Life of Pi

Hidden Tiger

 Author's Note: Here is my final essay for Life of Pi 

"How can they do that" people say, when someone murders out of cold blood. We think of it as inhuman and cold, it is in fact inhuman, but not necessarily cold. People who are serial killers, are letting the opposite side of their nature show, the animal side.  There are two sides to every human, but only one that you usually see, and that is the side that has emotions, and makes decisions off of them. The other side is our animal side, that is willing to do anything for survival and feels no sort of emotion when making decisions. Life of Pi studies both sides of humans, when Pi is on the life boat. On the boat, half of the time Pi acts like an animal doing things that no human would normally do, and when Pi  does think of his human self his actions are ruled more by his heart and emotion than by his instinct and logic. The reality is that humans have two sides, or a dual nature, and the animal side comes out when we are all alone with no human contact.

Pi is different in a way that some people view as weak and vulnerable, he gets teased for his name and doesn't really have any friends. He is a boy who believes in God strongly and does not eat meat, and is mild tempered. As the book progresses and Pi is put on the lifeboat, his actions become increasingly animal like. The boy he once was is replaced with someone who's desperation to survive overcomes his conscience.  "So the Taiwanese sailor is the zebra, his mother is the orangutan, the cook is… the hyena-which means he's the tiger!", this revealed on page 311 when Pi is being questioned about his time as a castaway. Pi was the tiger all along, so that means Pi killed that man, and ate him, but on the lifeboat the tiger and Pi seem to be two separate beings. They are Pi's dual nature, that only comes out when he is all alone with no means of survival, and no human contact.

Pi who ripped apart being after being, when there was no one around, he was the tiger, and he was himself. The tiger part or animal part of Pi remained on the surface while Pi had no human contact. The animal side of us stays with us when we are thrown out of civilization, and the animals side of him is what kept him alive, it was his survival instinct. "Then Richard Parker, companion of my torment, awful, fierce thing that kept me alive, moved forward and disappeared forever from my life.", on page 285 when Pi comes back to civilization the tiger leaves, and so that animal side of Pi is hidden from until he needs it again, which he never does based on the last phrase of that quote. 

Life of Pi clearly shows the dual nature of people, and how the side we don't show is our animal side. On the lifeboat Pi displayed both sides of our nature, and then when he left the lifeboat the animal side was gone, he thought. In reality the animal side is never gone, it is merely hidden from us and comes out when we need it for survival, it is our survival instincts. The animal side of us doesn't affect us as humans, but we all have the capability to act like an animal.

 

 

True Love

Author's Note: This is how I took the part with the other guy in the boat, who Richard Parker (and Pi) ate.

You call that person brother, sister, father, mother,or friend,  but whatever you call them it doesn't make a difference on whether or not you love them or not. True love seems like more of a decision than an emotion, if you are going to love someone you decide to look at the whole person, even their flaws, and make a decision to love them with their flaws. Pi meets a man on the sea, whom he calls brother. Pi loves this man, because he calls him brother in a sincere manner and not in a sarcastic one, but Pi's love is more like the love we see in Hollywood. Where girl meets boy, girl falls in love with boy, then finds something out about the boy and ends up hating. This would make Pi's love for the man not real, more like a really blind, kind of fake love.

When Pi first meets the man, the man is in a separate lifeboat, so Pi assumes the best automatically, because he is blind and cannot truly see the man. When the man comes aboard the lifeboat, and tries to kill Pi, it is revealed that Pi does not really love him. The bible says that love "always perseveres" Pi couldn't have loved that man, because he did not like the man after. "Something in me died then that had never come back" Pi says this at the end of this chapter, I took it was that Pi's love for the man had died, and would never come back. "I pray for his soul everyday" Pi is talking about the man again, and this is after he died, I honestly don't think that Pi prays for the man out of love, but rather out of guilt because the he ate some of the man's flesh.

Living totally blind like that must have been hard for Pi, but it shows that in life we can't always rely on sight, but then once true nature is revealed you can choose to love them how they are. Now I admit that is extremely difficult, especially for Pi, seeing as the man was trying to kill him, but Pi could have kept on loving him even after he had died. instead he ate part of the guy.  

  Mr.Kumar

Author's Note: Here is my response to the Life of Pi prompt.

A favorite teacher of Pi, Mr.Kumar is much looked up to. While he may not have the same beliefs as Pi, Pi  respects him and does not persecute him for the fact that he is an atheist, as Pi himself has religious beliefs. Pi's respect for Mr.Kumar seems to partially come from the fact that he actually believes something and is willing to defend and fight for it. This makes all the difference in the area of believing, because if you say you are a certain belief and that is all you do people aren't going to believe. Mr.Kumar laughs at Pi when he says that religion will save, he proudly proclaims his faith and you can tell, because he goes on to explain it. "There are no grounds for going beyond scientific explanation of reality…God does not exist."(page 27)  When he says this it confuses and Pi and then Pi builds a respect for him, he realizes that Mr.Kumar is exactly like him  "Like me they go as far as the legs of reason will carry for them- and then they leap." (page 28) This shows that Pi's respect comes from the fact that Mr.Kumar believes in something that can’t be proven, and yet he treats it like a fact. Mr.Kumar's atheist's beliefs are strong, but his description is quite an interesting one.

Two triangles held up by parallel lines, to me it sounds like a Christmas Tree, but to Pi that describes his favorite teacher, Mr.Kumar. " His construction was geometric: he looked like two triangles a small one and a larger one, balanced on two parallel lines." (page 25) A strong and devoted atheist Mr.Kumar's body shape is slightly contradicting to his beliefs. A triangle represents many things and a triangle can symbolize holy and divine, which is strange seeing as Mr.Kumar's religion is one where holiness doesn't really doesn't exist. The second thing a triangle can symbolize is the Holy Trinity and by extension God, and again Mr.Kumar doesn’t even believe in God. Healthy and good, another symbol for a triangle, this relates to Mr.Kumar because as a child he was sick with Polio and that is what led him to his atheist beliefs, it is also what made him look so triangular. A fourth thing that a triangle represents is safety, we use triangles in traffic to tell people that it is okay to cross the street, so guess what everybody Pi has a great big traffic sign for a teacher!