In the novel, The Hungry Tide, by Amitav Ghosh we’re shown how important it is to Piya and Kanai that somebody around them is different then they are. in the first two chapters Kanai obsessively looks into how different Piya may be. He completely stares her down from the way that her hair looks, to how she walks, how she dresses, and how she speaks. “Kanai like to think that he had the true connoisseur ability to both praise, and praise women, and he was intrigued. By the way, she held herself, by the unaccustomed delineation of her stance. It occurred to him suddenly that, perhaps, despite her silver, ear stud, and the tints of her skin, she was not Indi except by the scent. And the moment the thought occurred to him, he was convinced of it.: she was a foreigner; it was stamped in her posture, and the way she stood, balancing on her heels, like a fly, weight boxer, with her feet planted apart.” In his head, he completely makes up a story about her assuming where she’s from, and how she’s raised, and why she’s here. All in all, he is completely taken by her,  and has completely invested himself into her. Even with himself Kanai likes to think that he is better because he speaks multiple languages. he also believes that he has so much depth to him and so much knowledge that people should look up to him and should see him as different. So much so that he believes him and Piya would go great together because of how different they both are.

While on the other hand, Piya meets Fokir and sees him as something so foreign and in a way reminiscent of her father. With small details such as the cloth, they use to wash up or the protective essence that he provides her with. Like giving her privacy to shower and get ready, warn her about the dangers of laying on one side of the boat, going into save her when she falls into the water, offering her food, and providing her with warmth when she is cold. throughout the whole time that they talk to each other, they aren’t able to fully communicate since they can’t use words due to the language barrier, which in a way provides Piya with something that she has never experienced before and she was able to feel a connection with someone that she can’t speak to then that is even more dreamy. overall I believe that a big part of the hungry tide is to show a humans craving for opposite to them. Something that they have not been able to experience before, something that makes them feel new and different.

 In Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler begins to introduce a lifestyle that seems normal at first until we start getting rough details. For example, when everyone goes out to get baptized Lauren says that the rule is to go out in a bunch and go armed. Lauren is extremely empathetic, she suffers from hyperempathy syndrome which makes it so that she feels everybody else’s pain. This is why the ride to the church is so uncomfortable for her; she sees so much poverty, sickness, and dangers that she can’t help but look away. Two scenes that are important when describing the situation that they’re in would be when Lauren says how “a lot of the houses were trashed-burned, vandalized, infested with drunks or druggies or squatted in by homeless families with their filthy, gaunt, half-naked children.” This is really able to paint a picture for the reader since we haven’t yet seen what a dystopia would look like. It is a bit terrifying how this is not that far-fetched. If you go to poor areas of the country you will see things that are very similar to this. The only difference is that in this case there is a wall that separates the dirt poor from the sort of poor. It is not at all surprising the need to reinforce social classes, even at a time wheneverybody is doing badly.

There are times when it’s easy to forget that this is based on the time where the world is basically ending. If you forget about that fact for a second it seems like a normal neighborhood who has night patrol just to make the people feel safer; or a normal teenage girl who is hanging out with her best friend. You would expect them to be talking about music or boys but in reality they’re trying to make a plan in case things get really bad. They question if maybe it would be better to die now than later. Or reading books on survival in the wilderness, guns, medical emergencies, how to farm. You also wouldn’t think that the night patrol is there so that people will stop stealing your trees, your seeds, your bunnies or chickens to eat them and to sell them or so that nobody gets shot while walking past the wall. It’s just a very corrupt and scary place for such  young children to be growing up in,  but it is inevitable due to the state that the world has accommodated to.

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.