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Understanding and coping with change
Understanding and coping with change
Understanding and coping with change
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“You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.” Adapting to a new situation or experience like violent crashing waves can be difficult. Nevertheless, a person needs to learn how to surf in order to outlast the pounding waves. In a similar fashion, individuals need to learn how to adapt to a challenging situation in order to survive. This idea of the significance of adapting to new situations is often explored in literature. In the novel, Life of Pi, Yann Martel makes powerful use of character development to suggest that individuals may be able to adapt to situations in life through a sense of determination, or through denying reality and using their imagination instead. The protagonist Piscine Patel is able to adapt to situations in his life through a strong sense of motivation. …show more content…
This is evident when Pi decides that he will not be bullied anymore or called “Pissing Patel.” When Pi moves to a different school, he tells the reader, “I planned my escape and the beginning of a new time for me.” This means that Pi is determined to stop the bullies and begin a new chapter of his life. One can perceive that persistence when he enunciates, “I repeated the stunt with every teacher,” referring to his approach of writing his name as the number pi (3.14) on the board. Pi adapts to his situation of enduring bullying through a strong sense of determination, allowing him to finally stop suffering the humiliation, and thus adjusting to his situation. Furthermore, Pi adapts to his situation of being afraid of Richard Parker through intense dedication. This is indicated when Pi, filled with courage, declares, “It was time to impose myself and carve out my territory.” Pi becomes determined to display to Richard Parker that he is his master, and to show him that he is not afraid of him. This is established when Pi tells the reader, “Then I made my point... my single-note language blasting from the whistle, and Richard Parker moaning and gasping…” He does
...o face our fears, looking them dead in the eye. He notes that tigers only attack when you are not looking straight in the eye. When Pi tries to tame Richard Parker by blowing the whistle, while Richard Parker is seasick. Pi faces his fears instead of letting it sit there and control him. We need to ‘blow the whistle’ on our own fears and admit we do have a fear, so they become easier to control in our lives. Richard Parker also teaches Pi his inner strength even though Pi does not display it himself. "This was the terrible cost of Richard Parker. He gave me a life, my own, but at the expense of taking one. He ripped the flesh off the man's frame and cracked his bones. The smell of blood filled my nose. Something in me died then that has never come back to life. (Martel 139)”
Pi Patel in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi is a young Indian boy who is put through a tremendous traumatic experience; he gets lost at sea! Not only does he lose all his family, but he is forced to survive 227 days at sea with very limited resources. This ordeal causes great psychological pressure on Pi and causes his mind to find ways to cope with all the stress. When asked to describe what happened, Pi tells two stories: one with him surviving with animals including an adult Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, and a parallel story with humans in which Pi is forced to bend morality. Pi’s story of his survival with Richard Parker is a fiction that he creates to cope with a reality that is too difficult to face.
Richard Parker’s obligation to Pi Patel defines who he is as a being. And lastly what made Richard Parker unique and peculiar was his act of independence. His act of freedom illustrated a trait of his kind. Tigers are generally solitary creatures that prefer to live alone and that is what Richard Parker validated. Due to the fact that Richard Parker demonstrated perseverance, obligation and independence during his first attempt at adventure he proves that one’s identity is shaped by unique life experiences.
“The presence of God is the finest of rewards.” (Yann Martel, Life of Pi 63) In Yann Martel’s riveting novel “Life of Pi” The basic plot of survival unfolds, however, this essay will show how the hidden yet the dominant theme of religion throughout the story is what helped the main character Piscine Molitor Patel (Pi) survive.
...knowledge his shadow self. He was able to survive his plight on the lifeboat because of the characteristics of his shadow self, Richard Parker. Even at the loss of his shadow self, Pi remains connected and constantly misses this part of his persona. After his ordeal on the lifeboat, Pi becomes rational and humane; however his experiences has scarred him, and will forever remain with him. Readers can definitely learn from Pi’s experience with his shadow self. The more we refute our shadow, the more it weighs us down. However, if we are willing to come to terms with the reality of our shadow, learn how it works, “tame” it so that it does not control us, we would be more literate and enlightened.
A quick glance at Life of Pi and a reader may take away the idea that it is an easy read and a novel full of imagination, but take a Freudian view of the work and it transforms into a representation of the human psyche. Martel’s novel takes the reader on a journey with Pi as he struggles for his own survival. Pi experiences a breakdown of each component that makes up one's personality, according to Freud throughout the novel. One by one, ego and super ego both express a huge factor in Pi’s choices and emotions throughout his story. Readers are also introduced to an alternate ending to choose from.
The Life of Pi has many essential themes. The themes in the movie and book the Life of Pi help the audience identify the figurative meaning of the story. Yann Martel’s Life of Pi explores the will to live effectively. He does this by using specific diction and sentences to depict the main character’s ambition to survive.
“All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive” (Martel 44-45). Inside every human being, there is an extremely primal and animalistic trait that can surface when the will to survive becomes greater than the morals of the person. This trait allows humans to overcome their fear to do things which they wouldn’t normally be able to do in order to survive when they’re in extreme peril and in a do or die situation. Throughout the book, Life of Pi, survival is a dominant and central theme. The will to survive changes people and this includes the main character of the story, Piscine Molitor Patel. Survival will even change the most timid, religious, and law-abiding people. Yann Martel, using Pi as an example, tries to explain that all humans must do three things in order to survive a life threatening event: one must give up their morals, one must find a way to keep sane, and one must be ready to compromise and sacrifice.
In the bildungsroman novel, Life of Pi, Yann Martel uses the experiences of the protagonist, Pi Patel, to broaden the reader’s awareness about the concept of reality and what is possible. Pi’s reality, for the first sixteen years of his life, is as a vegeterian boy living a comfortable life in Pondicherry, India. His family has money and standing in the community and Pi attends good schools in his neighbourhood. He has the freedom and desire to explore and practice three different religions simutaneously. Yann Martel explains in an interview with Sabine Sielke that when a person is immersed so completely in their reality they do not know there are other ways to experience life until something happens to change their current thinking ( pg. 18). While moving from India to Canada, Pi experiences a dramatic change in his reality, which alters how he thinks about his life, when the Japanese cargo ship, Tsimtsum, sinks and thrusts him into a world where he must leave all his comforts behind and embrace the life that lies before him. Pi learns that reality changes and when it does he must accept the new version and redefine it when neccessary.
Choices play a prominent role in ensuring comfort and happiness in life. People make choices, which ultimately shape their lives. In Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi, the main character, Pi Patel is forced to make choices, which go against his morals, but ultimately keep him alive. This becomes clear when Pi chooses to change his person by eating meat. Pi then chooses to eliminate all personal boundaries, due to his incredible will to survive. Finally, he chooses to view all of the people on the life boat as animals in order to cope with the psychological distress of being lost at sea. When faced with choices, Pi puts all morals behind him to survive.
We, as humans, often underestimate the fragility of our morals and “humanity”. In Life of Pi, author Yann Martel tells the story of a young boy named Pi who, after being shipwrecked and losing his entire family, must somehow survive in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with a grown tiger for days on end by abandoning all the morals he once valued. Through Pi’s story, Martel shows how easily humans can become akin to animals when finding themselves in a desperate situation.
One rule to writing a good book is to have a character that will inspire the readers. A character that will show the right from wrong, and bravery and strength in a tough situation. Life of Pi displays that through a character named Pi Patel. He was at sea with his family who planned on setting sail from India to Canada was for political freedom. However on this journey the ship suffered a storm and many were killed, including Pi’s family. He survived the accident. All Pi had was some water, food, small boat, and a tiger. At first Pi tried to get rid of the tiger and kill the tiger, but they got to know each other and trust each other and became all each other had. Pi went through a lot of hardship being out at sea with barely any food or water or people to talk to besides Richard Parker but he stayed strong through it and
“When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves.” This excerpt by Austrian psychologist and Holocaust Survivor Viktor E. Frankl describes the very essence of the Life of Pi. Piscine Molitor Patel is burdened with this idea of change and, as a result, is forced to completely alter his way of life. He adopts a new religion of survival; one with no limits or boundaries, only desperation to prosper. Pi undergoes a transformation that mimics a religious conversion to savagery during his time in unintended exile.
In drastic situations, human psychology uses coping mechanisms to help them through it. In the novel, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Pi’s coping mechanism is his religions and his projection of Richard Parker. Martel’s Life of Pi shows how the projection of Richard Parker played a greater role in keeping Pi alive in comparison to his beliefs in his religions. During the period in which Pi was stranded on the lifeboat, Richard Parker kept Pi aware, helped Pi make the right decisions, and was Pi’s sub-consciousness.
Imagine being stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in a lifeboat, not alone but with some carnivorous animals, as company. The chances of survival do not seem so high, but when one has the will to survive, they can do anything to attain it. Pi Patel and his family are on their way to Canada from Pondicherry, India, when their cargo ship the Tsimtsum sinks. Pi is not the only survivor of the ship, along with him is a hyena, an injured zebra, an orangutan and a 450-pound orange Bengal tiger. Pi travels across the Pacific Ocean in only a lifeboat, with food dwindling quickly, he needs to find land and most of all survive the voyage. In Life of Pi; Yann Martel develops the idea that having the will to survive is a crucial key to survival; this is demonstrated through symbolism of the colour orange, having religion on the protagonist’s side and the thirst and hunger experienced by the protagonist.