Friday 13 May 2016

Sceptics and Tigers...living both Mythology and Science in the Life of Pi.






The Life of Pi in both film and novel offers a unique perspective it enables its central character to both live scientifically and mythologically. It reminds me of my own position both as being who cannot imagine or perceive a non material existence and yet all my experiences and observations lead to me to the wonder of a sense of being that is non material. I like Derrida am both an atheist and not an atheist.

Pi`s favourite teacher at school is a biologist and atheist and clearly advocates a scientific and material basis for reality. Pi knows that it is science that teaches us how to survive in the world yet he still has an overwhelming sense of what we could call mythology and magic.. He acknowledges that science explains much of the world and yet it can go only so far, Science is good at what it does but only to a point. At that point usefulness ends and only mythology and spirituality can then help us live fully.

The two character Pi and Richard Thomas the tiger occupy the two sided of the life boat and represent the duality or clash between science and spirituality. In a very explicit way they form an allegory of pi`s spiritual journey. In one half of the lifeboat is Richard Parker. A pure and beautiful animal, and in the other half Pi, a boy who is so religious that he takes on board three faiths at once.. The purpose of the 227 day journey across the Pacific is the reconciliation of the two halves that are found within Pi science and faith.

For survival pi must be a scientist, an animal trainer, in some ways he must become an animal himself to do what he has to do to survive. This part of him is dominant while on the lifeboat. He notices each day how he becomes more like Richard Parker at both the same time and particularly in the worst times.. Pi tries to keep alive his sense of spirituality and wonder at the lowest points and seeks the divine in the world of nature.

There is a complicated point of view seen in the text that illustrates these themes. It begins with a first person narrative about a writer having trouble writing his next novel. There is a coffee ship in Pondicherry where the novelist meets an old man who says he knows a story that will make the writer believe in a spiritual reality. The man send the novelist to Canada to meet a Mr Patel whose story this is. The them of meeting an old man, a psycho pomp comes straight out of a spiritual and mythological genre. The man is lost, his creativity is gone and the story is as old as the Fisher King tradition.

From this point on we expect a detached story in which the novelist tells someone elses` story or a third persons account. Instead we can a first person account by pi or as he called here Mr Patel. We experience the shift of awareness as we move from the bland name patel to the intimacy of Pi. In maths Pi is a constant essential for calculation and yet we can never find its exact value. Perhaps ideally suited for a metaphor or metonymy of the link between science and mythology. Throughout the story the novelist breaks into Pi`s account several times reminding us that he is there, mediating the story to us. pi`s and Richard Parker's story end when they reach Mexico. In Buddhism a metaphor of crossing a vast sea is often used to illustrate the concept of reaching nirvana.

When we read the book we are given the same test that the investigators are given. Which story do you prefer? And why do we choose as we do? Is it that we believe in spirituality and the divine in the same way that we believe fiction because it makes a better story? And if so is there anything wrong with that? I will leave the last word to Derrida when he says 'The Animal That Therefore I Am'






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