NOT using the
panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in Dublin,
Ireland in August 2019 (to which I be unable to go (until I retire from education)),
I would jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF
DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. But not today. This explanation
is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes
reviewing books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of
mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…
My wife and I
recently re-watched the movie version of the turn of the century philosophical novel
written by Yann Martell. Various interpretations of “what it means” range from “[A]
head-scratching combination of dense religious allegory, zoological lore, and
enthralling adventure tale, written with warmth and grace.” to “an elegant
proof of God, and the power of storytelling.” to “…Life of Pi sucks…”
Clearly, Yann
Martel did exactly what an author is supposed to do: elicit intense emotions.
For myself, I
haven’t read the novel, but based on my quick reading of the Wikipedia entry,
the movie closely follows the book with the exception of “…another blind
castaway, a Frenchman, who boards the lifeboat with the intention of killing
and eating Pi, but is immediately killed by Richard Parker…”
For me, the story
is a fantasy, no less real that JRR Tolkien’s THE HOBBIT because according to
Melissa McPhail, fantasy is “…an ever-shifting metaphor for life in this world,
an innocuous medium that allows the author to examine difficult, even
controversial, subjects with impunity. Honor, religion, politics, nobility,
integrity, greed—we’ve an endless list of ideals to be dissected and explored.
And maybe learned from.” (https://melissamcphail.com/exploring-tropes-the-ultimate-evil-dark-lord/,
blog post from October of 2012).
Despite its
fascinating premise, a sort of story-within-story one of which is something
approaching realistic in which survivors from the sunken cargo ship, “Tsimtsum,
a Japanese freighter that is transporting animals from their zoo to North
America” are in a lifeboat and the cook murders and cannibalizes two of them,
then makes peace with the boy Pi until starving and with ultimate irony, the
boy kills and eats him.
The fantasy comes
when the humans are replaced by animals – a hyena, a zebra, and an orangutan…the
hyena kills and eats both the zebra and the orangutan. A tiger, suddenly emerging
from hiding…kills and eats the hyena,” leaving Pi alone to come to an eventual
peace until they run aground in Mexico and the tiger vanishes. (The Frenchman perhaps
assumes the identity of the whale who destroys Pi’s supplies and precipitates
another disaster…)
Psychologically,
the most profound event in the movie (and perhaps the book, I’ll add it to my
growing pile of “things I should read”) is totally glossed over as a motivation
for what happens. If the orangutan does in fact represent his mother, Pi not
only witnesses the brutal murder of his
mother and her horrific consumption by the cook (and it’s virtually guaranteed
that he eats all of the flesh RAW); but it creates in him a rage so huge that the
animal he assigns to that rage is a Bengal tiger.
A Bengal tiger
ranks among the largest cats today, and is considered to be a of a group of
animals so impressive that their images are invoked to save other creatures
less worthy of rescue. Among these “charismatic megafauna” are the African
elephant, the Humpback Whale, the bald eagle, the giant panda, penguins, and
other animals guaranteed to create a sigh or a “wow!” from humans targeted to
support environmental concerns. It does seem logical that people are less
inspired to “Save the Royal Marstonian Snail!” or “Save the Lobed Star Coral!”,
than they are to “Save the Bengal Tiger!”
At any rate, while
a truly magnificent animal, it too is on the Endangered Species list and while
Pi imagines(?) it killing and devouring the hyena, he imagines not only himself
as a Bengal tiger, but he sees in himself that thoughtless response (aka animal
instinct) and sees himself as an animal, slaughtering the cook, who is a hideous
murderer and cannibal.
Here, despite all
the glowing reviews, I wonder if Yann Martel’s purpose was to show that Humans
are indeed simply animals. Just under the surface of our civilized manners, in
fact hiding our true nature from ourselves (religious, areligious, brilliantly
scientific, or functionally illiterate) we are little more than one of many
kinds of killing machines – from virus to Spinosaurus.
In fact, despite
the howls against the cruelty of Humanity by proponents and members of the
National Wildlife Federation, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the
Animal Welfare Institute, PetPedia, and the International Union for
Conservation of Nature; every one of the earnest individuals who serve, agree
with, and support their conservation efforts – stand on the shoulders of
Humans who slaughtered their way to planetary dominance.
There is no
escaping that, not even, Yann implies, in the middle of the ocean. Here is a
boy who goes from being a vegetarian, skips lightly over pescatarianism,
and lands with both feet firmly on outright cannibalism.
The person telling
the story, revealed both at the beginning and the end as a highly civilized, moral Human, one Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, who is married with two children
and living (of ALL of the common sense and pacifistic countries), CANADA!
Yet, unless you sit
and think about it, you don’t connect this soft-spoken man hosting a guest as
the man-after-the-boy who deliberately and possibly in a blind rage, killed and ate another Human being.
Ultimately THE
LIFE OF PI isn’t about God as the author Yann claims in the introduction when he writes, “This
book will make you believe in God.”
Critic Cath Murphy
goes on to say, “It’s a big claim to make. If asked which book was responsible
for the highest number of Road to Damascus moments, most people would probably
suggest the Bible, or the Koran, or even The Tao of Pooh.
“Yet this is the
claim made by Yann Martel in the prologue to his Booker Prize winning, best-selling,
world changing novel Life of Pi…Silly is the word which came right
into my head when I tried to sum up how I felt about this book. [Yann] might have overstated the power of his tale to
inspire religious belief.”
It's my thought
that the book is about us and any lofty ideal we try to espouse. It
appears to me to be a consideration of just how close Humanity remains to being
nothing but a tribe of amoral, spiritless, sometimes-thinking animals…
How’s THAT for “examin[ing]
difficult, even controversial, subjects with impunity”?
Resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_of_Pi,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_of_Pi_(film),
https://litreactor.com/columns/your-favorite-book-sucks-life-of-pi,
https://awionline.org/content/list-endangered-species,
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