57 pages • 1 hour read
Amitav GhoshGun Island
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Parallels Between Myths and Modern Events
The primary plotline of Gun Island is heavily dependent upon a central legend featuring a character called the Gun Merchant, and his battle of wills with a goddess of snakes named Manasa Devi. Although the Gun Merchant’s story is fictional, it is based on pre-existing folklore and a Hindu deity that is still worshipped in parts of India. Ghosh’s version of the legend therefore works as both a framing device within the story, and as a way to facilitate reflections on the link between ancient myths and modern-day occurrences.
Linked patterns of events and specific incidents that happen to the characters are found to constantly mirror the legend of the Merchant’s life. The Merchant is forced to flee overseas to escape disaster and the grief of his family’s death, and this happens to both Deen and Cinta as well. Deen leaves for America to avoid being falsely implicated in the death of his first love, Durga, while Cinta takes refuge in the United States to escape the paparazzi hounding her after her husband and daughter’s deaths. Additionally, while the Merchant flees his homeland, he is caught by pirates and sold to Captain Ilyas, who becomes a trusted traveling companion instead. Likewise, travel to “exotic” places becomes a recurrent motif throughout novel’s main plotline, and just as with the Merchant and Ilyas, any exploratory or fortune-seeking travel only happens with a companion. For example, Deen and Cinta travel together to Calcutta (Kolkata), across America, and even to Venice, and Tipu and Rafi leave India together, in hopes of eventually reaching Venice as well.
Once in Venice, the Merchant is forced to hide when Manasa Devi appears to him in books, warning him that she has eyes everywhere. He seeks refuge in the most secure place he can, but a venomous creature bites him anyway. Similarly, Deen finds signs of the Gun Merchant’s tale and the Sunderbans popping up all over the “Ghetto” in Venice. Despite the fact that the area is almost entirely humanmade, he still encounters venomous spiders there on multiple occasions. When the Merchant attempts to flee Venice as well, he is caught again and taken to be sold into slavery in Sicily. This is mirrored in the main plotline when the refugee boat heads from Sinai, an epicenter of human trafficking, to Sicily. As in the story, where Manasa Devi saves the Merchant and his fellow captors through a miracle involving a storm and creatures of the sea and sky, the captive refugees first escape the connection house, and are then rescued by the Italian navy, concurrent with said miracles. They even seize their captors’ “spoils” (the traffickers’ data), which will prove extremely valuable. Furthermore, there are connections drawn between the Ethiopian woman who engineers the refugees’ rescue and Manasa Devi.
While Deen constantly brushes the Gun Merchant’s legend off, Cinta emphasizes the power of storytelling and its ability to help human beings understand the deepest mysteries of life and make sense of their own histories. The Gun Merchant’s story is a prime example of this, for as the novel progresses, the legend connects disparate people across countries, cultures, and centuries. Cinta underscores the importance of storytelling and the link between past and present that it provides, for she points out the words inlaid in the church of the Black Madonna of Salute: “Unde origo inde salus – ‘From the origin salvation comes’” (244). A less mystical, more pragmatic understanding of these words is the need to revisit old ways of living that are more in balance with nature. As the historian at the conference points out, the current climate crisis can trace its origin to the exploitation of natural resources and dependency on fossil fuels that began in the 17th century. In concurrence with the symbolism inherent in the Gun Merchant’s legend, the book suggests that profit-chasing at the expense of the natural world will eventually lead to humanity’s own downfall; conversely, respecting nature and living in harmony with it will result in good fortune for all.
The Politics of Travel and Movement
A recurring motif throughout Gun Island is travel. The Gun Merchant himself travels extensively in the legend just as modern-day migrants from different countries, including Rafi and Tipu, travel to Europe. Likewise, Deen and Cinta travel across countries in pursuit of their career goals, and throughout the novel, even animals and birds travel within and across their natural habitats due to the widespread effects of climate change. Movement across the world amongst people and within the animal kingdom is therefore examined through a myriad of different perspectives, and travel and the politics that surround it blend to form a central theme in the novel.
The Gun Merchant’s travel is instigated by both natural events and supernatural elements. He refuses to be Manasa Devi’s devotee, and hence is struck by calamity and loses his family and fortune. Thus, he sets out to reclaim the latter, and his travel sees him both fleeing and chasing different things simultaneously. As Deen and Cinta decipher more details surrounding the Gun Merchant’s legend and its derivation from historical events, Cinta likens the Merchant to the explorers of the 17th century, who similarly risked their lives and traveled the seas in search of fortune.
Deen and Cinta’s travels are similar to those of the Merchant, for they both attempt to escape grief and danger by leaving their homelands. Both of them are also looking to make their “fortune” in the places they escape to, by means of their careers. Like the Merchant, Deen and Cinta are also explorers, but primarily of ideas and stories—Deen through his work with rare books, and Cinta through her work as a historian. Like the Merchant, Deen and Cinta are also both “immigrants” in a different land, for they have moved away from their homes to escape unfavorable or inhospitable elements.
Similar motivations propel Rafi and Tipu’s travels and those of the vast majority of migrants who move to Europe. For example, Moyna describes to Deen the poverty that has stricken the Sunderbans following cyclones and natural calamities, and these natural forces have led to an exodus of people who are either voluntarily emigrating or are being forced to move through human trafficking. Tipu and Rafi join the wave of migrants leaving home in search of a better life elsewhere, though Tipu’s journey is driven by the mystical visions he has following the snakebite. Nevertheless, both young boys leave home voluntarily but illegally, without visas and passports. Rafi and Tipu also have brushes with the involuntary movement of people as well; Rafi is almost tricked into bonded labor by a scafista in Venice, while Tipu arrives at the connection house in Sinai where refugees are being held captive for organ harvesting.
Despite multiple governments and countries knowing about the existence of the latter, they refuse to address the problem or take refugees in. This points to the more unscrupulous manifestations of capitalism, illustrating how human beings are often willing to ignore others’ suffering in favor of their own comfort and profit. The novel therefore explores the question of who is permitted travel, where they are permitted to go, and by what means. For instance, Deen and Tipu travel very differently, the former with the required documentation and by following due process. Despite this, Deen still cannot escape some anxiety about traveling in certain countries due to prejudices surrounding the color of his skin. This anxiety is best depicted in the scene where Deen accidentally plays Urdu music in the airplane. He is immediately apologetic, and although the incident is an accident, he is warned that he will be deplaned if he does not comply. Likewise, when he screams at the sight of the hawk and snake as the plane approaches LA, he is immediately taken away for interrogation by security. All of this confusion arises simply because he rises from his seat to ask the stewards a legitimate question about the wildfires; rather than hearing him out, the flight attendants meet Deen with suspicion and order him to resume his seat, his query unaddressed. Thus, although he is a legal immigrant in America, Deen still faces some barriers to stress-free travel within and across certain countries. Fittingly, he reflects on the xenophobia felt by some Europeans about immigrants coming into their countries and traces these attitudes back to the implicit desire of the dominant culture to preserve centuries-old white European power and privilege. This is also ironic, considering the fact that it was the Europeans who pioneered the movement of people across the globe, albeit on their own terms and for very different purposes.
It is not just the humans who travel, in Gun Island, for the animals are migrating as well, often to their own detriment. Dolphins are seen to beach themselves; snakes and insects move northward to escape the rising temperatures in their natural habitats; birds and cetaceans travel in force as part of a spectacular migratory event. From one perspective, these movements are attributed to the rising temperatures and climate change. In the same breath, the novel also frames these movements as “unnatural,” for they are caused by harmful human activity that led to the rising temperature in the first place. Yet a third interpretation exists, for these events are also implied to be somewhat mystical or “supernatural”, especially in the context of the Gun Merchant’s legend. In both instances, this movement feeds into a third central theme of the book: The Conflict Between Humans and Nature.
The Conflict Between Humans and Nature
Hinted at beneath the layers of the story exploring the Gun Merchant’s legend and the refugee crisis in Europe is the ongoing crisis of climate change. Ghosh bases his central legend on a pre-existing one that naturally gives rise to this theme, for Chand Sadagar and Manasa Devi’s story features a central conflict between a man who prioritizes increasing his wealth instead of honoring a goddess who represents the natural world. It is only when death and natural calamity repeatedly strike the merchant that he is finally forced to reconcile with the goddess.
Ghosh’s fictitious version—the Gun Merchant’s legend—is built along similar lines as the authentic myth, and the underlying message is reiterated across other instances in the book, such as the idea of the Little Ice Age and the apocalypse that those in the 17th century believed to be imminent. Furthermore, climate change is explained as the source of all the strange occurrences taking place in the book, from strange weather phenomena to the unusual migratory patterns displayed by various animals and birds. While Piya sees these occurrences as atypical but not inexplicable or “unnatural,” Cinta holds a different view. She asserts that these events are unnatural precisely because they are brought about by human activity. Through both Piya’s perspective and Cinta’s reflections, however, Ghosh communicates that the underlying driving force behind the strange occurrences and calamities is the same: humanity’s greed and the resultant exploitation of the natural world. This echoes across stories and instances, from the legend of the Gun Merchant and climate issues to the refugee crisis and human trafficking networks. All of these issues are born of the same root cause: the commonplace desire of humans across cultures to gain personal profit at the cost of the natural environment, other living beings, or even one’s fellow humans. This attitude, as Ghosh posits through the central legend and the experiences of his characters, will eventually lead to disastrous consequences felt by people across the world. Additionally, the novel implies that only conscious reflection, awareness, and the willingness to act will allow humans to solve their collective problems. Ultimately, Ghosh ends the book on a positive note, as all of the examples of these common social issues are resolved within the world of the novel.
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