Riassunto "Gun Island" - Amitav Gosh (EN), Sintesi del corso di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica Riassunto "Gun Island" - Amitav Gosh (EN) e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! “Gun Island” By Amitav Ghosh Amitav Ghosh’s latest novel, Gun Island, foregrounds (mette in primo piano) environmental issues, like climate change and the danger to fish from chemical waste dumped into rivers by factories, but also migration. Gun Island is a beautifully realized novel that spans space and time. It is the story of a world on the brink (sul baratro) and of unstoppable transition. But it is also a story of hope, of a man, the protagonist, whose faith in the world and the future is restored by two remarkable women: Cinta and Piya. Women are a strong presence and force in the novel. For example, Cinta is a scholar from Venice working on the role of Venice in the medieval spice trade from India. In this book, Bengali legend focused on ancient myth, folklore, tales of heroism and the supernatural blends with contemporary adventure made of implausible coincidences and chance meetings. This is the perfect mix that allows Amitav Ghosh to find new ways to write about human and animal migration and climate breakdown. In depicting a wide range of diverse characters from various countries and subtly invoking myth and history, fact and fiction, Ghosh has created a work that contrasts nostalgia for a lost past with concerns for the contemporaneous. Its narrator embodies scepticism and a frequently limiting (limitante) adherence to empirical reality. Dinanath is a scholar and a rare book dealer of Bangladeshi heritage who has settled in Brooklyn. He was a sympathiser of a Maoist group and he fell in love with Durga, their relationship was opposed by their companions since Datta’s uncle was a policeman. In a clash with the police, she was betrayed by her companions and killed. After this politically adventurous youth spent in India, he attended university in the Midwest thanks to a scholarship. His name has mutated to the American-friendly “Deen”. At the time of the novel, he mitigates his emotional and romantic difficulties with visits to a therapist while attempting to keep financial troubles at bay by amateurishly dabbling in stocks, shares and complicated insurances against the future. But a visit back home to Kolkata – his family having relocated to India during Partition – threatens to derail (far deragliare) his self-imposed US exile. One of his uncles mentions a Bengali legend, the tale of a seventeenth-century merchant, Bonduki Sada-gar (translated with “The Gun Merchant”), fated to travel the world seeking a safe haven from the persecution of the goddess of snakes, Manasa Devi. It is a story passed down through centuries, with which Deen has been familiar since childhood and apparently Nilima Bose has the proofs of the real past existence of the merchant. According to the legend, the rich merchant who lived in the Sunderbans (in West Bengal) refused to become her devotee and, therefore, he was punished though floods, famine and storms; then his family composed of his wife and 7 children was killed by poisonous scorpions. He was obliged to flee oversea to escape the wrath (ira) of the goddess, but his boat was attacked by pirates and he was sold to a captain called Ilyas. After stopping in few ports of call, such as the “land of candied palm sugar” and the “land of tissues” (as Deen translated them from Bengali), they finally reached with a great load of cowries (cipree) from the Maldives Gun Island, which was an island inside another island. Nevertheless the goddess managed to find them coming out from the pages of a book. She warned him that she could find him anywhere. The merchant hid in a room with iron walls, but he was bitten by a poisonous spider sent by Manasa Devi. He succeeded in fleeing from Gun island, but he was captured by pirates who would have sent him on the chain island. Therefore, he traded his devotion to the goddess for his freedom. Once freed, he returned to the Sunderbans and built a temple (dhaam) for Manasa Devi. Deen went then visiting Nilima Bose, a distant relative, who once saw the temple in the mangrove swamps of the Sundarbans. That sighting dated back to 1970, when a cyclone hit that area except for the village which was located nearby the temple. Apparently, the bells warned the inhabitants of the imminent danger. Deen is convinced by Piya Roy, a fascinating Bengali-American cetologist, to visit the temple. He will be accompanied by Tipu, an entrepreneurial young man who is very able with computers and opens Deen's eyes to the realities of growing up in today's world. He is the son of Monya, an Indian woman working for the cause of illegal immigrants in Nilima’s charitable organization. He has lost his father during an expedition for Piya’s work, who, as a consequence, is very protective and kind to them. Tipu’s youth has been very troubled: Piya took him to Oregon to help him, but she was not prepared to be a “mother” and he had problems with the police. Then, she returned to India to attend a private boarding school, but he was expelled. During the visit to the temple, Tipu is bitten by a real cobra and Rafi, the current guardian of the temple takes care of him during the boat trip to the hospital. His conditions are really serious and, in a semi- conscious state, he has a vision about a strange stranding of few dolphins that Piya was monitoring. Finally, he receives the antidote and he is safe. Deen, shocked, returns to Brooklyn where he falls into depression and continues thinking about the legend, which haunts his dreams and life. In the meantime, Tipu is still having frightening visions after the accident, though his love story with Rafi is helping him. After calling an old friend named Cinta, Deen decides to go to Los Angeles in order to participate to a conference, where she is to hold the final report. Cintia is an old friend of Deen, she is a very famous history scholar from Venice. She has been very unlucky in her private life since she lost her husband (who was a journalist) and her little daughter (Lucia) in a car accident in Innsbruck, which probably was planned by the mafia. During the conference, an historian states that the Little Ice Age took place in the 17 th century and it brough about climate change and, as a consequence, drought (siccità), famine and plagues in addition to the frequent and long wars of that period. The main paradox was the incredible development of intellectual and creative works. This theory is another piece of the puzzle. Meanwhile, Los Angeles is burning, but the final report of Cinta can take place: her speech is about the Venetian ghetto, namely an island inside another island which was built in 1516 in order to host all the Jews. This part of the city was previously used as a foundry (fonderia) to forge weapons. Moreover, in the past, the same Arabic word for “Venice”(al- Bunduqevya) meant “nuts, guns and bullets”, three things that Venice exported in Asia, Egypt and North Africa. Deen immediately realises that the Indian word “bundook” and the name of the merchant “Bonduki Sadagar” may not mean “gun merchant” rather “the merchant who has been in Venice”. Then, with Cinta’s help, the legend takes a more realistic shape: the toponyms appearing in the legend have to be translated with the name of real countries, namely Egypt, Costantinople and Goa (centre of the slave trade in the Indian Ocean). The dates match with their theory. As a matter of fact, the Jewish captain Ilyas and the merchant landed in Venice to escape from their misadventures and there sold their cowries which were used as bargaining chips (merce di scambio) in the Atlantic slave trade in North-West Africa. In order to verify their thesis, Deen flies to Venice, where he has to work as a Bengali interpreter for Gisa’s new documentary project (Gisa was Lucia’s best friend) about illegal migrants. There, he meets Rafi who has fled from India with Tipu that knew some dalals (human traffickers) since he worked in the business of clandestine migration, for which he invented trustworthy stories about the past of the migrants in order to make them get the status of refugee. In Venice he gets in touch with many immigrants coming from India and Bangladesh and listens to their terrible experiences. In countries like Libya, Egypt and the Sinai’s peninsula, migrants are kept in houses of connection for day or weeks where they are beaten, tortured and sold like slaves. Their hazardous journey across the Middle East and Africa and the strong, even militant opposition to their presence in the city by Italian authorities reinforces the contrast with the Gun Merchant’s past, prosperous journey to Venice. In the meantime, Piya receives an email that warns her about an imminent stranding of another herd of cetaceans in the Sunderbans and she suspects that it’s Tipu who sent it from a computer in Alexandria of Egypt. Deen wants to look into this story in order to localize Tipu. Therefore, he discovers that Rafi and Tipu left India through the overland route (rotta via terra) organized by human traffickers. This trip led trough