I think it is possible to read Life of Pi as an "allegory of fear," so long as we take into consideration the multitude of things going on in Yann Martel's stunning novel.
It is true that fear is working its way into Pi's mind as he attempts to process the strange world around him. He presumably has great fear for his mother as he watches her meet her end on the raft. And soon,...
I think it is possible to read Life of Pi as an "allegory of fear," so long as we take into consideration the multitude of things going on in Yann Martel's stunning novel.
It is true that fear is working its way into Pi's mind as he attempts to process the strange world around him. He presumably has great fear for his mother as he watches her meet her end on the raft. And soon, he inherits the sum total of what fear remains, as he wonders whether or not he will survive. I think another important topic in Martel's work is trauma, and the curious way that the human brain works when it is subjected to intense duress.
In the novel, Pi conjures up a world that might be fabricated purely from trauma. But his ultimate thesis is that the "fabricated" world may not be any less real than the "real" one. A boy alone on a raft exists only in the reality his mind creates; this is the fundamental teaching of phenomenology.
And in this fantasy world, we come across a third fear that is more abstract; the fear he has for Richard Parker, which ultimately, is the fear he has of himself. And so our "Man vs. Wild" narrative gets curiously intermingled with a "Man vs. Self" story line, where the wild is the self, and proves just as terrifying in either format.
Yes, fear is a central theme to Martel, taking its place alongside trauma, spirituality, imagination, and grief.
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