Human Impact on the Environment and the Anthropocene in Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island

Abstract

This article analyses the impact of human in Amitav Ghosh's Gun Island altering the ecology of the earth from the Anthropocene perspective. The Anthropocene asserts that nature, which has been damaged so much that it cannot regenerate, and whose balance has changed, has changed not because of meteor strikes, ice ages or globalcauses as it used to be in old times, but because of human influence. The unpredictable and inconsistent climatic effects caused by human effect such as fossil fuel consumption especially after the industrial revolution, global warming, rise in sea levels, acidification of oceans show that humans have the greatest impact on nature compared to other living things. Although the existence of man in the world is relatively short, the biggest factor affecting the environment in the 21st century is human. Therefore, due to the global impact created by man, human impact changes the life of nature, animals, plants and himself in an unknown direction. In this context, Amitav Ghosh's novel Gun Island features the impact of humanity to the ecology that connects the past to the present with a Bengali myth showing how the impact of humanity stretches into the ecology.

Keywords

• anthropocene
• gun island
• climate change
• migration

Amitav Ghosh'un Silah Adası Romanında Insanın Çevreye Etkisi ve Antroposen

Öz

Bu makale, kendini yenilemeyecek kadar zarar gören ve dengesi değişen doğanın eskiden olduğu gibi meteor çarpması, buzul çağları veya küresel sebeplerden değil de insan etkisiyle değiştiğini gösteren Anthroposen bakış açısı ile Amitav Ghosh’un Silah Adası adlı eserindeki insan etkisiyle iklim değişikliği ve yarattığı sorunları ele almaktadır. Sanayi devriminden sonra artan başta fosil yakıt tüketimi artışı olmak üzere değişen iklim sebebiyle ortaya çıkan tahmin edilemeyen ve tutarsız iklimsel etkiler, insanın doğa üzerinde diğer canlılara nazaran en büyük etkiyi yarattığını göstermektedir. İnsanın dünyadaki varlığı kısa olmasına rağmen, 21. Yüzyılda çevreyi etkileyen en büyük faktör insandır. Dolayısıyla, insan yarattığı küresel etki sebebiyle doğanın, hayvanların, bitkilerin ve kendisinin de hayatını bilinmeyen bir yöne doğru değiştirmektedir. Bu kapsamda, Amitav Ghosh’un Silah Adası adlı romanı, Bengal dilindeki bir mit vasıtasıyla, geçmişi günümüze bağlayan ve insanın etkisinin küresel anlamda çevreyi nasıl etkilediğini gösteren kurgusal bir hikâye ortaya koymaktadır.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• antroposen
• iklim değişikliği
• silah adası
• amitav ghosh

Kaynakça

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