When I started reading “Parable of the Sower” I found it eerie that the plot takes place in 2024. Butler created this dystopian society, that does not seem so far removed from reality. With only three months left in the 2023 calendar year, it seems like every week there is another news headline about the alarming effects of climate change. From the forest fires in California, which seemed so far removed from my life. California is normally a drier climate and has been suffering from droughts for years. The Canadian forest fires started back in March and reached high intensity in June. Honestly, the weight of the situation did not register with me until there was a thick yellow smog that covered Manhattan. As someone who has called New York home for the last 20 years, this smog made the city seem foreign to me and caused quite a panic within. The idea of the earth’s climate rapidly changing is not foreign to me. Growing up there has always been an emphasis in my public education about the importance of recycling and carpooling to reduce gas usage. However, the effects of human technological advances seem irreversible. When I think about the state of the earth I have a moment of existential panic. However, reading this novel gives me a sense of relief. The fact that I am not alone when it comes to the fears I have about the future of the planet. Someone else can see the rapid decline. My fears and sense of urgency to make changes are not delusional. On the contrary, are supported.

As mentioned prior, I have lived on Long Island for my whole life. One thing I can relate to in the novel is the common usage of guns. Within the last decade, I have seen normalized ordinary folks vocalizing their need to have a firearm. In “Parable of the Sower”, Lauren does not vocalize her distaste for how her father owned two guns. But by analyzing her language around the topic you can see how she feels that it is unnecessary. On page 38 she states, “Dad has never said where he got the submachine gun. It’s illegal of course, so I don’t blame him. It must have cost a hell of a lot”. With Lauren’s condition of being a hyperempath, she would not want her father to use these guns to harm anyone. Possibly she feels the money could have been allocated towards food or savings. While I can compare this to my reality, how the Long Island community has shifted. Growing up the idea of having a firearm was taboo, and if you needed one for your profession you would make it known that it was locked away. There was more of an emphasis on protecting youth from suicide or accidental murder. Currently, more and more people feel the need to carry, despite of whether their firearm is illegal or not.  I continue to question what has changed in the last few years. Is it that people finally felt so algin with a politician in the Trump era? Or is it the increase of school shootings with minimal change in helping the youth with their mental health? Whatever the case may be, subconsciously my community feels endangered. Without huge inference from politicians, they feel having a serious weapon is the solution.

While both Parable of the Sower and The Hungry Tide both take place in a world where climate changed affected it heavily, they both portray a vastly different world despite the same disaster striking their worlds. In Parable of the Sower, climate change has caused society as a whole to collapse, to the point where people are forced to wall themselves away from the outside world in order to survive. Everything from food, water, and jobs are scarce, to the point that if you are seen enjoying the basic necessities of life outside, you would get robbed or killed. To make it worse, there’s a really popular drug going around, pyro, that makes the user bewitched by fire. The user will set any and everything they can on fire, to the point that they would sometimes set themselves on fire. In this world, robbing, raping, killing and arson is commonplace.

However, in The Hungry Tide, while they also face disaster from climate change, their world is not nearly as bad. Unlike Sower, we get a before and after on the climate change, where Kanai recalled, “the Malta as a vast waterway, one of the most formidable rivers he had ever seen. But it was low tide now and the river in the distance was no wider than a narrow ditch, flowing along the center of a half-mile-wide-bed” (21). As the novel goes on, we get mentions of a future catastrophe that will do lasting damage to their community. At first many are skeptical of this prophecy, but as time goes on, more and more examples are shown that display a drastic change in the environment due to climate change, such as the Kolkata suburb. “‘It wasn’t always a suburb, you know,’ Piya said, peeling another banana. ‘In 1852 it was just a wetland with a few scattered ponds.’ In July that year, Piya said, an unusually high tide caused a sudden surge in the rivers of the delta. The wave traveled deep into the hinterland, flooding the swamps and wetlands that surrounded Calcutta. When the tide turned and the waters began to recede, a rumor swept the streets of the city: a school of giant sea creatures had been stranded in one of the salt lakes on the city’s western outskirts” (189). Despite climate change also affecting this world pretty bad, society has not fallen yet, and the people do not resort to crime to get by, but instead they help each other out.

Despite both worlds being affected by the same disaster, both worlds have drastically different ways of living. While one world is burning down literally and figuratively, the other world is rebuilding itself with the people each offering to do something for their community such as teach. I think this is a good portrayal of climate change done by cli-fi books. They have different scenarios while pushing for the same idea. This is similar to how many people have different interpretations of climate change. Some see it as our inevitable demise and that there’s no saving it, while others see it as a problem that can be solved if everyone does their part in stopping it.

In the Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh we see a series of characters with different backgrounds, hobbies, careers, and viewpoints. This helps for a well-developed plot as well as how the characters develop relationships with each other withing the novel.

Kanai is a Delhi translator and interpreter who knows more languages than the average person. He uses language as a tool to navigate his world and deems it very useful. Monya, Fokir’s wife, is a training nurse who is ambitious, thrives for better, and values education. Fokir is more traditional in the sense that he doesn’t have an education, doesn’t know how to read or right, and he makes a living off selling animals he catches in the sea.  Kanai and Moyna have the same attitude towards Fokir in the sense of his job isn’t as practical as what they are striving for. In the novel the narrator states, “Her ambition was so plainly written on her face that Kanai was assailed by the kind of tenderness we sometimes feel when we come across childhood pictures of ourselves-…”(Ghosh 113). Kanai takes such a liking to Moyna because he sees part of him in her when he had that yearning ambition for his career and furthering himself. He thinks her career choice is practical and admires the qualities that he sees in her and believes that she would reach where she wants to go.

Most times one may think your wife is supposed to be supportive in everything what you choose to do but that isn’t the case for Moyna when it comes to Fokir. In the novel when Fokir had caught the stingray and cut piece of the tail for his son, Moyna, annoyed, makes a remark about Tutul needing to be in school and grabs the tail from him” (Ghosh 218). This shows how Moyna values education rather than the sea animals Fokir sells. She even sates before that Mashima said soon there would be nothing more to fish in fifteen years deeming Fokir’s job as impractical long-term. She doesn’t want her son near the sea let alone creating the same life as his father. Kanai sees his job in a more similar manner as well. “What you see as fauna he sees as food. He’s never sat in a chair for heaven;s sake. Can you imagine what he would do if he was taken on a plane…thought of Fokir walking down the aisle of a jet in his lungi and vest” (Ghosh 222). When speaking to Piya Kanai makes fun of the way Fokir dresses and makes remarks that he doesn’t have any notable skills let alone sitting in a chair.

Moyna and Kanai’s have very different views compared to Piya and the practicality of what he does. In the novel Piya states, “Fokir’s abilities as an observer are 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” (Ghosh 221). Piya admires how attentive Fokir is with tthe sea. He is very knowledgeable about places to find the dolphins as well as has really good survival instincts when it comes to the sea in which he was able to save Piya twice from dear death experiences. This goes to show what one person may see as impractical is practical to the next person. For someone like Fokir coming across a foreigner, he can easily make good money from serving as tour guide considering Piya offers him money. He is knowledge of the sea and has really good survival instincts compared to Kanai which can be seen later in the novel.

After reading Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide, the reader can observe how the relationships among characters change in the novel. Some relationships in particular that stood out to me were the relationships between Piya and Kanai and Piya and Fokir. In my writing, I aim to observe how these relationships change.

During the first couple of chapters, the reader is introduced to Kanai and Piya, who initially don’t seem romantically affiliated. But, from the alternating perspectives of the chapters, we can tell that Piya and Kanai are among the most important characters in the novel, which could suggest that they are, in some way, destined to be together as a couple. When they first meet, it seems almost impossible for Kanai and Piya to have feelings for each other. When Piya spills some tea on Kanai, she states that he “was the last person she would have chosen to scald with her tea” (Ghosh 8). In addition, when Piya apologizes to Kanai, Kanai says, “ ‘Do I really have a choice?’ he said in a tone more challenging than ironic. “Does anyone have a choice when they’re dealing with Americans these days?’ ” (Ghosh 9). From these quotes, the reader gets the intention that Piya and Kanai don’t appear to like each other at all. Based on what Piya says, she wanted to avoid interacting with Kanai. And Kanai appears to be looking down on Piya because she’s American. Surprisingly, after talking for some time Kanai invites Piya to visit Lusibari:

“ ‘Lucy’s House?’ Piya looked up in surprise. ‘As in the name Lucy?’/‘Yes.’ A gleam came into [Kanai’s] eyes and he said, ‘You should come and visit the lace. I’ll tell you the story of how it got its name.’/‘Is that an invitation?’ Piya said, smiling./‘Absolutely,’ Kanai responded. ‘Come. I’m inviting you. Your company will lighten the burden of my exile.’ ” (Ghosh 12).

This interaction shows that Kanai and Piya appear to be falling for each other. After this interaction, Piya even explains that she initially thought Kanai was too full of himself, but now she feels inclined to be more generous. At this point, Piya “caught sight of a glimmer of irony somewhere that made [Kanai’s] self-centeredness appear a little more interesting than she had first imagined” (Ghosh 12). Later on, when Piya and Kanai meet again in Lusibari, the reader again sees that Kanai and Piya may have feelings for each other. When Piya initially sees Moyna, Fokir’s husband, she states that she “felt a twinge of envy at the thought of her going back to Fokir and Tutul while she returned to the absence upstairs” (Ghosh 163). In addition, while Piya tells Kanai about Fokir, specifically when she talks about her working with Fokir, Kanai experiences a “stab of envy” (Ghosh 221). The envy that Piya and Kanai imply that they may indeed have feelings for each other. 

On the other hand, during Piya’s journey to get to Lusibari, Piya meets Fokir. During this journey, Piya and Fokir form a relationship where they both seem to work well together. As Piya explains, “She had thought they midnight end up disrupting each other’s work–that her soundings would get in the way of his fishing or the other way around. But to her surprise no such difficulties arose…it had proved possible for two such different people to pursue their own ends simultaneously–people who could not exchange a word with each other and had no idea of what was going on in one another’s heads…[even Fokir appeared] amazed by the seamless intertwining of their pleasures and purposes” (Ghosh 118). From this quote, the reader can see that Piya acknowledges how well Fokir and her work together. Moreover, we can see that Piya admires Fokir’s abilities. Piya and Fokir appear to have a lot in common because, as Piya explains, in nature “for a long time nothing happens, then there’s a bust of explosive activity and it’s over in seconds. Very few people can adapt themselves to that kind of rhythm–one in a million, I’d say. That’s why it was so amazing to come across someone like Fokir” (Ghosh 221). Additionally, Piya states she has never met anyone with the instinct of being able to watch the water without being aware of it until she met Fokir. So far, the reader can that Piya and Fokir have a strong connection and at this moment, perhaps Piya has started to develop a liking for Fokir. This all changes when Piya, along with Fokir and Kanai, encounters a group of people killing a tiger. Kanai tells Piya that they should go back to the Megha, but Piya wants to do something about the killing since she believes that isn’t right to take revenge on an animal. Piya then tells Kanai, “If you’re not going to do anything about this, then I will. And Fokir will–I know he will” (Ghosh 242). Piya strongly believes that Fokir will do the same as she does. After all, they appear to show a strong connection with each other. When Piya takes a spear from a man and breaks it into two, the man and others start shouting at her. She then feels a hand on her elbow and finds out that it is Fokir. At this moment, “[Piya’s] heart lifted and she was assailed by both hope and a sense of relief: she was certain he would know what to do, that he would find a way to put a stop to what was going on” (Ghosh 243). To her surprise, Fokir ends up carrying her back to the boat. After this incident, Piya realizes that she and Fokir have nothing in common. Although she knew Fokir grew up killing animals, “[Piya] thought somehow he’d be different” (Ghosh 245).