Amitav Ghosh’s novel Sea of Poppies is a description of colonialism and its effect on the environment. The novel deals with the cultivation of opium and its harmful effect on the life of the people and the environment. In my paper, I will be dealing with the changes that occur due to the cultivation of opium and how its addiction leads to the death of Hukum Singh. People are compelled by the British to grow opium in their fields. Opium affects the normal behavior of birds, animals and insects in the novel.
The novel gives us a glimpse how in the nineteenth century colonialism destroyed the ecosystem of the country. The description of a French Botanist as assistant curator of Calcutta’s Botanical Garden does little for the conservation of native plants in comparison to the destruction caused by the colonial rule. But the character of Paulette is an example of a child of nature in the novel.
The importance of seeds of plants in the life of human beings is stressed in the novel. They are regarded as assets by the women characters like Deeti and Sarju for their future. The river Ganga is show as the life line of the people from Bihar to Calcutta, it is considered as sacred by the people. In the novel, it is the spiritual power of the river which gives Deeti a vision of her future. Ghosh has tried to show the loss of natural habitat during the colonial rule in India.
Keywords- Ecology, Ganga, Opium, Nature, Seeds.
About the Author:
Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta in 1956. He is one of the leading Indian writers in English who interweaves nature with experience and history. His works show an interaction between nature and human. He has published many fictions such as The Circle of Reason (1986), The Shadow Lines (1988), In An...
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... of the writer to the readers of the novel to be a part of nature and should not try to control it.
Ghosh has tried to depict the harmful effect of colonial rule in India during the nineteenth century. The cultivation of opium destroyed the ecological balance of nature; it ceased the cultivation of food crop. It resulted in hunger, migration and degradation of environment. He has tried to show that every crop has its own importance and when it is grown in excess it creates imbalance in the ecology.
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In “The Botany of Desire” by Michael Pollan, the author argues that instead of humans interacting, controlling, and paving the way for plants, they in fact work in ways for our lives to better themselves, and help us to become the human’s we are. They instill desires in our life: beauty, control, sweetness, and intoxication. Each plant mentioned in the four-part book, apples (Malus Domestica), tulips (Tulipa), marijuana (Cannabis Sativa x Inidica), and potatoes (Solanum Tuberosum) contribute to a desire. Apples help instill the desire for sweetness, with the sugary nutrient Red Delicious or Gala. Tulips help create the desire of beauty, where we want it and where we get it from Marijuana intoxicates people daily, and that is the desire it creates, people have always enjoyed altering their consciousness, from the Chinese dynasties with their opium to the current times that are infatuated with weed culture. Potatoes had the desire of control. Potatoes need control; they instilled control in the different societies
From its beginning, the literature of the 1960s valued man having a close relationship with nature. Jack Kerouac shows us the ideal form of this relationship in the story of Han Shan, the Chinese poet. At first, these concerns appear to have little relevance to Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth. However, by mentioning Gauguin, Roth gives us a view of man's ideal relationship to nature very similar to the one seen in the story of Han Shan. The stories of Han Shan and Gauguin offer an interesting commentary Neil and Brenda's relationship, as well as insight into its collapse.
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The famous French philosopher Rousseau and its setting in the Romantic Era seem also to have influenced the themes in the book with its focus on the necessity of emotion and the importance of protecting nature, something which could actually be seen as the main ?message? of the book. Her book is a warning against the ?over-reaching? of man and she uses the Gothic style to shock 19th Century readers.
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The first images of the garden are seen through the exaggerated imagination of a young child. “” are as “ as flowers on Mars,” and cockscombs “ the deep red fringe of theater curtains.” Fr...
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Gregorio Lopez Mr. Locks British Lit 4/7/14 The First Opium War and its aftermath on Chinese To the normal Chinese man during the early 19th century, opium was nothing more than a luxury that only those of higher power or influence could indulge themselves in. Yet by the middle of the 19th century opium had become a commodity that everyone could have and that at the same time they seemed to need. Even though it was now such a big part of the normal chinese culture, it did not benefit the people nor Chinese culture, it did not benefit the people or the government. The only benefit it did seem to have was towards the British.
A light-skinned African American freedman passing for white, an Indian female farmer has been rescued from sati, a French women disguised as an Indian labourer, a British opium merchant, a half-Paris and half-Chinese convict these are some of the “mongrel” characters with complex histories that populate Amitav Ghosh’s most recent novel Sea of Poppies.
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