Highlighting elephant’s perspective through umwelt exploration: textual analysis of the novella River Storm

ABSTRACT

The elephants are the most important animal characters in Nirmal Ghosh’s novella River Storm, and they both metaphorically and literally permeate the entire story. This article explores how viewing these animals through the lens of sensory ecology enables more accurate identification of the ways in which the elephants’ olfactory, tactile, and auditory senses help in communicating with their environment and a better comprehension of the nonhuman perspective. It also tries to illustrate why understanding an elephant’s sensory capabilities is necessary to acknowledge the non-human perspective in a society where humans predominate. Drawing on the premises of Jakob Von Uexkull’s umwelt theory, this study acknowledges the elephants’ agency by contradicting humans’ generic conception of animals as objects or symbols or allegorical subjects in the epistemology of literary discourse about animals. To emphasize the elephant’s distinctive perception of the environment, the narrative specifically moves beyond the boundaries of human perception. Furthermore, it clarifies how an elephant interacts with their surroundings using their sensory faculties, how misinterpretations of their umwelt can result in a number of conflicts between humans and elephants, as well as how a clear understanding of the elephant world can result in a cordial relationship between humans and elephants.

KEYWORDS:

• Umwelt
• sensory ecology
• olfactory sense
• auditory sense
• tactile sense
• elephant agency

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Moumita Bala

Moumita Bala is a Senior Research Scholar (UGC SRF) and Teaching Assistant in the Humanities and Social Sciences Department of Indian Institute of Technology Patna, India. Her areas of interests include Literary animal studies, Environmental Humanities and Folklore studies. Her articles have been published in the Scopus Indexed Journals and she has presented Papers at both National and International Conferences.

Smriti Singh

Smriti Singh is a Professor of English in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Patna, India. Her areas of research and teaching are Indian writings in English, Literary Theory, and ELT. She was a former Fulbright FLTA at the University of Texas at Austin. She has published three books and numerous research papers. She is currently the Chairperson of the Postcolonial Studies Association (Invited Position).