.
❏ The serpent goddess followed the gun merchant as a sea serpent (or dragon with glowing eyes) all the
way to Venice; warned him; haunted him at various places and at last gave him freedom for a shrine
built up in return.
❏ Deen is also haunted by nightmares in which he sees snakes.
❏ “two little shining discs, deep in the water; … reflect the light back at him, like the eyes of a cat. The
discs began to grow larger as he watched, as though they were rising towards the surface” (GI, p. 288).
❏ Deen explores the historical truth behind the myth and he encounters similar kind of venomous
creatures like yellow-bellied snake, and particularly a poisonous spider, which gave him the answer to
the riddle of a mystified symbol of circle with symmetrical lines (in the shape of a spider web) carved
in the shrine of Manasa Devi. (Ghosh)

Myth
❏ Along with Cinta and Deen encountering a species of a giant squid, again whose story is connected to
the gun merchant that “the piece has been inspired by an old Venetian legend about a monster…
beneath the embarkment of the Punta della Dogana” (GI, p. 226) strongly weaves the supernatural
storyline.
❏ Tippu, the swamp dweller, who fascinates the western culture acquires visions after a gigantic king
cobra bites him in the shrine where Deen goes on scrutinising the secret behind the myth of the snake
goddess, Manasa Devi.
❏ Rafi, another islander of the gun merchant’s swamp, knowing some secrets about the myth, which his
grandfather had always told him, whispers to Deen as, “it was right behind you… its hood was raised
and its head was above your shoulders… I leave it alone too – it keeps other snakes and animals
away…you must have disturbed it when you went in.” (GI, p. 176).
❏ Rani, an Irrawaddy Dolphin which died due to beaching in an unexpected place and wrong season. It
was the same time that Pia, the microbiologist lost signal with the species and later found it dead.
“about forty-five minutes …that’s impossible! … but that’s when my alert went off … about Rani…”
(GI, p. 189).
(Ghosh)

Technology
In the novel in pg. No, 91 have reference if technology that Moyna/ Nilima talk about
Piya’s home that…
➢ In the kitchen there were two large refrigerators. Like almost everything in the
building, they ran on solar power. One of the refrigerators was especially stocked
for Piya, who, I soon discovered, subsisted on a very idiosyncratic diet, consisting
mainly of energy bars and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
➢ When Deen meets the teenaged Tipu for the first time, he’s awed and I think, a
little bit afraid of the boy’s felicity with computers, his ability to access seemingly
any data he wants. It’s a reversal of the boy-meets-old-wizard trope; Tipu even
says, “The internet is the migrant’s magic carpet”. (Ghosh)

The refugee crisis
➢ Climate related environmental strife and disaster in the Sunderbans area is the spinning
core of Gun Island from which characters like Tipu, Rafi or even the gun merchant in
another time, are hurled outward, into other stories, by the violent centrifugal force of
climate chaos and disaster. Chased away from the punishing land they called home,
these characters get drawn into other dreams, to other refuges, propelled by promises,
towards other stories of life in the West, which constitute, so to speak, the surface
narratives of this novel, where people like Deen, Piya, or the charismatic historian Cinta
play important parts.(Ghosh)
➢ However, and because climate change knows no boundaries and can spring surprises
and violent retribution at a place of its choosing, and also because stories connect with
stories riding microscopic filaments of probability and chance, the characters of Gun
Island find out how an angry planet stitches them together in the present, as it had in the
past, when the gun merchant was running away from a wrathful goddess.(Ghosh)

Starting in the Sundarbans
➢ In Gun Island, Amitav Ghosh makes a spirited foray into the world
of climate fiction, a category which has received scant attention
from writers, especially in our part of the world – a region, which
for economic and other reasons is vulnerable, and will be
disproportionately affected by the unfolding climate disaster.
➢ The story of this legendary trader, Deen finds, has many parallels
with the Bengali verse epics about Chand Sadagar and Manasa, the
Hindu folk goddess of snakes, who is also central to the gun
merchant’s story. He learns that the gun merchant has a “dham” or
shrine in Sunderbans, the mangrove-covered deltas of south Bengal.
(Ghosh)
Climate
Change

Migration
Gun Island explores different forms of migration, starting from people and entire communities
being uprooted from their native land to the drastic changes recently prevalent in the migratory
patterns of different species. Ghosh gives many instances of climate related catastrophes being
inductors of such migrations. He talks in detail about the cyclone Aila which hit the Sundarbans in
2009.
Aila’s long-term consequences were even more devastating than those of earlier cyclones.
Hundreds of miles of embankment had been swept away and the sea had invaded places
where it had never entered before; vast tracts of once fertile land had been swamped by salt
water, rendering them uncultivable for a generation, if not forever.The evacuations too had
produced effects that no one could have foretold. Having once been uprooted from their
villages many evacuees had decided not to return, knowing that their lives, always hard,
would be even more precarious now. Communities had been destroyed and families
dispersed. . . (Ghosh 48)

Animals and Birds : Migration
‘You know - temperatures are rising around the world
because of global warming. This means that the
habitats of various kinds of animals are also changing.
The brown recluse soldier is extending its range into
places where it wasn’t found before - like this part of
Italy.’
- Deen (Gun Island). Pg. 214

Ecocriticism
➢ Amitav Ghosh’s most recent novel The Gun Island has nature and climate
change as its primary themes and therefore ecocriticism and its offshoots are
relevant to the discussion of the aforesaid novel.
➢ The Gun Island is probably an answer to the question that he had raised in his
nonfiction The Great Derangement: why are literary artists refraining from
discussing issues related to climate change?
➢ The Gun Island explores the impact of climate change in various parts of the
globe. In India, where almost every hamlet has its own stories around sacred
groves, it does not come as a surprise that Ghosh built a story around the snake
goddess Manasa Devi who imbues the narrative from the beginning till the
end.(Ghosh)

Colonialism and Climate refugees
Reading the book with an awareness of colonialism and climate refugees makes this pretty obvious,
but Ghosh makes a clear statement about this theme through a Bengali immigrant Deen meets named
Palash:
But everyone has a dream, don’t they, and what is a dream but a fantasy? Think of all the people who come
to see Venice: what’s brought them there but a fantasy? They think they’ve travelled to the heart of Italy,
to a place where they’ll experience Italian history and eat authentic Italian food. Do they know that all of
this is made possible by people like me? That it is we who are cooking their food and washing their plates
and making their beds? Do they understand that no Italian does that kind of work any more? That it’s we
who are fuelling this fantasy even as it consumes us? And why not? Every human being has a right to a
fantasy, don’t they? It is one of the most important human rights—it is what makes us different from
animals. Haven’t you seen how every time you look at your phone, or a TV screen, there is always an ad
telling you that you should do whatever you want; that you should chase your dream; that ‘impossible is
nothing’—‘Just do it!’ What else do these messages mean but that you should try to live your dream?
-Gun Island

➢“Island within Island” (Rafi to Deen)
➢ Cinta told the story that Venice was known as “Bandia” so
Deen connect it with The Gun Island.
➢ Deen told Cinta about the story if Gun Island and Shrine.
➢ After listening Cinta said that it may be reference of Venice
not Guns in Gun Merchant’s Name.

In his novels, Amitav Ghosh employs a new narrative technique.
He writes his novels in the first person and creates a narrator
who for all his anonymity comes across as if he is the person
looking at you quietly from across the table by the time the
storytelling is over and silence descends.
Narrative Technique of Amitav Ghosh

Narrative technique of Gun Island
➢ Gun Island is a beautifully realized novel that effortlessly spans space
and time.
➢ It is the story of a world on the brink, of increasing displacement and
unstoppable transition. But it is also a story of hope and the future is
restored by two remarkable women.
➢ Amitav Ghosh’s new novel ,Gun Island ,express many of the writer’s
recurring motifs
➢ irrawaddy,dolphins ,the Sundarbans, Climate change.But at the heart
of the novel is the theme of illegal migration and refugee crisis,
displacement and renewal.
➢ Amitav Ghosh’s novel “Gun Island “ is as much as etymological mystery
as a compelling study of illegal migration a derivation that points to the
deep and civilization over the ages.
➢ Ghosh write with deep intelligence and illuminating alacrity about
complex issues. ( NAZ)

➢ This ambitious novel memorably draws connection
among history,poltical and mythology.
➢ Ghosh’s story involving and intricate, speaks urgently
to a time growing ever more perilous.
➢ A tender ,attentive and engaging account of the ways
in which an individual sensibility might be altered by
ironies of the history, chance alliances and
climatological .
➢ Gun island is a rich and rewarding novel that reaffirms
the transformative power of topographical and human
connection and registers the rhythms of the quiet and
the unquiet life.
Conti.....

The Era of Climate in Fiction
Amitav Ghosh & Nathaniel Rich
Conversation

➢ Amitav Ghosh View on Climate Change :
For me, climate change is not something
discrete. It’s not something that has
happened only within the last thirty years. It
is something which has a very long history
which reaches very deep into our past. It’s
within that context that I think of it, and it’s
within that context that these stories come to
me. ( Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Important aspects of fiction
If we look at the realities of the world we live in
today, it’s really impossible to write about
settings in quite the same way we used to
because, for one thing, the settings have
completely changed—populations have
changed, geographies have changed. And,
more to the point, we live at a time when it’s
not just people moving, but entire ecosystems.
( Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

About “Gun Island ”
I think it’s impossible—in terms of any kind of literary approach in this
moment in time—to dispense with the uncanny. We have to embrace the
uncanny; the uncanny defines exactly this moment. I’ve experienced this
myself with the writing of this book. There is a chapter in the book that is set
in Los Angeles with a fire advancing towards a museum. This actually
happened: you may have read last year that there was a fire advancing
towards The Getty museum. But as it happens, I wrote that chapter several
months before the fires. It was so weird to see that happening, to read about
it, to watch coverage of it on television, because I had already seen it
happening in my head. And in the same way I write about a big hailstorm in
Venice and I’m told that this also happened in the last few months. The
uncanniness of the world! For all of us who are writing about these events,
it’s constantly instantiated, isn’t it?( Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

literary convention
Yes, I did feel that. I also felt that for many conventional
readers, the book will be strange simply because so much
of it is about very grounded but largely unseen realities.
One of the issues the book deals with is the
Mediterranean migration crisis. I spent quite a long time
in Italy travelling to refugee camps, migrant camps and
interviewing people, talking to them about their
understanding of what was going on in the world. They
had very sophisticated understandings of the world at
large.( Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

The legend that is central to the plot
Yes, it is very much an actual legend. This is a
very ancient legend going back millennia,
probably rooted in the cultures of the
indigenous peoples of eastern India. The legend
has two major figures: one is the goddess of
snakes, who is known as Manasa Devi, and the
other is a figure called the merchant, Chand
Sadagar.( Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Collective experience
Novels are about characters. You cannot have
one hundred characters—I mean, you could,
but that would make it difficult for the reader.
The challenge lies in the question of how to
focus on only a few characters while conjuring
up behind each character a phalanx of
others.If I’m able to do that at all in this book
it’s because of the other books that I’ve
written.( Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Gun Island: Not a Fiction but a Prediction
Many authors have started writing on this topic of global
warming and destruction of environment since it was not
addressed and given place in the literature. Amitav Ghosh
has continuously raised voice and has been writing on it
in his novels. In his recent novel, Gun Island, he wrote
(predicted) on the wildfire in Los Angeles, a sprawling
Southern California city. This wildfire not only shocked
the world but Amitav Ghosh also. His forecast in the novel
became the reality now.(Dr. Panchal)

He even mentions the process of climate change has already begun but no
where had he mentioned the solution on it. Now it is the reader’s responsibility
to act wisely. When Amitav Ghosh heard the wildfire he was shocked. He didn’t
think this will happen so soon. He started writing on this novel in 2016,
published it in June 2019 and immediately in November 2019 the world
witnessed the prediction came true. He has been writing on climate change for
more than twenty years. In as Interview when he was asked to comment on
California wildfire he said the threat of climate change is real and it is
intensifying. Though he focused on the problem, climate change, he didn’t
mentions and gave the solution to the world. He thinks as a writer I can only
write or show you what is happening and what will. Now the world leaders
should take conscience and act accordingly.(Dr. Panchal)

Gun Island: A Tale of Myth, Migration and Climate Change
Gun Island presents an inter woven plot which connects
human and animal, past and present, natural and the
supernatural. It explore how the notion of
interconnectedness manifests itself in each of these
elements. Gun Island projects unprecedented climatic
conditions as the primary cause for these natural disasters.
It becomes a clarion call for climate induced migrations as it
skillfully portrays people and entire communities being
uprooted from their native land and the drastic changes in
the migratory patterns of different species due to changing
climes and warming waters. Gun Island focuses on giving the
readers hope for a better tomorrow.( Francis)

A Tale of Difference and Resilience in Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island
Gun Island undertakes an exploratory voyage into the fourteenth-
century with the legendary story of the Gun Merchant while
simultaneously being rooted in the socio-political and climatological
crises of contemporary times. It depicts that the disadvantaged
inhabitants of the Sundarbans and many other people from different
countries migrate, illegally, to Italy transcending national and
continental boundaries in search of employment and opportunity It
intends to investigate how the refugees from the various national,
linguistic, and cultural backgrounds portrayed in the novel under
discussion can be grouped in terms of their shared plight while
battling for life during migration like all pandemic (COVID-19) -
stricken people of the world, building a global society despite the
multiplicity of differences.( Bose and Satapathy)

❏ Snake sting to Tipu
❏ Rafi has good mobile phone to get communication
Learning Outcome -Jignesh

Learning Outcome - Latta
❏ "I'm a compulsive note - taker and record - keeper."
- Deen (page 12)
➢ Cultivate habit of taking note - technology helps.
❏ "Don't set yourself up to fail, yet again"
- Deen’s therapist (page20)
➢ You have to try even you know the results.
❏ (Death threats are scary to be honest !) but someone has to do the work.
- Piya (page 96)
➢ Be strong and start working
❏ Way of looking at migrants changed

Can literature save the planet?

Reference
❖ Bose, Trina and Amrita Satapathy. "A Tale of Difference and
Resilience in Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island." The International
Academic Forum (n.d.). web. 3 january 2022.
<https://papers.iafor.org/submission59841/>.
❖ Farrar, John C., Roger W. Straus and Robert Giroux’s. "The Era of
Climate in Fiction." (n.d.). web. 2 January 2022.
<https://fsgworkinprogress.com/2019/09/20/the-era-of-climate-in-
fiction/>.
❖ Francis, Ashna . "Gun Island: A Tale of Myth, Migration and Climate
Change." SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJELLH 9.9 (2021). web. 4
January 2021.
<https://ijellh.com/OJS/index.php/OJS/article/view/11163>.

Reference
❖ Ghosh, Amitav. Gun Island. Penguin Random House India, 2019.
Book. 2 January 2022.
❖ NAZ, KARISHMA . "Narrative historical fiction and memory a
literacy." International Journal Of Creative Research Thoughts
8.9 (2020). web. 3 January 2022.
<https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https
://ijcrt.org/papers/IJCRT2009040.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjHnpqv36j1
AhX3wzgGHfJDBs8QFnoECD0QAQ&usg=AOvVaw2Q3gcRo0fHOB
qPsTSFricl>.
❖ Panchal, Dr. Dnyaneshwar Anantrao. "Gun Island: Not a Fiction
but a Prediction." International Journal Of Creative Research

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