Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh
This blog introduces a preparatory learning activity focused on Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island. By engaging with video lectures and a critical reading document by Dilip Barad, the activity aims to summarise key ideas and examine the novel’s themes, narrative techniques, and characterisation in order to support effective class discussion.
Flipped Learning Activity Worksheet on Gun Island
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Video 1 Characters and Summary - 1 | Sundarbans | Gun Island | Amitav Ghosh
The video explains the narrative of Gun Island through Deen Datta, a Brooklyn-based rare book dealer who returns to the Sundarbans and encounters the legend of Bonduki Sadagar and Manasa Devi. As Deen’s journey unfolds, myth intersects with modern realities such as climate change, human trafficking, and global migration, blurring the line between the past and the present.
Critical Note
The video effectively uses the idea of the “uncanny” to show how traditional rational knowledge fails to explain today’s ecological and social crises. It highlights Ghosh’s use of myth as an alternative way of understanding a world shaped by uncertainty and environmental instability.
Enhancement of Understanding
Characters: Piya and Tipu personalize global issues like migration and climate science through lived experience.
Plot: The Gun Merchant’s mythical journey mirrors modern migration routes, reinforcing displacement as a recurring historical reality.
Themes: The video clarifies the novel’s focus on global interconnectedness and border anxieties.
Thematic Reflection
Climate Change
The Sundarbans represent the global climate crisis, where nature acts as an uncontrollable force. Manasa Devi symbolizes nature’s resistance to human domination.
Migration
The novel links mythic exile to modern refugee movements, showing migration as a forced response to ecological and economic collapse.
Myth and the Uncanny
Myth allows the novel to express realities that rational language cannot, especially in a world where technology and nature behave unpredictably.
Video 2 - Characters and Summary - 2 | USA | Gun Island | Amitav Ghosh
Summary
The video discusses the first part of Gun Island, mainly set in Los Angeles before shifting toward Venice. It focuses on Lisa, an intellectual and researcher who warns about wildfires and the internal decay of trees. Instead of being heard, she is attacked on social media, accused of conspiracy, and given death threats. The LA wildfires show that climate disasters affect even rich countries and wealthy people.
The video also explains Cinta’s etymological study of the Gun Merchant’s myth. She suggests that “Gun Island” may not be a real island but comes from the Venetian word Ghetto, meaning a foundry where bullets were made. Over time, this word changed across cultures. The video ends with Cinta adopting two refugee children and planning to document the arrival of the “blue boat” of migrants in Venice.
Critical Note
The video highlights how the novel blurs the line between rationality and irrationality, suggesting that irrational beliefs are another way of understanding memory and loss. Lisa’s persecution reflects the modern-day hunting of intellectuals, similar to women being branded as witches during the Dark Ages. It criticizes a world driven by conspiracy theories, social media trolling, and hostility toward scientific truth.
Video Summary – 3 | Venice | Part 2 of Gun Island | Amitav Ghosh
This video covers the second part of Gun Island, set mainly in Venice. Deen travels there after being hired as a translator for Gisa, a documentary filmmaker working on the Bangladeshi migrant community. The video explains that “Gun Island” is Venice itself, known as al-Banduki in Arabic and Bonduki in Bengali, meaning guns or bullets.
In Venice, Deen meets migrants such as Rafi, a construction worker, and Lubna Khala, who manages migrant labour. The narrative follows the search for Tipu, believed to be on a “blue boat” of refugees heading to Italy. The video ends with the dramatic rescue of the boat, marked by bioluminescence, and the mysterious death of Cinta, who dies by her own will (icham ruty) on the boat.
Critical Note
The video highlights Ghosh’s use of parallelism, drawing a connection between Venice and Varanasi as cities that act as time portals and celebrate the “beauty of decay.” A major tension exists between rationality and mysticism: Pia explains events scientifically, while Cinta interprets them through myth, suggesting Deen is being awakened or possessed by the Gun Merchant’s story. The video also critiques the demonisation of migrants, showing how the novel humanises them by focusing on their suffering, sacrifice, and survival.
Enhancement of Understanding
Characters: Palash’s middle-class background contrasts with Rafi and Tipu’s poverty, showing migration driven by both desperation and aspiration shaped by media images.
Plot: The “Island of Chains” in the myth is revealed as Sicily, linking ancient myths to modern refugee routes.
Themes: The shipworm (teredo navalis) eating Venice’s wooden foundations symbolizes climate change causing unseen but deadly decay.
Thematic Study
Video 1 Etymological Mystery | Title of the Novel
Characters and Summary
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