In the film adaptation of Yann Martel's novel, Life of Pi, the exciting and tragic story of the main character's, Pi Patel, childhood is told through flashback scenes from the older, present-day Pi while he is being interviewed by the writer of the novel. Having grown up in India, Pi was raised Hindu but through encounters with strangers, becomes a Christian and a Muslim, while still practicing Hinduism as he sees no reason to have to give up any of each religion's beliefs. Pi is a very independent and curious young boy, and his parents have opposing opinions on his choices. His father is a realist and rationalist, and tells Pi that he must trust science and that if he believes in everything it is no different from believing in nothing. While Pi's mother encourages Pi's endeavors and claims science teaches us about the world, but religion teaches us about the heart.
Pi tells a tragic and unbelievable tale of the loss of his family during a shipwreck while the family was moving overseas to Canada. Pi claims he was the only survivor and was strayed on a life boat with some of his father's zoo animals- an orangutan, a zebra with a broken leg, a hyena, and a Bengal Tiger named Richard Parker. Eventually Pi and Richard Parker are all who remain, and they develop a bond. This experience is a practice and test of Pi's survival and beliefs. When he does reach help, the investigators do not believe this story and ask Pi to tell them a more believable tale, which he does. Much darker and more gruesome, Pi says the cook, a sailor with a broken leg, Pi's mother, and himself were the survivors. The cook killed the sailor and Pi's mother to use their bodies for food and fish bait, causing Pi to kill the evil cook. Which story is the true one is never clearly confirmed, although the first is the one most would hope to be true as it tells an elaborate story of survival and includes strong religious symbolism. In Hegel's Faith & Knowledge, he says Man is not "a spiritual focus of the universe, but an absolute sensibility. He does however, have the faculty of faith so that he can touch himself up here and there with a spot of alien supersensuousness." This relates to Pi, who filled his life with religions being extremely unsatisfied with the limitations of his reality. His first story is not sensible, but surely has alien supersensuousness and points to higher interventions.
I have never seen this movie but, it seems as if he was trapped between different beliefs. I feel that at birth everyone is made to believe that what ever your parents believe in you must believe in also. I think that everyone needs time to explore and figure out what's good for them. Trial & error
ReplyDeleteI thought the movie was interesting from the two different stories. He had a story that he found truth in and took away more from that than the "real" story. You make what you want to believe, maybe not to this degree ,but as I commented on Monikai's post, stories have their embellishments to let them be more relatable and interesting for anyone to take away the true moral of a story. It doesn't matter how he really got to where he is, but what he believed how he got there for himself.
ReplyDeleteI think part of the Life of Pi is that it stands as a an allegory for Religious Experience itself. Though Pi is alone during this time and no one can corroborate his stories there is a claim that it happened. But since no one could believe it they asked for another version.
ReplyDeleteThere is a story were Jesus only had five loaves of bread and two fish to feed an entire crowd of five thousand people. The disciples broke the bread and fish and passed it out. The story goes that everyone was satisfied and they even collected leftover bread afterwards.
This story could be taken to mean "through faith you will be filled and will need to eat little" or it could mean that Jesus literally produced more bread. Besides the accounts of the people there, there is no proof. It's true that one seems more likely in a logical sense, but without actually having attended there is no way to be one hundred percent sure it didn't either. It is similar to Pi's story in that there isn't a way to prove either story, the fantastic or the believable. This duplicity of what "actually" happened, and whether that even matters to the reader, is the foundation of Faith.
In Bertrand Russell's "Why I am not a christian," Russell states that Religion comes mostly from a place of fear of the unknown, and that fear is a parent of cruelty. Just as Russell states, fear and religion go hand and hand in this movie, and yet the protagonist uses religion as a tool to help conquer his fear, instead of the all-to-well-known idea of religion using fear to conquer the believer.
ReplyDeleteThe connection has been made before between this topic and our documentary series. Both have to do with one's ability to re-tell the full truth and how it is nearly impossible. To be able to even tell a story in one sitting, the task merits the person summarizing; cutting and splicing details to make a story worth listening to. Taking this a bit farther, if the facts of what happened don't line up with the significance of the event or person, then the less important facts are reduced and the character of the person or extravagance of the event is played up. Its as if only later you realize what the important information was. Pi was doing this heavily. The believable story's facts didn't add up to what was actually happening to him emotionally. No amount of retelling would be able to show people what he was feeling, so coming at the events at a radically different angle allowed a broader, yet more true, perspective.
ReplyDelete