Reading Ghosh, Nixon, LeMenager, solidfy this idea that culture translates into literature and vise-versa yet climate change is a topic that is seemingly difficult to encapsulate and represent in literature. Ghosh writes that it must be due to lack of imagination instead of lack of facts. That the rationalization that is part of writing a novel leaves no room for surprise but the path of nature itself is not stable. How can you rationalize when “catastrophes waylay both the earth and its individual inhabitants at unpredictable intervals and in the most improbable ways” (p24). Nixon argues in his essay that we lack proper representation of slow violence and it is urgent to create it so that “people see, feel, and respond appropriately to the reality of massive ecological changes that humans have slowly brought over the course of centuries” (p2). Nixon recognizes that our downfall as a society is media and it being sensationalized. So the topic of slow violence, which does not have any immediate drastic effects, goes unrecognized. Ghosh also recognizes that climate change/slow violence is not seen as exceptionable and dramatic enough for fiction literature. In fact, he states that “the very gestures with which it conjures up reality are actually a concealment of the real”. They place this emphasis that we, as a whole, are constantly in a state of delusion and/or ignorance. These disastrous events may seem dramatic enough to those who are victim and witness to them, but are otherwise not entertaining enough to create a stir of deeper thinking and questioning about the cause. It stood out to me that Ghosh himself was part of an unnatural disasterous event and still struggled to write about it. How do you build up to something that is unnatural, surprising, and a result of other events that happened throughout a long duration of time? It is unquestionably difficult to capture in a fiction entertaining enough to catch the people’s attention without making it a non-fiction essay that people will most likely not read.

Although this makes it sound like literature used as awareness is impossible when it comes to slow violence, it only highlights the need for it. Especially since it is mostly affecting poorer communites of people, which are too often viewed as ‘disposable’ and ‘unimportant’. We are progressively becoming blind to what is real. They both share this idea of rethinking/recognizing climate change/slow violence which I believe is necessary to bring about change.

After reading Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement, I was able to gain a greater understanding of how fictional novels can help us understand the climate crisis occurring right now. Throughout his piece, a common theme was how fictional stories are not as fictional as we think. The state of our earth’s climate is unpredictable and changing at a rapid rate. Within the last 50 years, weather events have occurred in areas of the world that their environment can not withstand. One example is Hurricane Sandy in 2012, “never before had a hurricane veered sharply westward in the mid-Atlantic” (page 14). The power of this hurricane was something the East Coast had never dealt with before. This hurricane had deified “…statistical weather-predictions models”, the intensity of this hurricane shocked the community and left many people unequipped (page 13). When looking at statistical weather predictions Hurricane Sandy was extremely out of the ordinary, however, its’ trajectory and intensity were predicted accurately by the law of physics. Due to its rarity, people in these areas could not possibly fathom a hurricane coming and destroying current life on the East Coast. Ghosh continues to give similar examples of bizarre weather events like an earthquake in L’Aquila, Italy, Hurricane Catrina in Brazil, and Cyclone in North Delhi. His conclusion is despite the shock of these weather events, nothing is out of the ordinary when carbon emissions are alternating the current state of our earth. Humans are not as invincible as we may like to think, our actions interfere with the natural course of the earth. Instead of brushing off fiction as some magical tale that could never happen, these ideas were created in the contemporary era and possibly could have some validity. Possibly these authors write these fictional pieces to try to grapple with the idea of how unpredictable life can be with the effects of global warming. These stories contain more truth than one might want to believe. Once I completed Ghosh’s piece I gained a new perspective on climate change, that collectively we are living in a state of delusion. Not enforcing laws to combat the climate crisis because the irreversible effects seem so removed from current life. However, if we step back it is apparent how we are experiencing repercussions now. Possibly in this age where technology is evolving so rapidly, where content is being given to us left and right at a rate the human brain can not completely comprehend. These big flashy headlines about wildfires or droughts seem concerning but not out of the ordinary because of their common recurrence. 

We have looked into multiple texts about climate change and they all send the same message. It is up to authors to paint such a vivid picture into people’s minds that it will be impossible to ignore. It’s important to have a clear understanding of what slow violence is in today’s age and how it affects us.

Slow violence is harm being done at such a slow rate that it is easily ignored. Our generation is used to drama,15-second videos, or incredibly simplified versions of texts. All of this has caused important information that is not easily explained to not be profitable. Different companies have not been given climate change the attention it needs because it simply won’t make money, it won’t keep consumers entertained and they will eventually click away from the broadcast. I personally feel that we have reached a point where the media believes that the effects of climate change cannot be reversed and we are basically doomed so might as well profit as much as you can from it now, instead of putting in that effort to warn people and scare them. Slow violence is something that is happening so slowly that there is no dramatic evidence that can be presented to catch people’s attention long enough. This is why Ghosh says in The Great Derangement  “It would serve no purpose to approach them in that way: because to treat them as magical or surreal would be to rob them of precisely the quality that makes them so urgently compelling—which is that they are actually happening on this earth, at this time.” People like to be fed a story people like to read or see something that completely leaves them in shock. Ghosh is aware of this, we know this because he talks about how what is happening in today’s world is urgently compelling, since it is happening as we speak.

Ghosh hits us with a very brutal truth on page 57 when he goes back to back on things that could happen and are happening due to climate change. Nowadays many people have said how trauma porn is one of the most compelling and intriguing things to read or see. People who live basic normal day-to-day lives yearn for something outside of their ‘boring life’. So to hear all of these things that could happen and have happened can really bring more attention and awareness to the effects of climate change today. It’s not just a fun story you’re reading but you realize that this is literally happening in the earth you live in as well.

Ghosh mentions how throughout history small warnings have never been enough. He brings up a small story of how in Fukushima during the middle ages there were was stone tablets with warnings to not build their homes below a certain level. Instead the Japanese built their homes exactly where the warning said not to and in fact built a nuclear plant there. Ghosh goes on to talk about how humans didn’t lose awareness but small warnings have never been enough. Humans always seek a greater impact in order to take things into consideration and realize that things are said for a reason.

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The effect of literature on Climate change
The most potent weapon humans have at our disposal is storytelling. Literature, specifically novels, has been a significant factor in shaping the world as it is the purest form of recorded expression. Authors like Rob Nixon, and Amitav Ghosh have delved into the issues associated with climate change, accentuating the difficulty of making the threat of climate change tangible. It is not an immediate threat but rather a slow but violent one. With these authors being experts in their given field of literature, their use of storytelling through their novels has allowed them to bridge the cultural gap.

The term “Slow Violence” was first coined by Rob Nixon in his 2011 book, which described the slow but persistent damage caused to the environment by climate change over time. This apt term for climate change brings forth to light the potency but often times hard to visualize the threat that climate change poses. Lemenager and Ghosh also touch on the difficulty of visualizing slow violence as our brains normally only perceive threats that are immediate. Storytelling does not necessarily have to be strictly for entertainment Humans for generations have used stories for millenniums to teach lessons to the newer generations. Novels such as ‘The Great Derangement’ by Amitav Ghosh are filled to the brim with different accounts of how climate change has been affecting the world around us for the longest time. Ghosh recounts a time when in New Dehli a  tornado passed over the capital. This experience opened his eyes to the fact that sooner or later the slow but persistent violence of climate change came out of nowhere but did come. He recounts “Something that was not a property of the thing itself but of the manner in which it had intersected with my life.” (Ghosh, 19). Ghosh emphasizes the fact that the tornado had opened up his eyes to the consequences of what he knows is going on in climate change and that it could affect him in the unlikeliest of times. There is a point to be made that the effects of climate change have already taken effect in the world today. Nixion believes that we are currently at a point in time where we are still not in the post-global warming causes but rather living through it. ” Industrial particulates and effluents live on in the environmental elements we inhabit and in our very bodies, which epidemiologically and eco-logically are never our simple contemporaries” (Nixion, 2361) Nixion uses more logical explanations and anecdotes to explain the effects of climate change while Ghosh uses the storytelling and personal anecdotes to put into perspective the effects of climate change.

Novels and storytelling are powerful tools for humanity to use to their own benefit. Rob Nixion and Amitav Ghosh each masterfully use this medium to push forward their ideologies and their experiences about the ongoing and critical situation of climate change. Climate change is such a difficult issue for many people to get behind greatly benefits from people like these authors and these novels using their experiences and factual evidence to help their readers understand the gravity of the situation we all find ourselves in.

Reading Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement, I’ve come to further realize the importance of delivering important issues through fiction. Ghosh argues that despite climate change being an issue that is presented many times in fiction, it is often not taken seriously in its genre. Nonfiction is obviously a place for it but it does not reach everyone, including me. Ghosh embodies the issue well by saying “the climate crisis is also a crisis of culture, and thus of the imagination”(Pg 13). Knowing the views on climate change day, many believe that it does not exist for one reason or another. This brings up a fundamental issue when dealing with real world problems through the medium of fiction: its fiction. People can ignore the message and say it was fake, that that was not the point of the work. Media can be interpreted in thousands of ways, mean something completely different to another so how can the message be clear to the consumer?

Before we tackle that I would like to bring up another piece of fiction that I’ve read that reminds me of climate change as an issue though it does not reference it at all: Life of Pi by Yann Martel. The book being about a boy stranded at sea on a lifeboat with a tiger, he is faced with many challenges, an obvious one being the elements. The harsh sunlight, the biting cold at night, and the cruel realization that dehydration is imminent despite being surrounded by water remind you of the unforgiving climate. Climate change may not be the point of the book but after reading through the texts and Ghosh’s assessment of climate change being unknowingly referenced in works of fiction, Life of Pi seems more interesting now especially since it reinforces the idea that novels have a role to play to make us really think about climate change.

Although the situation in Life of Pi was fictitious, it presented a stunningly real and possible issue. Being stranded and vulnerable to the elements could happen at any time. Especially since the world is getting warmer and air conditioning usage is increasing while the power grids cant keep up, it is a reality that is not too far away. So how can the message be clear to the consumer? The real world issue has to present a clear and viable threat to the consumer in a way that makes them think on what their position would be in that world. Easier said than done but it fiction can present these issues in a more digestible manner than a nonfiction work.