Environmental awareness of stewardship role: an eco-critical reading of The Hungry Tide and Gun Island

Abstract

This thesis offers an ecocritical reading of The Hungry Tide and Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh to revisit the environment and nature to bring awareness of relationships and the actions for positive impact on the environment for a better ecosystem and the world. By doing so, it examines the conflict between anthropocentrism vs. biocentrism, where environmentalists and eco-critics talk about biocentrism by criticizing the anthropocentrism that causes environmental degradation and imbalance for putting the universe in terms of human values and interests. Regarding it, several naturalists have come out with environmental ethics such as land ethics, and bioethics which mainly call for a biocentric view of the common good without excluding either anthropocentric or biocentric but the integration of both. It also discusses the conflict between the ecosystem and vs. ethical system by questioning which is responsible for the environmental crisis. Both texts show that errors in environmental issues are mostly due to ethical system errors. Therefore, it urges us to depart from moral degradation to moral goodness being an ethical steward of caring, loving, and protecting the creation with a positive impact on the environment. In this thesis, I will imply ecocriticism emphasizing the stewardship responsibility with ethics to re-establish the interdependent relationship between humans and non-humans amidst conflict to promote biocentrism going beyond anthropocentrism for the common good of all and the equilibrium of the ecosystem. Thus, this paper focuses on the personal conscious choice of stewardship actions, prioritization of the common good, and collaborative efforts to become a steward to bring positive environmental change to this common home earth for a better world.