Sunday, November 25, 2012

Doug Reviews Life of Pi


Ugh. I’ve tried to write this blog five times. It just isn’t happening. A friend of mine recommended I write about Life of Pi. It is one of my favorite books, and now after seeing the movie yesterday, on my top movies list as well. I am now simply lost in trying to review something so meaningful to me at a personal level.

Christmas time, five years ago, my brother introduced me to a book he had just read called Life of Pi. He has impeccable taste in literature (I mean, he’s read virtually everything, so he ought to have an idea of what does and does not suck). I bought the book and read it over the course of about four days. The story spoke to me in a way I’d been searching for. You can imagine my excitement/trepidation when I learned the book was being made into a movie.

Excited to see the story in film, nervous that like so often is the case, the translation to the big screen would lose the most important essence of the book.

The book touts itself as a “story that will make you believe in God.”  

The story is basically a two hundred plus page build up to a single point.  A quick Google search will show no shortage of interpretations of that one point. I once heard Rob Thomas (lead singer of Matchbox 20) explain that the power of a great song is often that it means different things to different people, and I think that explanation might hold up with Life of Pi.

But I’ll try to give you the real interpretation…

I should say here that I will do my best to avoid spoilers, but it will be difficult to not give some things away while discussing the book/movie. If you have not read the book or seen the film, maybe you ought to before reading this post.

Piscine’s name is important to the book. His nickname, Pi, is critical to the representation of life the main character plays. He plays all of humanity. He plays the numberless, infinite, irrational, imperfect and indescribable role of existence that we all face, just like his mathematical counterpart, p.

Pi introduces us to his life in Pondicherry, his experience growing up in a zoo, and his fascination with religion. Then, his family closes the zoo, sells the animals, and sails to Canada on a Japanese cargo ship. The ship sinks, and from there we are told two wildly different but eerily similar stories.

The first story is one of adventure and magic. It is an inspiring story of optimism and survival, of the promise of something better, and the assistance of heaven through mysticism and the supernatural.

The second story is much bleaker. It tells of the depths one must go to in order to survive. It speaks of shame and loneliness and the brutality of existence. There was no assistance from on high, just random luck, a fierceness to survive and a tiger like ferociousness necessary to overcome the hopelessness of existence.

At the center of it all is Richard Parker. In one story, he exists as a real life tiger to aide Pi in his survival, keep him company, ensure he is on constant alert, and provide him with a purpose. In the other story, Richard Parker exists only as a deep and primal part of Pi, an imagined embodiment of Pi’s strong instincts for survival. Whether in the boat or in Pi’s mind, Richard Parker is real enough to keep Pi alive.

The men interviewing Pi are asked the question, “Which story did you like better?” To which they reply, “The one with the Tiger.”

And so it goes with God. Even my Calvinist and Determinist friends will agree, we each get to choose the story we like best.   

There is a great quote early on in the book that was absent from the movie. In fact, the movie completely dropped the first Mr. Kumar, the teacher who professes to Pi his atheism. For me, Mr. Kumar’s role is crucial to the plot.

As Pi is adopting more and more practices from each of his religions, he discusses also the closeness he feels toward his atheist brothers and sisters. He then addresses agnosticism and doubt. For those of us who wrestle with doubt, he claims doubt is useful and we must all face it at some point. But then he says something that has stayed with me, to the point I don’t even need to look it up:

“To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.”

Regardless of which story we choose to believe, we must keep moving. That’s why I choose the story with the tiger. 

5 comments:

  1. "To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation."
    I want you to tell me more about what this means to you. I'm sure the meaning is obvious to most, but to me it makes no sense. I suspect it is because maybe we don't have the same idea of what it means to be a doubter/skeptic/atheist. I consider myself to be all of these things, and that these things have kept me moving forward in my personal growth.
    My idea of not moving forward is to stop and accept a questionable version of the truth. Truth is absolute. Truth is not open to interpretation. I would rather spend all my days searching, grasping, desperately drowning for a truth that never emerges, than to accept a version of reality that requires me to turn a blind eye to reason and rationality. That, to me, is moving forward.
    Pi tells two stories. He suggests the end result is the same, so deciding which tale to believe is a matter of personal existential preference. I disagree that anything can be gained by indulging in fantasy rather than embracing the cold hard truth. Yes, the truth is bleak and dark in the microcosm of Pi's specific set of events. But set against the big picture, the incredible fullness of being itself, we don't need delusions and animal fables to feel good about the universe. Well, I don't anyway.

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  2. I think we probably define the term agnostic differently. For me, Agnosticism is the belief that the reality of God is unknowable, therefore a pursuit unworthy of our time.

    Meanwhile, your skepticism/atheism seems a heartfelt statement of existentialism born of many hours contemplating, studying, reading about and discussing the meaning of life. Perhaps you have reached the conclusion that your morals come from a sense of being responsible for your own actions with neither hope for heavenly reward nor fear of eternal punishment.

    I guess my interpretation is that "doubt as a philosophy of life" means taking on a philosophy that it is all meaningless, and even if there were meaning, it wouldn't be possible for us to ever know what that meaning is. But you seem firm in your belief that we have no need for fables to dictate our being a positive addition to our species. I find very little doubt in your statement, and am comforted by it.

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  3. Ah, that clears up my confusion. You take "doubt as a philosophy of life" to mean nihilism. Is that the context of the quote? I can't remember. It's been 10 years since I read the novel. The idea of nihilism as a philosophy of life is certainly perplexing since self-destruction seems the only logical conclusion.
    As far as morality goes, I think people overestimate the extent to which post-life consequences affect their moral decision-making. I seriously doubt that if, hypothetically speaking, we all woke up tomorrow knowing there was no God/heaven/hell, that my Christian friends would start raping and murdering. You don't have to believe in a god to understand compassion. I read a Buddhist teacher who compared moral action to the left hand scratching the right hand. The left hand doesn't do this for reward or to avoid punishment. It scratches the other hand because they are both parts of a whole. But now I'm off topic...
    Back to Life of Pi...
    So how's this for another possible allegorical reading (SPOILERS):
    Richard Parker is strong, fierce, terrible, and magnificent. Pi desperately wants to look in Richard's eyes and see love, friendship, something. But his father reminds him that he is only seeing reflections of himself when he tries to look in Richard's eyes. Richard keeps Pi alive on the boat, sure. But in the end Richard vanishes into the jungle and Pi admits that Richard, both the good and the bad, was just something inside his own mind. In fact, the Richard fantasy just helped him justify and externalize the horrible things that Pi himself had done. Now replace the name Richard in the above sentences with the name God. Which story do you want to believe? Do you want to imbue the universe around you with human qualities, reflections of ourselves, and blame it for the good/bad? Or do you want to take responsibility for yourself and the effects of your own actions? The writer wants to believe in imaginary beings, sure. Humanity just isn't ready to accept responsibility for itself when it's far easier on the ego to see ourselves as the victims of supernatural circumstance.

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  4. In quick defense of nihilism...a wise man once said, "It is only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything."

    I think your commentary on morality is dead on. One of my closest friends is aggressively atheist. He is quick to point out how nervous it makes him that the only thing keeping Christians, Muslims and Jews from committing immoral acts is fear of angering God. It is a good point, but a simplistic one. My concern for morality comes from one of my favorite Buddhist idioms:

    Two monks were traveling when they came upon a fairly wide river. Upon crossing, they met a woman who needed to cross the river. The first monk refused, as it is forbidden to touch women. The second monk, without a moments hesitation, took the woman in his arms and carried her across the river.

    As they continued on their journey, the first monk grew increasingly irate. After they had traveled many miles past the river, the first monk finally erupted, chastising his companion for his sins.

    The second, and wiser, monk listened patiently to his brother. When the scolding ended, he replied, "Brother, I stopped carrying the woman at the bank of the river. Why do you continue to carry her?"

    For me, this speaks to the hypocritical nature in us all, theist or atheist. We can get so caught up in the ways others "don't truly live their beliefs" that it can destroy our sense of peace and personal balance.

    Sorry about the digression. I agree with you. The point the author is trying to make is that the reality of existence without God can appear cold, harsh, and lonely. The version of the story with God in it can be inspiring, comforting and just that: a story.

    His point is we get to choose which story we like better.

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  5. I love the monk anecdote. I made a rage comic on my blog of that very story (http://anattapunk.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/carrywomanrage1.jpg). It won't make sense if you aren't familiar with the medium.
    I'm not sure Tyler Durden was a nihilist or wise, but that's a great line from another great book/movie combo. When will Doug review Fight Club?
    Back to Pi. Are we talking about which version of the story we like better? Or which story we choose to believe? Can we like one while believing the other?
    Or consider this hypothetical premise. A person who sees a world without God as cold, harsh, and lonely has never given up on the idea that God is the source of warmth, comfort, and love. (Why else would warmth, comfort and love fly the coop as soon as God is taken out of the equation?) So the cold harsh lonely version is actually just the logical inverse of the God version. In other words, choosing between these stories isn't like choosing between apples and oranges... It's more like choosing between apples and things that aren't not-apples; i.e. not really a choice at all.
    Haha that's terribly wordy and probably makes no sense.

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