People, though wonders at the beauty of nature and its creations, fail to realize that they are also part of the web of life in the earth. Moreover, they adopt an anthropocentric attitude towards nature which, in fact, results in exploitation of it. This kind of attitude towards nature has urged several critics and writers to warn them of nature’s two-sided faces – its power and its rebellious nature. They create many nature-centered texts and bring in the importance of establishing a harmonious relationship with nature through their concepts and critical essays. This becomes evident when Serpil Oppermann in his article “Ecocriticism: Natural world in the Literary Viewfinder” says, “Ecocriticism does enable the critics to examine the textualization of the physical environment in literary discourse itself and to develop an earth-centered approach to literary studies”. In this way, Amitav Ghosh has examined the physical environment in his novel The Hungry Tide. As an anthropologist, he finds it easy to locate the problems undergone by the people living in an immense archipelago of islands, the Sundarbans.
In the same way, he involves nature in the Ibis trilogy, Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke and Flood of Fire. These novels revolve around the major characters with their vast environment as background. Land and water play a vital role in these novels which have almost become characters that mold the lives of the indentured laborers, Zamindar and lascars. Though these people travel in the sea, their lives are almost drenched with cold blood and sweat. Sea of poppies, the name itself suggests that the people are scattered in a way, like the poppy seeds that are down in the land for a harvest that benefits the colonizers. River of smoke, as the title suggests, the characters are interwoven and clouded with compassion, buried emotions, greed and betrayal that form a smoke in their minds and lives.
Their psychological conflicts and their sufferings leave way to certain circumstances that would lead them to serious troubles, turning their lives upside down. The plots taken by the author hand a strong background that depicts human flaws psychologically, biologically, emotionally and rationally. Piyali Roy, a stubborn American cetologist in The Hungry Tide, holds an attraction for Fokir, a local fisherman in Sunderbans. Being a Bengali herself and not knowing the language, she hired a translator unofficially, named Kanai. The triangle attraction towards each other between Piyali, Fokir and Kanai, forms the plot of the story with nature and its rebellious attitude forming its heavy background.
Through the character Hardayal Singh, an army man in The Glass Palace. Ghosh reflects Hardayal’s conflicts on being loyal; towards his British officials and for his own country. He considers himself a worthless, alienated man and is awakened by his consciousness to be loyal to his motherland. His conflicts pave him a way for him to join and fight for the freedom struggle in India. It is vividly evident that the characters of each novel have mental traumas and conflicts within themselves, who in one way or other is anxious to be at service to their colonizers or to get rid of their imperial motives. It brings them happiness, and a sense of responsibility to be at service to the British or to accept their sense of anxiety in being colonized.
Characters like Ila in The Shadow Lines have the impact of the colonizers in her mind that affects her emotions and the binding that she has for her family. She voluntarily falls in love with an English family friend and happens to marry him only to far mental torments and struggles to have neglected her indigenous qualities. Though her outlook and behavior towards her married life look modern and English, she regrets deep within herself for choosing the wrong option, thus depicting hybridity in her identity. Rajkumar of The Glass Palace being an orphan, lands up in Burma due to circumstances and gradually manages to become a “big man” and grows a great Rajkumar Empire there in Burma. In his later part, he is being pushed out of the land where he grew powerful and stands startled. When he is chucked out of his foster land which gave him everything, he is laddered on by his Burmese wife, Dolly. Along with her, he reaches his own motherland India. His mental agony makes him suffer yell a lot of pain and gradually overcomes it with the care that his own land gives him.
In the same way, Dolly, his wife being a Burmese comes to India when she was ten years old, as the Burmese Royal family was ousted out by the colonizers. She grows up as a woman in India and struggles hard to go back to her motherland Burma through her marriage with Rajkumar. She only has traces of Burma that threatens her like she is running for her life and identity. Her inner conflicts are poured out when she feels and imagines the Princess’s newborn baby to be her own baby.
These people are thrown away not by the land but by the people either voluntarily or forcefully. Yet the land or the environment forms to be a destroyer, rebelling against the force that tries to govern it. For instance, the Sunderbans is a man-made mangrove where people were brought down from different places to live a care-free, indiscriminate life. But if some people tried to violate the place or the wildlife reservation area that safeguards the man-eaters and crocodiles, it retaliates. The tide becomes hungry and drowns the whole area with storm and waves. This area where humankind can hardly survive is highly sensitive and extremely beautiful but still hazardous to live. Even if they make a living out there, no damage must be done to that area for their own good. This is the fact that Kanai fails to understand at first hand and realizes in the latter part when he is caught in a heavy storm and survives luckily.
The above-mentioned incidents and characters represent several sorts of conflicts and inner struggles undergone by people at various circumstances, be it natural or unnatural; man-made or environmental. It is evident that they are interwoven and hence nature may show it’s two-sided face- a creator of a destroyer.