Amitav Ghosh the Hungry Tide and the Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano
Both The Hungry Tide and The Interesting Narrative Of Olaudah Equiano are tales of sociological hardships combined with a life bound to the sea. The ocean plays a significant role in the text offering disempowerment to some whilst empowering others. In The Interesting Narrative the slave trade was in full swing and a capitalist attitude heavily dominates the text, whilst in The Hungry Tide capitalism plays a smaller role and the humanitarian backdrop of the story is a more central theme. In this essay I will draw into focus the various ways in which the ocean is represented as empowering and disempowering to the lives of characters looking at them as they develop through the text and contrasting their empowerment against that of others. These themes will involve the effects of the ocean on traditional communities, the ocean as a tool for capitalist purposes and the empowerment of the ocean in relation to a spiritual life. Both of these texts were written with humanitarian objectives in mind and so I will also conclude on how the empowering or disempowering effects of the ocean are used towards such purposes. By exploring these themes I will come to a conclusion as to whether there is a pattern in the empowering or disempowering aspects of the ocean or whether there is something else at work. The African community finds the ocean heavily disempowering, as it is what separates them from their homeland and families. In his first experience at sea Equiano notes his despair ‘I now saw myself as deprived of all chance of returning to my native country, or even the least glimpse of hope of gaining the shore.’[1] Equiano uses the words ‘deprived’[2] and talks of the loss of hope which clearly express the disempowerment he experiences by the ocean. The ocean for him is an entirely unfamiliar territory, which leaves him very isolated and Equiano recognizes that it is at sea that all hope of being reunited with his family is lost, as on land there was at
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