After reading the ending of Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide, I thought that perhaps, even though there was a tragic aspect, there was also a feeling of satisfaction and resolution. Although Fokir does die, the reader finds a sense of resolution within Fokir’s last moments during the storm. In addition, the reader gets a feeling of satisfaction through Piya’s project. 

During the cyclone that hits Garjontola and Lusibari, Fokir displays knowledge regarding what to do to be safe. He can keep himself and Piya safe for a while during the cyclone. At one point, the reader sees a moment where Fokir is sitting behind Piya with “his fingers knotted around her stomach. His face rested on the back of her neck and she could feel his stubble on her skin…Everywhere their bodies met, their skin was joined by a thin membrane of sweat” (Ghosh 315). After reading these lines, the reader can get the idea that Fokir and Piya appear to be romantically coming together. Just picturing this scene could be enough to show that Fokir and Piya are affiliated. However, when the eye of the storm approaches them, Piya realizes that there isn’t anything protecting her from the flying debris. This is when Fokir becomes Piya’s shield. He uses his body to protect Piya from the debris, and, as described in the novel, “Their bodies were so close, so finely merged, that she could feel the impact of everything hitting him, she could sense the blows raining down on his back. She could feel the bones of his cheeks as if they had been superimposed on her own; it was as if the storm had given them what life could not; it had fused them together and made them one” (Ghosh 321). At this point, I believe that it is reasonable to say that Fokir and Piya are romantically affiliated. Although Fokir does end up dying after being hit by a big and heavy stump, the reader can find a sense of resolution since now, it can be said that Fokir and Piya have become a couple of some sort. As Piya explains, “She remembered how she had tried to find the words to remind him of how richly he was loved — and once again, as so often before, he had seemed to understand her, even without words” (Ghosh 324). From these lines, we can see that Fokir and Piya have always had a deep connection with each other, and this connection will continue to be seen in Lusibari’s future.

A month after the cyclone hit, the reader finds out that Piya has created a plan for a project to conduct research regarding the dolphins in Lusibari. It is with this project that we can see the connection between Fokir and Piya displayed since Piya decides to name her project after Fokir. As Piya explains, she has a “hand-held monitor…[which] is connected to the satellites of the Global Positioning System. On the day of the storm it was in my pocket. It was the only piece of equipment that survived…All the routes that Fokir showed me are stored here” (Ghosh 328). These routes that are stored on the monitor show every area where Fokir has seen a dolphin, which Piya says is the foundation of her project. As Nayar explains in their writing, “The ‘biodegradable’ Fokir returns as archived data” (Nayar). Although Fokir dies, he still lives in the form of this data. Piya is, therefore, able to use Fokir for her project, which is her way of remembering Fokir. Her project, as Nilima states, serves as “a memorial for Fokir” (Ghosh 328). 

Overall, I view the ending of Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide as a mix of tragedy and resolution. The reader does experience the tragedy of Fokir’s death, but the reader gets a sense of resolution and satisfaction from the moments following Fokir’s death. Fokir’s last moments with Piya imply that Piya and Fokir have become romantically affiliated with each other. This gives the reader a sense of resolution. Furthermore, through Piya’s project, the reader gets a satisfying ending since her project serves as a memorial for Fokir and shows that although Fokir dies, he still lives on.

    Starting 10:04: A Novel by Ben Lerner after reading Parable of the Sower and The Hungry Tide was quite the whiplash for me personally. I did a bit of searching about the book’s general plot before reading, nothing that dives deep into or spoils the plot, but I was very confused upon finding out the genre. I had never read a novel that is both autofiction and metafiction. I’ve heard both terms before, mostly to describe how a novel is subversive compared to others in its genres, but after reading a few pages I was still confused as to how this book fits the pattern of the books we’ve read so far. I honestly assumed I had downloaded the wrong book until I read the email stating that it was indeed the right book.

   With that in mind, I have noticed a few connections such as how time is an important factor in all three books. In Parable of the Sower and Hungry Tide, the passing of time brings on a sense of dread. The worlds in both books are crumbling, though in varying degrees due to the different schematics, and time does not stop to give the characters a chance to grieve or prepare for the inevitable. Time marches on, oftentimes for the worst, and all the characters of both The Hungry Tide and Sower can do is try to survive while living as normally as their world would let them. Time in 10:04 works differently. Yes, the main character has to deal with his ever-changing world as time flows but the actual way the narrative is written isn’t so straightforward. By that I mean Lerner jumps between different times in both his real life and his newest novel. The main character of his book only known as “the author” is both him and not him, his life a version of his that has been molded and twisted enough to shadow his current circumstances but not mirror them completely. One example is Alex – his friend in the real world – and her oral surgery. In his timeline, she is debating on whether or not to use local anesthetic or, in her words “ a heavier IV thing”. When discussing the pros and cons of both she says

“That’s the thing—I can’t remember. I asked my mom and she said she thought I did something heavier. Apparently if you do the IV sedation it induces amnesia. That’s why so many people have trouble remembering what they did. The difference isn’t really in how much pain you experience but in whether you remember it.” (Lerner, Ben. “One.” 10:04, p. 44)

    A typical novel would have this plotline wrapped up later on in the novel either by the author’s first account of the event or being told what happened after by another person, but not in this book. This plotline is explored with the character referred to only as “the author”, not with the outside perspective Lerner has but as the patient. The conversation over what anesthetic the author should use is skipped, as it occurred already in Lerner’s real life, and it instead switches to the actual operation. In the author’s story, it is emphasized how the sedation will erase certain memories, and the consequences Alex could face are shifted onto the author and are applied to his life. On the ride home, after seeing the beautiful lower Manhattan skyline and the rare intimacy between him and Liza – Lerner’s stand-in for Alex – the author realizes

“I won’t remember this. This is the most beautiful view of the city I have ever seen, the most perfect experience of touch and speed, I’ve never felt so close to Liza, and I won’t remember it; the drugs will erase it. And then, glowing with the aura of imminent disappearance, it really was the most beautiful view, experience. He wanted badly to describe this situation to Liza but couldn’t: his tongue was still numb; he couldn’t even ask her to remind him of what the drugs would erase”  (Lerner, Ben. “One.” 10:04, p. 65)

   The author’s moment of intimacy with Liza could reflect on an event that happened earlier in the book, where he and Alex are sharing the apartment during a storm. Alex has fallen asleep watching a movie and Lerner and while he doesn’t say it in words it is implied there are some romantic feelings involved on his end. Lerner brings this event forward in time and mixes it with a more current event and uses the latter to explore his complex feelings about the earlier moment in his own life through the author. 

This blog post, once again written in honesty, doesn’t have much of a general direction besides the fact that I would like to discuss my thoughts on the ending of the novel, as well as my general thoughts of the novel as a whole.

That’s to say, I’ll discuss the novel in general first—it was… interesting, and I don’t mean that as in “I found this book interesting!!” Quite the opposite in fact. I understand the backstory of this novel, as it was based on real events, but the way it was written was more complex than it needed to be in my honest opinion. Having two narrators in a novel is fine, but I think Ghosh’s delivery in terms of time was lacking. It was difficult to determine what was happening as there weren’t any clear signs as to a time skip in the backwards direction, like when we read about Kanai and Fokir’s mom (Kusum??) when they were younger. It felt like events were just… happening.

There were a few places in the novel that had journal entries or like, stories in them, and I just want to be completely honest and say that I was not interested in the journal entries/stories at all. Like all the way at the start of the novel at the end of the first chapter (then again, the chapters aren’t entirely clear either), there’s an entire page and a half’s worth of words that didn’t really catch my attention enough for me to find it important to read. I get maybe for the story, these were important, but they certainly don’t need to be almost two pages long. Ghosh could’ve probably used those extra pages to write a clearer ending.

I’m fine with the characters, I think they were written alright. I feel like Piya could have more of a personality, but then again she isn’t able to properly communicate with others because she doesn’t know the language, so I find it a bit understandable that she isn’t very talkative and that she seems to be absent of a personality or some expressiveness. Kanai, on the other hand, I think was pretty interesting to read, only because he has what Piya lacks—the ability to communicate, so we’re able to see Kanai interact with others and react to situations. The best example I can think of would be when Fokir and Kanai were going through the jungle and Kanai fell down in the mud after being tripped up from a “rope-like tendril”. Fokir offers to help him, but instead Kanai yells at him, “‘Ja, shuorer bachcha, beriye ja! Get away from me, you son of a pig!’” (Ghosh, 277) Kanai in this scene is very expressive, showing the emotion of anger through his words and tone of voice. During this point in the novel though, I would say that Piya had definitely become more talkative and expressive, which was nice to see considering that I like her character quite a bit—mainly because she works closely with sea animals and loves her job.

Now for the ending, I would say was a bit of a let down. I mean, content wise it was fine because Piya and Nilima sorted out Piya’s project idea, where it would also help benefit Monya and her son because she’ll get a part-time job and learn some English from Piya (who would learn Bangla in turn). However, considering what happened in the novel, I was sort of expecting there’d be some sort of romance between Piya and Kanai, where we’d get some sort of closure on their relationship, but no. Kanai wasn’t even there at the very very end of the novel, he was in another location on his way back to Lusibari (I think it was? I can’t find it at the time of writing) while Piya was having a chat with Nilima. I wish we even got more information on Piya’s project and maybe information on how it was going after a time skip, as well as checking up on Piya and Kanai’s relationship. But instead, it felt like a really annoying cliffhanger.

For this blog post I wanted to discuss the different societies/different ideas of the best way to survive discussed in “Parable of the Sower” towards the beginning/middle of the book. I wanted to start of with Lauren’s father, who runs the Robledo community. He believes in a sort of patriarchal society and he is the unofficial leader of their community. He controls the guns and artillery and he seems to be the person everyone goes to. He believes that if the community can band together and have eachothers backs that is the best way to survive, there is a power in numbers. He urges his community that the best way to survive is to share their resources amongst each other and stick together.

Another community that is briefly mentioned is the KSF, which is more of a work camp.The KSF works to filter water on the coast to make it drinkable to people, as we know clean, drinkable water is a resource that is very scarce They provide work, board, and pay for anyone willing to move in. Lauren and her father are suspicious of the idea of the KSF, they believe its a modern day slave camp. To back this up the book states, “Anyone KSF hired would have a hard time living on the salary offered. In not very much time, I think the new hires would be in debt to the company. That’s an old company-town trick—get people into debt, hang on to them, and work them harder. Debt slavery.”  When a radio announcement comes through announcing that the KSF is looking for teacher Lauren’s stepmother, Cory, who is a teacher advises her husband to apply. To this request, Lauren’ father respns that they are, “Too poor, too black, too Hispanic..” to apply, suggesting that the camp is more accepting of white families. Later on in our story, Lauren’s best friend, Joanne, and her family, the Garfields, move to Olivar. We don’t hear anything more about the Garfields again in the book.

The idea of the North is mentioned throughout this part of the book very vaguely. Multiple times Lauren mentones that there is hope for a better life North. It is believed that north is the area towards Washington state and Canada, she explains that the land is better, there is less violence and cleaner water. Her father is not a fan of this idea because he believes these could just be rumors and they would travel North to find nothing better than they had when in Robledo, in fact they’d be even worse off with no community no home and limited resources. Later n inthe story she does achieve this, she does build a community to go North with her. She finds exactly what she was looking for and even expands a community that begins to share her newfound Earthseed religion. In a way she becomes a new version of her father.

One last thing that intrigued me that was only talked about the in the beginning of the book, Keith’s idea of survival. Keith expressed the idea of wanting to move to Los Angeles and survived on the streets, being the predator instead of waiting to be the pray, which was completely against what his father stood for. Keith eventually did turn towards a life of crime. Keith gave into the violence of the world, and for a little bit he did come home with more money. He joined a street gang of thieves who put his ability to read and write to good use and accepted him in. In the end, Keith did end up dead as a result of his commitment to his life style.

Throughout this part of the book, Lauren saw and learned about multiple different communities and ways of survival before she was forced out of her home. When she lost everything  and everyone she ultimately decided her idea of heading North was the best thing for her. She encounters Harry and Zarah right before she takes off and this is where she starts to build her own community. Lauren got to witness a lot of different people’s ideas of survival and community some of which, mostly her father’s ideas, she incorporates into her Earthseed community throughout the book. While she does incorporate her father’s ideas of community she also gets to see a lot of what she doesn’t want in her community. Being exposed to so many ideas, she plans out what works and what doesn’t for her community and their survival. Eventually she builds up Earthseed and creates a community of people who share her values and want to be part of her idea of a family. She loses everything and has to build it from the ground up, but she builds it in her own way and in the end it works out for her and the people she chooses to surround herself with.

I will start this blog post with honesty: This is after reading the novel “The Hungry Tide” by Amitov Ghosh, and I just want to say that after a certain point, I started to read with my eyes and not my brain; I soon couldn’t focus and had drowned in this confusing sea of words that is this novel. However, if there was anything that (slightly) caught my attention, it would be the “love-triangle” that was pointed out in class. So, for this blog post (that had accidentally slipped past me… whoops…) I want to write about this “love-triangle” and the relationships between certain characters in the novel. Specifically– Piya, Fokir, and Kanai.

My impressions of the characters (based on the entirety of what we’ve read and what I personally remember) are as follows: Kanai’s a narcissistic playboy type who loves the fact that he knows 5 languages (not including dialects) and who thinks he’s superior to everyone; Piya is a beautiful, hardworking woman who really loves her job studying marine life, and in the instance of this novel that would be dolphins, who also values animal lives a lot; and Fokir being a large, quiet man who keeps to himself and does his job well, knowing the area and not hesitating to end the life of an animal if it oversteps its boundaries.

The “love-triangle” consists of, in a nutshell, Kanai (a “woman connoisseur”) and Fokir (a married man) going against each other to win Piya’s heart. And I don’t mean this literally, by the way, as in they actually plot to go against each other to specifically win her heart (well, maybe except Kanai but I know Fokir doesn’t). Both Kanai and Fokir demonstrate their qualities throughout the novel, with Kanai not really gaining favorable impressions in my eyes, personally, and Fokir just being this sweet and respectful guy who helps Piya find her dolphins. 

After traveling to Lusibari, things start to get a bit intense: Before this, Piya and Fokir have already interacted quite closely to where they might be perceived as having an “intimate” or at least very close relationship. The pair travel to Lusibari to try to find more dolphins, and Kanai (as a translator) and a local dude named Horen goes along with them. Taking note of their relationship, Kanai, out of a fit of jealousy, points out to Piya that she will never understand Fokir, to which then she gets hurt (I unfortunately cannot find the evidence as of right now, however it does exist). But as more time progresses within the story, we can clearly see Piya’s feeling about Fokir, especially in this passage, which is a conversation between Kanai and Piya:

“And if you stayed, you’d be working with Fokir?” 

She nodded. “I’d like to — but I guess it depends on him.” 

“Is there anyone else you could work with?” 

“It wouldn’t be the same, Kanai,” Piya said. “Fokir’s abilities as an observer are really extraordinary. I wish I could tell you what it was like to be with him these last few days — it was one of the most exciting experiences of my life.” 

A sudden stab of envy provoked Kanai to make a mocking aside. “And all that while you couldn’t understand a word he was saying, could you?” “No,” she said with a nod of acknowledgment. “But you know what? There was so much in common between us it didn’t matter.” (219-220)

Piya believes that her feelings go beyond words, and that certainly is the case in terms of Piya and Fokir’s relationship–although they can’t communicate through words, their actions and how they treat each other is enough for us readers to understand that there definitely was some sort of flame between them. Even Moyna, Fokir’s wife, was concerned about their relationship because she notices how close they are, even bringing up her concerns with Kanai, stating, “…Who knows what he’s begun to expect — especially when she’s giving him so much money? Maybe you could speak with her too — just to explain she would do him harm if she made him forget himself.” (212) as well as, “‘She’s a woman, Kanai-babu.’ Moyna’s voice sank to a whisper. ‘And he’s a man.’” (212)

With Kanai on the other hand, Piya and Kanai have definitely had their moments together, like when they were exchanging conversation about their past relationships:

“That’s interesting,” he said. “I once knew a woman who used to say that — about the sea.” 

“A girlfriend?” said Piya. 

“Yes.” 

“Have you had many?” 

He nodded, and then, as if to change the subject, said, “And what about you? Do cetologists have private lives?” 

“Now that you ask,” said Piya, “I have to say that there aren’t many who do, especially not among us women. Relationships aren’t easy, you know, given the kinds of lives we lead.” 

“Why not?” 

“We travel so much,” Piya said. “We never stay long in one place. It doesn’t make things easy.” (253-254)

This was good development for their relationship because even small, mundane conversations like this could help them become closer to one another, as well as help them to learn more about each other. It’s also good for Kanai’s character in general, in which he isn’t just trying to use Piya as a “mate”, but is actually trying to get to know her as an individual, and I personally feel like Piya could really appreciate that. 

Now, for the finale: I would say that theoretically, Fokir would be the best match for Piya instead of Kanai mainly because of the connection they share, as well as their commonalities and how well Fokir treats Piya. However, Kanai could also be a good fit because he has the ability to understand Piya, whereas Fokir and Piya lack the ability to communicate with one another. Unfortunately though, near the end of the novel, Fokir ends up dying after getting caught in a storm with Piya, and even that was romantic in the fact that Fokir shielded Piya with his body from the storm, protecting her even after death. At the end of the novel, though, Piya ends up with no one and ends up focusing solely on her research.