Environmental Concerns in Amitav Ghosh's "The Great Derangement": Climate Crisis, Literary Imagination, and the Failure of Bourgeois Realism

Abstract

Amitav Ghosh's "The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable" presents a profound critique of contemporary literary culture's inadequate response to the climate crisis. This paper examines how Ghosh articulates environmental concerns through his analysis of the "great derangement" – the collective failure of imagination that prevents modern society from comprehending and addressing climate change. Through close textual analysis grounded in ecocritical theory, this study explores Ghosh's argument that the bourgeois realist novel, dominant literary form of the modern era, is structurally incapable of representing the unprecedented nature of climate change. The paper argues that Ghosh's work reveals the urgent need for new narrative forms and imaginative frameworks to confront environmental crisis, while demonstrating how colonial history, capitalist modernity, and literary aesthetics intersect in perpetuating ecological destruction. Ghosh's environmental concerns extend beyond traditional nature writing to encompass questions of justice, temporality, and the very foundations of modern consciousness, offering a decolonial perspective on climate discourse that challenges Western-centric approaches to environmental crisis.