ABSTRACT:

This paper offers an ecocritical reading of Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island focusing on the interconnected crises of rising seas, climate change and human displacement. Set against transnational landscapes stretching from the Sundarbans to the Mediterranean, the novel foregrounds how environmental degradation reshapes both ecosystems and human lives. Through an ecocritical lens, the study examines the fragile relationship between humans and the non-human world, highlighting how climate-induced disasters such as cyclones, sea-level rise and biodiversity loss disrupt traditional livelihoods and force migration. Ghosh portrays nature not as a passive backdrop but as an active agent that challenges anthropocentric assumptions and exposes the ethical responsibilities of humanity toward the planet. The novel’s blending of myth, history and contemporary climate realities underscores ecological memory and the interconnectedness of global ecological systems. This paper argues that Gun Island urges readers to recognize climate change as a shared, transboundary crisis and calls for ecological awareness, empathy and sustainable coexistence in an era of accelerating environmental uncertainty.

Keywords: Ecology, Equilibrium, Resistance, Anthropocene, Exploitation