The Hungry Tide

The Hungry Tide

by

Amitav Ghosh

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on The Hungry Tide makes teaching easy.

Piya Roy Character Analysis

Piya is a cetologist (a biologist specializing in marine mammals) who comes to the Sundarbans to conduct a survey of the river dolphins. Though she was born in Calcutta to Bengali parents, Piya grew up in Seattle and never learned Bengali. However, she knows that in her line of work, she doesn't always need spoken language to communicate. This idea comes to the forefront when she meets the fisherman Fokir. Even though the two can't speak to each other, Piya recognizes that she and Fokir can communicate in a way that seems more honest and more meaningful than she believes they'd be able to could they speak to each other. This stands in stark contrast to her relationship with Kanai; even though they can speak to each other, Kanai initially has little interest in getting to know Piya, which keeps Piya from feeling comfortable opening up to him. Piya begins the novel believing wholly in the power and goodness of conservation efforts. As the novel progresses, Piya is forced to recognize that conservation isn't always a force for good—it often happens at the expense of poor people like Fokir. Though Piya and Fokir are clearly attracted to each other and develop a quiet romance throughout the novel, they never act on their feelings for each other. About six weeks after the cyclone, when Piya returns to Lusibari, she suggests that she'd like to name her ongoing project after Fokir. She also wants to work with local fishermen to carry out her project and share funding with the Babadon Trust, which suggests that she learned that conservation efforts are most effective when implemented in a way that actually helps locals.

Piya Roy Quotes in The Hungry Tide

The The Hungry Tide quotes below are all either spoken by Piya Roy or refer to Piya Roy. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Language Theme Icon
).
Part 1: The Launch Quotes

Piya was so startled that she looked at the picture again, with fresh eyes, wondering what he might be thinking of […] Like an optical illusion, the picture seemed to change shape as she looked at it; she had the feeling that she was looking at it through his eyes.

Related Characters: Piya Roy, Mejda
Page Number: 29
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: The Boat Quotes

It was not just that he had thought to create a space for her; it was if he had chosen to include her in some simple, practiced family ritual, found a way to let her know that despite the inescapable muteness of their exchanges, she was a person to him and not, as it were, a representative of a species, a faceless, tongueless foreigner.

Related Characters: Piya Roy, Fokir
Page Number: 60
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: Words Quotes

How do you lose a word? Does it vanish into your memory like an old toy in a chest, and lie hidden in the cobwebs and dust, waiting to be cleaned out or rediscovered?

Related Characters: Piya Roy, Fokir, Piya's Father
Related Symbols: Gamchhas
Page Number: 78
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: Listening Quotes

The two of them, Fokir and she, could have been boulders or trees for all they knew of each other, and wasn't it better in a way, more honest, that they could not speak? For if you compared it to the ways in which dolphins' echoes mirrored the world, speech was only a bag of tricks that fooled you into believing you could see through the eyes of another being.

Related Characters: Piya Roy, Fokir
Page Number: 132
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: A Post Office on Sunday Quotes

"He loved the work of Rainer Maria Rilke […] Rilke said 'life is lived in transformation,' and I think Nirmal soaked this idea into himself in the way cloth absorbs ink. To him, what Kusum stood for was the embodiment of Rilke's idea of transformation."

Related Characters: Kanai Dutt (speaker), Piya Roy, Nirmal Bose, Nilima Bose, Kusum
Page Number: 233
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: Interrogations Quotes

"Because it was people like you," said Kanai, "who made a push to protect the wildlife here, without regard for the human costs. And I'm complicit because people like me […] have chosen to hide these costs, basically in order to curry favor with their Western patrons. It's not hard to ignore the people who're dying—after all, they are the poorest of the poor."

Related Characters: Kanai Dutt (speaker), Piya Roy, Fokir
Related Symbols: Tigers
Page Number: 248-49
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Hungry Tide LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Hungry Tide PDF

Piya Roy Quotes in The Hungry Tide

The The Hungry Tide quotes below are all either spoken by Piya Roy or refer to Piya Roy. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Language Theme Icon
).
Part 1: The Launch Quotes

Piya was so startled that she looked at the picture again, with fresh eyes, wondering what he might be thinking of […] Like an optical illusion, the picture seemed to change shape as she looked at it; she had the feeling that she was looking at it through his eyes.

Related Characters: Piya Roy, Mejda
Page Number: 29
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: The Boat Quotes

It was not just that he had thought to create a space for her; it was if he had chosen to include her in some simple, practiced family ritual, found a way to let her know that despite the inescapable muteness of their exchanges, she was a person to him and not, as it were, a representative of a species, a faceless, tongueless foreigner.

Related Characters: Piya Roy, Fokir
Page Number: 60
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: Words Quotes

How do you lose a word? Does it vanish into your memory like an old toy in a chest, and lie hidden in the cobwebs and dust, waiting to be cleaned out or rediscovered?

Related Characters: Piya Roy, Fokir, Piya's Father
Related Symbols: Gamchhas
Page Number: 78
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: Listening Quotes

The two of them, Fokir and she, could have been boulders or trees for all they knew of each other, and wasn't it better in a way, more honest, that they could not speak? For if you compared it to the ways in which dolphins' echoes mirrored the world, speech was only a bag of tricks that fooled you into believing you could see through the eyes of another being.

Related Characters: Piya Roy, Fokir
Page Number: 132
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: A Post Office on Sunday Quotes

"He loved the work of Rainer Maria Rilke […] Rilke said 'life is lived in transformation,' and I think Nirmal soaked this idea into himself in the way cloth absorbs ink. To him, what Kusum stood for was the embodiment of Rilke's idea of transformation."

Related Characters: Kanai Dutt (speaker), Piya Roy, Nirmal Bose, Nilima Bose, Kusum
Page Number: 233
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: Interrogations Quotes

"Because it was people like you," said Kanai, "who made a push to protect the wildlife here, without regard for the human costs. And I'm complicit because people like me […] have chosen to hide these costs, basically in order to curry favor with their Western patrons. It's not hard to ignore the people who're dying—after all, they are the poorest of the poor."

Related Characters: Kanai Dutt (speaker), Piya Roy, Fokir
Related Symbols: Tigers
Page Number: 248-49
Explanation and Analysis: