Narrating Symbiosis: Material Agency and Ecological Relationality in Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island

Abstract

Ecological crises and man-nature conflict is a major contemporary world issue recognized by WHO and UNO. Like many other disciplines of studies, literary texts both classical and modern have reflected the symbiosis-essential ecological concern through interdependence of man and nature, man-animal for existence, survival, respect for one another and sensitization with the tactics of narratology. Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island redraws a relationship between human history and the nature. Praxis of literary Anthropocene has blurred the traditional boundaries between human characters and nonhuman beings. By connecting contemporary climate- induced migration of human beings with the ancient Bengali folklore of the snake goddess Manasa Devi, the novel challenges human-centered storytelling. It argues that nature and animals are not mere backdrops for human drama, but are active participants that shape global events. This paper is an attempt to explore how ecological colonization and modern capitalism have simultaneously disrupted both the human communities and the ecosystem by comparing the forced journeys of human refugees with the irregular migrations of wild lives across the Sundarbans and the Mediterranean Sea. This study uses the lens of New Materialism and Ecological Relationality to analyze how the material world and non-human beings possess their own agency and voice by integrating local myths and non-Western worldviews.