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When the Iceberg Falls Apart
If humans were given the choice between two stories,
which ones would be picked? In this instance, a story
isn't something told before bedtime. A story is being
used as a perception of life. The definition of a good
story depends on person to person, but one novel
claims otherwise. Yann Martel's novel Life of Pi is
about a young man, Pi Patel, and his family who are
immigrating to Canada via ship. A devastating
shipwreck Pi stranded at sea with various animals,
including a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. This
paper breaks down the novel using psychoanalysis.
Psychoanalytic criticism consists of the iceberg model
which consists of five elements; consciousness,
unconsciousness, id, superego, and ego. The id is a
human's inner survival instincts and innate desires
which are suppressed in the unconsciousness. The
superego consists of one's morality and values always
present in the consciousness. Lastly, the ego balances
the other two, and places parts of itself in both the
consciousness and unconsciousness. Life of Pi exposes
the interactions between the id, ego, and superego in
relation through the broader concept of storytelling,
to depict the compelling use of psychotherapy.
As a response to the knowledge that one might die,
Pi's id overrides his superego, and gradually his ego,
until the novel exposes the way the mind is unable to
control how information is processed and acted upon.
When Pi finally takes notice of the boat, he remarks
"It seemed orange - such nice Hindu color - is the
color of survival because the whole inside of the boat
and the tarpaulin and the life jackets and the
lifebuoy and the oars and most every other significant
object aboard was orange" (Martel 328). If orange is
meant to symbolize survival, then so would the orange
Richard Parker. In the case of Freudian psychology,
Richard Parker would be a representation of the id.
The tiger jumping from its hidden location in the boat
and taking control parallels the id being unleashed
from the unconsciousness. Pi would then be a symbol
for the superego, since both their lack of action
emphasizes the power of the id and how it will do
whatever it takes to survive. The superego will resist
but it will soon accept its circumstances. Thus, the
irony when Pi says "It was Richard Parker who calmed
me down. It is the irony of this story that the one
who scared me witless to start with was the very same
one who brought me peace, purpose, I dare say even
wholeness" (Martel 378) makes perfect sense. Despite
being conflicting in nature, the id and superego are
part of the same iceberg and at a certain point, such
as imminent death, the superego will allow the id to
do what it must accomplish in order to survive. As a
result, Richard Parker begins to release prusten
around Pi. "Prusten is the quietest of tiger calls, a
puff through the nose to express friendliness and
harmless intentions" (Martel 380). Prusten is a sense
of understanding between the id and superego, which
the superego will later use. The same should not be
said for the ego. With the id tipping the power
dynamic of the iceberg, the ego is not maintaining
balance. It will resist the id from taking over. The
various tests that Pi attempts to tame Richard Parker
are similar to the various tests the ego will do in an
attempt to tame the id. The tone shift in the chapter
is critical in understanding the personalities of the
id and superego. The beginning is quite serious, like
the id, while the later taming sequences are more
humorous. We see shifts in the tone from the previous
quote about Richard Parker calming Pi down to quotes
like "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, without
further ado, it is my pleasure and honour to present
to you: THE PI PATEL, INDO-CANADIAN, TRANSPACIFIC,
FLOATING, CIRCUUUUUSSSSSSSSSSSS!!! TREEEEEE! TREEEEEE!
TREEEEEE! TREEEEEE! C! TREEEEEE!" (Martel 383-384).
Despite this Pi's final plane is "Plan Number Seven:
Keep Him Alive" (Martel 384) proving how the superego
will accept the reality of the situation.
Although the id took power from the superego at first,
Pi's superego slowly starts to act more like his id in
the consciousness so that the id is no longer needed,
and this allows the superego to remain morally good
but still survive. Soon Pi began to think about his
predicament and realized "There was not a shadow of
doubt about the matter: to leave the lifeboat meant
certain death. But what was staying aboard?" (Martel
346), with the lifeboat being his own id. With the id
in control, the superego is unable to perform its
functions of keeping its morals intact. When Pi breaks
down after killing his first sentient being, and
claims that he is "as guilty as Cain" (Martel 421),
his mind begins to realize that having the id in
control would kill Pi, even if he needs it. Luckily
Avinash de Sousa explains why the superego
relationship with the id is so special. "Freud gave
consciousness the quality and capacity to transform
experienced activity into unconscious states, similar
to how different forms of energy are interchanged in
physics. It could also play a part in inhibiting and
restricting certain thoughts from becoming conscious.
It also served the purpose of transforming quantities
of unconscious excitation into qualitative experiences
of pleasure and unpleasure" (de Sousa). This could
also mean that for select occasions the superego could
begin acting like the id. This would not mean that the
superego would turn into the id, but rather it would
perform the duties of both. Toward the end of the
novel, Pi takes notice of how the color of the boat
changes and says, "What was orange became whitish
orange" (Martel 552). White is meant to be the color
of purity, an aspect that the superego always fights
to keep intact. Though the orange still remains. This
is meant to explain two things. The first is that the
id is still very much present in the consciousness,
but it is more dormant. The second is the fact that
the superego is now beginning to adapt to the id's
traits and will begin to perform its duties as well.
That is why there is an evidently stark contrast
between the tone when Pi kills his first fish and when
Pi kills the turtle in the latter part of the book.
There he makes points such as "Green sea turtles gave
more meat than hawksbills, and their belly shells were
thinner. But they tended to be bigger than hawksbills,
often too big to lift out of the water for the
weakened castaway that I became" (Martel 449). The
tone went from gloomy to almost technical. Despite
Pi's strong values which he still holds, he has
descended so far down that the idea of eating the
animals has risen from his unconsciousness to the
point where it has become second nature. These
instincts exist inside each human in order to help us
survive, but in actuality, humans repress these
instincts because normally we don't need them. For
some people like Pi, the superego is too powerful. If
the id were to ever come into full power, it could
completely destroy the mind.
Due to the imbalance between the id and the superego,
Pi's ego is unable to complete its duty of balancing
his impulses in regards to understanding the mind's
needs in relation to the situation, further depicting
the consequences of having a static ego. At the
beginning of the story, it is probably accurate to say
that Pi's superego is the most dominant personality.
When this happens, the person is far too moralistic,
and would always turn himself or herself away from
anything he or she deems wrong. In this story that did
not matter, because Pi's ego was able to keep his
superego in check. However, Martel creates the story
so that over time, we get a sense that Pi is becoming
weaker. This is because his ego no longer has any
grasp over Pi's impulses. The id, and later the
superego which begins acting like the id, come into
power, and this makes Pi wilder. The ego is still part
of this iceberg, thus is still aware of what is
happening, and this is destroying Pi. Kendra Cherry
explains that if the ego was in control "An individual
with this type of personality might be so tied to
reality, rules, and appropriateness that they are
unable to engage in any type of spontaneous or
unexpected behavior. This individual may seem very
concrete and rigid, incapable of accepting change and
lacking an internal sense of right from wrong"
(Cherry). Too much of the ego is clearly the bad
thing, but now it is necessary to consider what would
happen if the ego wasn't there. There would be too
many spontaneous decisions, and there would be no
regard to the outcomes of those decisions or any clear
reasoning that would help to deal with those outcomes.
If the individual was too concrete, they would unable
to process their situations. The reason why most
humans do not have to face this problem is that their
ego was always there to complete these tasks. It would
be disastrous for the ego to remain static. When Pi is
talking to the Japanese inspectors at the end of the
novel, he exclaims in an outburst "I applied reason at
every moment. The reason is excellent for getting
food, clothing, and shelter. The reason is the very
best tool kit. Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers
away. But be excessively reasonable and you risk
throwing out the universe with the bathwater" (Martel
672). Pi isn't actually trying to talk to the
inspectors, but rather to his own ego and try to
console it. The comedy at the scene with the Japanese
inspectors is one of the most important moments of the
film. Pi obsessing over their food is how he is able
to control himself. Now that he has a constant supply
of food Pi is reminding his ego that his instincts are
no longer needed. Thus hiding all of the cookies under
the bedsheets are symbolic of repressing instincts
into the unconsciousness once again. Pi is begging the
ego to take control once again because the ego is the
part of our mind that allows us to move forward in
life.
Pi's mind utilized imagination to create a story that
can protect its ego from the aftermath of what the id
and ego must do in order to survive, in an attempt to
establish the essentiality of storytelling. Rebecca
Duncan said, "Beyond lending credibility in a
traditional sense, Pi's narrative strategies
illustrate the potential of the concept of
Nachtraglichkeit to investigate the fluid identity and
perceptions of the postmodern survivor" (Duncan 272).
Most humans stacks layers of information on each
other, and they are unable to get a clear perception
of their world. Martel uses religious motifs to
explain how Pi is different from other people. Early
on Pi takes notice of the area surrounding the town he
is in, and says "The hill on the right, across the
river from the hotel, had a Hindu temple high on its
side; the hill in the middle, further away, held up a
mosque, while the hill on the left was crowned with a
Christian church" (Martel 136). The idea of Pi
following three religions, or three different stories,
was used to explain that Pi has the ability to lay
stacks of information side by side. This way he has
the ability to view different perceptions of life at
the same time. As a result, Pi owns a strong
imagination, which he uses to create his own story. He
chooses to create the fictional story with all the
animals, which the audience learns at the end is
perfectly parallel to the second story he tells the
Japanese inspectors. Pi even says "the agnostic, if he
stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays
beholden to dry, yeastless faculty, might try to
explain the warm light bathing him by saying,
'Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain,'
and, to the very end lack imagination and miss the
better story" (Martel 164) which is meant to explain
the dangers of believing in no story. Not only will
the yeastless version waste everybody's time, it does
not have the capacity to give someone their sense of
life. Greg Wilson claims "In many ways, Yann Martel's
Life of Pi is a blend of two seemingly contradictory
metafictional breeds, both of which ultimately address
the notions of truth and reality in storytelling"
(Wilson 201). Martel is claiming that Pi has the
greatest possible human mind. Through whichever angle
or lens Pi wishes to perceive life, his mind can do it
because it can balance the perfect picture of reality
and fiction. Pi recalls a moment with his professors
and a zebra where "Mr. Kumar said, 'Equus burchelli
boehmi.' Mr. Kumar said, 'Allahu akbar.' I said, 'It's
very pretty'" (Martel 146). Like most of the people
around Pi, society normally typically forces everyone
to view it through a single lens, believing it is not
normal to place different kinds of information side by
side. Life of Pi proves that each human has the
ability to see through multiple angles and follow each
one side by side, without consequences.
In choosing to believe in the other story, the Pi's
mind is able to undergo psychotherapy which allows the
id, ego, and superego to return to the usual states.
Rebecca Duncan states "Through fictional strategies,
Martel engages with, yet radically reshapes, the
survivor narrative, using metafictional and self
reflexive dimensions to suggest that a survivor must
not only survive the crisis but also come to terms
with the consequences of having survived" (Duncan
268). This ends up creating one of the significant
moments of the novel; Pi's question of "'So tell me,
since it makes no factual difference to you and you
can't answer the question either way, which story do
you prefer?'" (Martel 706). Pi still isn't really
speaking to the officers, but himself. Pi's ego now
has now been given choice. The counterpart to the
story with the animals is the utterly terrifying story
with the humans. That version is the true story, and
no ego can disregard the reality. However, the story
with the animals is fake but greatly overlaps with the
true story. The fictional story can protect Pi for the
rest of his life, if his ego chooses that version.
Elizabeth Palmberg concludes "By the end, Pi's belief
in God and love has been honed down to a stark,
unhopeful, desperate need for God and love - or for
storytelling, which Martel seems to regard as the same
thing" (Palmberg 206). The novel was framed with the
idea that Pi would be retelling his stories to an
author, who has been widely speculated to be based on
Yann Martel himself. Spreading the strength of
storytelling was Martel's main goal throughout the
novel. For any person, the trauma is told through a
story in order to begin the psychotherapy that will
calm the ego down. This psychotherapy is a choice. One
choice can shred someone to pieces, and the other can
allow people to pick themselves up once more. All this
power is held through a choice of two stories. It is a
concept that is used universally, can be implemented
in ways that even save lives.
Life of Pi tells a story about stories as a Freudian
work of the id, ego, and superego in psychotherapy. In
a life-threatening moment, the relationship of the id,
ego, and superego can save and destroy someone.
Stories are the cure that can bring that person back.
They are so simple, yet Life of Pi uses their
simplicity to its advantage. Martel advocates that
there's nothing more powerful than a story. Stories
guide people and take them on journeys of emotions.
They can also be the most potent defense mechanism.
Whichever story that one picks to define their life
will expose them to many dangers, and protect them
from many evils as well.
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