Gun Island
As part of an activity assigned by Prof. Dilip Barad, this blog explores Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island through two worksheets and accompanying video lectures. The tasks focus on themes such as myth, climate change, migration, and postcolonial history, helping students connect textual analysis with visual explanations. By examining character journeys, historical interconnections, and ecological crises, the worksheets and videos guide readers to understand how Ghosh blends folklore, science, and social commentary in a contemporary context.
WORKSHEET 1
I. Browse through the digital copy of the novel
1. Is Shakespeare mentioned or are his plays referred to in the novel?
2. Role of Nakhuda Ilyas in the legend of the Gun Merchant
Nakhuda means: Boat captain / navigator
4. Fill the Table: Character Traits
5. Comparison between the Book and the Mobile at the end of the novel
At the end of Gun Island, the book symbolizes slow knowledge, memory, myth, and continuity, while the mobile phone represents speed, connectivity, surveillance, and modern migration networks. Ghosh suggests that ancient myths now travel through digital media, proving that storytelling adapts but never disappears.
II. Use ChatGPT (Answers)
6. Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island in 100 words
Gun Island (2019) by Amitav Ghosh blends myth, climate fiction, migration narratives, and history. The novel follows Dinanath, a rare book dealer, whose investigation into the legend of Bonduki Sadagar leads him across the Sundarbans, Venice, and the Mediterranean. Through storms, refugees, and ecological disasters, Ghosh connects ancient folklore with contemporary climate change and human trafficking. The novel challenges rational humanism and highlights a posthuman world where nature, myth, and humans are deeply interconnected.
7. Central Theme of Gun Island
The central theme of Gun Island is the interconnection between myth, climate change, migration, and postcolonial history. Ghosh shows how ecological crises force human displacement and revive ancient legends, challenging rationalist thinking and Eurocentric humanism. The novel emphasizes posthuman ethics, where humans, nature, animals, and stories coexist in fragile balance.
WORKSHEET 2
1. Climate Change in Gun Island (10–12 words + recurrence)
2. Explanation of the Title Gun Island
(Key words: Venedig, Hazelnut)
The title Gun Island refers to “Venedig” (Venice) in the Bengali legend of Bonduki Sadagar, where bonduk (gun) symbolises violence, colonial power, and ecological destruction. The hazelnut motif connects Venice’s trade history to global capitalism. Together, they reveal how myth, climate change, migration, and colonial histories intersect, transforming a legendary island into a real contemporary crisis.
3. Characters and Reasons for Migration
4. Theorists & Myth Approaches
5. Summary of the Article (Posthumanism.in)
The article argues that Gun Island critiques Eurocentric humanism by foregrounding posthuman ethics, where humans, animals, climate, myth, and technology coexist. Ghosh dismantles the colonial separation between nature and culture, showing how climate change destabilises national borders, rational histories, and human exceptionalism. The novel proposes a postcolonial, ecological worldview rooted in interconnected survival rather than dominance.
6. Research Possibilities in Gun Island
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Climate fiction (Cli-Fi) and South Asian literature
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Myth re-narrativisation in postcolonial novels
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Human trafficking and climate-induced migration
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Posthumanism and ecological ethics
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Mediterranean–Indian Ocean cultural connections
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Myth vs history: historiographic metafiction
7. Sonnet on Gun Island
Where myth and monsoon cross the migrant’s breath,
A trader’s tale drifts through Venetian air;
The seas remember more than books confess,
As drowned histories rise, unburied, bare.
No border holds when tempests write the law,
Nor reason rules where legends walk alive;
The gun once fired now scars both land and lore,
And myths return so futures may survive.
Here humans fade from center’s fragile throne,
With beasts and tides they share one trembling fate;
A world re-made from grief we never own,
Yet must protect before it is too late.
8. MCQs (Any Two)
1. Gun Island primarily explores:
a. Colonial romance
b. Urban nostalgia
c. Climate change and migration
d. Detective mystery
2. Bonduki Sadagar represents:
a. A historical king
b. A merchant of Venice
c. The fusion of myth and modern crisis
d. A pirate legend
9. Italian Words with Hindi & English Translation
Characters and Summary - 1
Characters and Summary – (Sundarbans)
This video introduces Gun Island through its major themes of mythology, migration, and climate change. The novel follows Deen, a rare book dealer, whose journey begins in the Sundarbans after he encounters the legend of the Gun Merchant and the snake goddess Manasa Devi. This myth becomes a gateway through which the narrative connects ancient folklore with present-day ecological and social crises.
The video explains how the Sundarbans, with its fragile mangrove ecosystem, functions not merely as a setting but as a symbolic space where environmental vulnerability and human survival intersect. Characters such as Cinta add intellectual depth to the narrative by linking historical trade routes with contemporary global problems like human trafficking, forced migration, and extreme climatic events. Through this exploration, the video highlights how Gun Island reveals the deep interconnectedness of human lives across different geographies, cultures, and historical periods.
Characters and Summary – Video 2 (USA / Los Angeles)
This video focuses on the USA, especially Los Angeles, to show that climate change affects rich and poor countries alike. The wildfires challenge the belief that environmental disasters happen only in developing regions. The video also highlights the role of memory, dreams, and irrationality, suggesting that the past continues to exist in the present.
The character Lisa represents scientists and intellectuals who warn society about climate dangers but are instead trolled, threatened, and blamed through conspiracy theories. The video connects these attacks to historical witch-hunts. It also introduces themes of migration, forgotten histories, and the etymological mystery of “Gun Island,” linking Venice, trade routes, and global displacement.
This video examines the second half of Gun Island, focusing on Dinanath’s journey to Venice. It explains that the title “Gun Island” emerges from the Arabic name for Venice, al-Bandukiya, showing how language, history, and myth intersect. In Venice, Dinanath meets Bengali migrants whose stories reveal the harsh realities of illegal migration, human trafficking, and refugee life. The video also emphasizes environmental threats such as rising sea levels, wildfires, and invasive species, linking local crises to global climate change. Alongside these issues, the narrative explores the tension between scientific rationality and mythic belief, culminating in a humanitarian moment on the “blue boat,” where compassion briefly overcomes borders and fear.
Thematic Study
Etymological Mystery: Title of the Novel
This video explores the etymological mysteries and central themes in Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island, showing how language becomes a key narrative device. It explains that the word “Gun” in the title does not refer to weapons but is derived from al-Bandukiya, the Arabic name for Venice. Through this linguistic transformation, Ghosh connects distant geographies, histories, and myths, revealing how meanings shift across cultures and time.
The lecture emphasizes that translation often leads to the loss or distortion of original meanings, creating a gap between a word’s sound, origin, and present interpretation. Concepts such as “ghost,” “possession,” and irrational belief are examined to demonstrate how philosophical, historical, and cultural contexts shape human perceptions of reality. The video also shows how mythical places in the novel correspond to real locations like Egypt, Turkey, and Sicily through etymological wordplay.
Overall, the video highlights etymology as a powerful tool in Gun Island, helping uncover hidden connections between myth and history, past and present, and local stories and global movements.
Part I - Historification of Myth & Mythification of History
This lecture examines how Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island blends mythology with historical reality. It argues that the journey of the “Gun Merchant” is not simply a mythical tale but a coded historical narrative reflecting seventeenth-century travel, slavery, and global trade networks. Through etymological clues and symbolic language, the novel reveals that seemingly mythical locations correspond to real places such as Venice, Egypt, and Sicily.
The lecture further connects these historical myths to contemporary global crises, suggesting that the “uncanny” elements of the story help readers understand modern issues like human trafficking, migration, and climate change. By introducing critical approaches such as functionalism and structuralism, the discussion shows how myths function as cultural frameworks that preserve historical truths and mirror the lived realities of an interconnected and changing world.
Thematic Study – Historification of Myth & Mythification of History (Part II)
This video continues the discussion on how myths function as coded narratives that connect the past, history, and contemporary reality in Gun Island. It introduces four critical tools for reading myths, drawn from scholars like Jane Harrison, Malinowski, Durkheim, LĂ©vi-Strauss, Freud, and Roland Barthes, as identified by Prof. Peter Struck.
The first tool, Myth and Ritual, explains how rituals create collective unity, and myths emerge later to explain why those rituals exist. In Gun Island, the pilgrimage to Manasa Devi’s shrine functions as a ritual that is later reinterpreted as a response to ecological fear and survival. Dinanath’s journey mirrors traditional pilgrimages involving hardship, renunciation, and transformation, suggesting a symbolic encounter with nature rather than a purely religious act.
The second tool, Functionalism, views myths as cultural mechanisms that legitimize social values. The retelling of the Manasa Devi myth in the novel serves a contemporary function: urging humanity to rethink its relationship with nature amid climate change, migration, pandemics, and environmental disasters. Myth is thus not entertainment but a way to build ecological awareness and community responsibility.
The third tool, Structuralism, focuses on binary oppositions rather than narrative sequence. The video highlights key binaries in the novel East/West, rational/irrational, scientific/mythical, anthropocentric/ecocentric showing how Ghosh challenges Western rationality by valuing intuition, myth, and ecological balance.
Overall, the video emphasizes that retelling myths does not mean repeating them unchanged. Instead, myths must be reinterpreted through new hermeneutics to address present-day crises. In Gun Island, ancient myths are transformed into narratives about climate change, migration, and global interconnection, making myth a living and functional force in the modern world.
Part III - Historification of Myth and Mythification of History
This video explains how Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island challenges the rigid division between myth and history. The lecture shows that myths are not merely imaginary or superstitious stories; instead, they often preserve historical truths in symbolic form. The myth of Manasa Devi and the Gun Merchant (Banduki Sadagar) is decoded to reveal hidden references to real historical events such as ancient trade routes, migration, slavery, and sea travel between India, the Middle East, and Europe.
The video also applies Edward Said’s idea of Orientalism to the novel, explaining how Western thinking often labels Eastern cultures as irrational or inferior. Through characters like Dinanath, Cinta, and Piyali, the novel breaks this stereotype by showing that scientific reasoning and belief coexist in both Eastern and Western societies. The triangular interaction among these characters creates a balanced perspective where logic, history, and intuition complement each other.
Furthermore, the lecture introduces structuralist and psychoanalytic readings, showing how binary oppositions such as East/West, myth/science, belief/reason, and tradition/modernity are first created and then dismantled in the novel. Using Freudian ideas, the video explains that myths function like collective dreams of a culture, expressing suppressed fears, desires, and anxieties—especially humanity’s fear of death, migration, and ecological collapse.
Finally, the video connects ancient myth with contemporary realities like climate change, refugee crises, and environmental disasters. By historifying everyday events and mythifying history, Gun Island urges readers to understand that nature cannot be controlled, and when ecological balance is disturbed, humanity has no escape. The video concludes that Ghosh calls for a holistic worldview where science and myth together help humans confront global crises.
Climate Change | The Great Derangement
In the video, the lecture discusses how Amitav Ghosh’s novel Gun Island explores the theme of climate change through a mix of myth, history, and contemporary realities. Ghosh builds on ideas from his nonfiction work The Great Derangement, which critiques the inability of modern literature to fully address the ecological crises caused by human actions such as capitalism, imperialism, and environmental exploitation. In Gun Island, he uses both rational, educated characters and myth-believing local figures to bridge the gap between scientific understanding and traditional knowledge. The story incorporates the myth of Mansa Devi and the Gun Merchant to show how local histories and beliefs can inform our understanding of present-day environmental disasters. The lecture also emphasizes the uncanny nature of climate change events, which often seem mysterious, sudden, or unbelievable, making them hard to capture in realistic narratives. Additionally, the novel highlights the importance of indigenous knowledge, religious organizations, and ethical responsibility in tackling environmental challenges. The lecture suggests using digital humanities tools to track climate-related words—like floods, cyclones, droughts, fossil fuels, and global warming—in literature to study how novels reflect and respond to ecological issues. Overall, Gun Island is seen as a literary response to the climate crisis, combining storytelling with social, political, and ethical commentary.
Migration | Human Trafficking | Refugee Crisis
In Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island, migration and displacement emerge as central themes, exploring how human beings respond to natural disasters, communal violence, poverty, socio-economic pressures, and personal restlessness. Characters like Lubna Khala’s family are forced to flee Dhaka due to cyclones and floods, while Kabir escapes political riots and land disputes in Faridpur, highlighting the impact of violence and instability. Economic hardship drives Rafi and Tipu to migrate, risking dangerous journeys facilitated by smugglers, while Palash represents migration motivated by ambition and the desire for better opportunities abroad. Tipu’s seizures and visions after a cobra bite illustrate a more uncanny, personal reason for migration. The novel juxtaposes these contemporary migrations with historical exploitation, such as the slave trade, emphasizing the continuity of human suffering. Ghosh also situates these movements in vulnerable locations like the Sundarbans and Venice, where environmental change and sinking landscapes underscore the precariousness of life for climate refugees. Through these narratives, the novel highlights the tension between human selfishness and individual acts of kindness, as seen in Rafi’s and Bilal’s care for others, and encourages readers to reflect on empathy, social responsibility, and the ethical challenges posed by modern migration crises.
Conclusion
Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island intricately weaves together myth, history, climate change, and human migration to create a narrative that is both timeless and urgently contemporary. Through the journeys of Dinanath, Rafi, Tipu, and other characters, the novel highlights how environmental disasters, socio-political instability, and economic inequality drive human displacement. Ghosh’s intertextual references, including Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and the etymological play with Venice (al-Bandukiya) reveal the continuity of folklore and history across time and geography. Climate change is not merely a backdrop but a structural force shaping lives, migration, and storytelling. The novel also critiques Eurocentric rationalism, advocating a posthuman and ecological perspective where humans, nature, animals, and myth coexist in interconnected balance. Ultimately, Gun Island emphasizes the enduring power of storytelling as a tool to understand human vulnerability, ethical responsibility, and the necessity of harmonizing tradition, science, and myth in responding to global crises.
References:
DoEDoE-MKBU. “Characters and Summary - 1 | Sundarbans | Gun Island | Amitav Ghosh.” YouTube, 17 Jan. 2022, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn70pnUIK1Yn.
---. “Characters and Summary - 2 | USA | Gun Island | Amitav Ghosh.” YouTube, 17 Jan. 2022, www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiYLTn7cWm8.
---. “Climate Change | the Great Derangement | Gun Island | Amitav Ghosh.” YouTube, 21 Jan. 2022, www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_3tD4voebA.
---. “Etymological Mystery | Title of the Novel | Gun Island | Amitav Ghosh.” YouTube, 19 Jan. 2022, www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Yg5RmjBlTk.
---. “Migration | Human Trafficking | Refugee Crisis | Gun Island | Amitav Ghosh.” YouTube, 21 Jan. 2022, www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLeskjjZRzI.
---. “Part I - Historification of Myth and Mythification of History | Gun Island | Amitav Ghosh.” YouTube, 21 Jan. 2022, www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBLsFEKLGd0.
---. “Part II | Historification of Myth and Mythification of History | Gun Island | Amitav Ghosh.” YouTube, 23 Jan. 2023, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP2HerbJ5-g.
---. “Summary - 3 | Venice | Part 2 of Gun Island | Amitav Ghosh.” YouTube, 18 Jan. 2022, www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F3n_rrRG9M
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