Transcript:
Today we will return to an idea presented earlier two weeks ago the lesson titled, “The Truth of Myth,” in which we presented the idea that nonfiction presents truth objectively, but that fiction and mythology, though objectively true, present a subjective truth that often feels even more deeply accurate than true stories. To do so we will dive deeply into the story of the popular book and film called, “Life of Pi.”
Q: Why are we so willing to suspend our disbelief?
The reason I love Life of Pi is it really gets to the heart of a critical question I faced when I studied Animation. Q: Why are we so willing to suspend our disbelief in films completely filled with implausible contents and built on impossible premises? Films with talking animals for example. We know that animals can’t talk, so how are we able to empathize so deeply with the characters in Zootopia? We know humans can’t fly. Yet we all love the Avengers. Dragons, wizards, and aliens don’t exist and maybe they never will, yet our ancestors have been telling stories about them since the dawn of time.
Spoiler Alert
If you have not watched or read Life of Pi, then I have to warn you, this could spoil what would have otherwise have been a really great puzzle. Listening to me break it down means you will miss that chance to try and figure it out for yourself, but even if you know what is going to happen before it does, it is still a very enjoyable film. It is my firm belief that you can’t really spoil a great film, because knowing the plot does not really take away from the emotional experience. If it did, then none of us would ever watch a film twice, and so many of us love to watch our favorite films again and again even if we already know what will happen.
Synopsis of Life of Pi
There are three main parts to the story. In the first part Pi, a young Indian boy who loves religion grows up in a family that owns a zoo. Pi takes care of and befriends some of the animals in the zoo including a female orangutan named, Orange Juice, and a far more dangerous animal, the tiger named Richard Parker. He also feels a lot of pressure from his father who runs the zoo and questions Pi’s commitment to various religions. Circumstances then force his family to transport all of their zoo animals to North America on a Japanese cargot boat. While at sea Pi meets an extremely rude brutish sailor from France, and a happy budhist who offers some help to his family after they are treated offensively by the sailor.
While transporting the animals across the ocean the Japanese cargot boat gets shipwrecked, Pi loses his family and gets stranded onto a lifeboat with some strangely familiar yet primitive survivors.
Pi is not alone. He brings the female orangutan, Orange Juice, on board as well an injured and slowly dying zebra. He also has a dangerous hyena on board which threatens to eat the zebra. After it is attacked by Orange Juice, the hyena then fatally wounds the orangutan. But the carnage does not end there, because Pi has one more guest who has been hiding deep inside the lifeboat. Just before the hyena can fight to the death with Pi, the tiger Richard Parker then strikes out and kills the hyena!
The remainder of the story deals mostly with Pi learning how to survive this perilous journey on a boat together with a deadly tiger. He has to simultaneously learn how to survive on very little resources and how to train Richard Parker. He comes very close to being killed, dying of starvation, and dehydration.
At one point he says he cannot tell the difference between when he is awake, and when he is dreaming or hallucinating. At the point of starvation, and perhaps even madness, he and Richard Parker find a mysterious paradise island with no human inhabitants. There they are able to eat and drink fresh water. As he is eating he discovers a human tooth buried into some strange fruit from the island. Out of fear that the island itself will eat them he and Richard Parker abandon this deadly paradise and return to the sea.
There’s a great shot when they are leaving the island. Did you notice anything weird about the island’s silhouette? If you look back at the island when they are leaving it is shaped like a dead corpse lying on its back.
Eventually Pi washes up on shore and returns to civilization. The tiger escapes into the jungle. The story could end right there and I don’t think anyone would complain. The movie has some implausible elements for sure, but because the acting and effects are quite good, it’s hard not to get swept up in the story no matter how implausible living on a lifeboat with a tiger might seem. It already feels more realistic than watching any of Disney’s recent live action films.
Another Version of the Story
But then the movie surprises you at the very end. While Pi is in the hospital recovering he is visited by two Japanese men who work for the cargot boat’s insurance company. They interview him wanting to know what happened to the ship.
But Pi’s story sounds just far too implausible to them. They feel for him and they like his story, but they beg him to tell a story they won’t feel embarrassed to present to their superiors.
Pi warns them that this is the better story, but then proceeds to tell them an objective factual nonfiction version of the story.
He tells them that in fact it was his mother, the happy budhist, and the sailor who ended up stranded on the lifeboat. The happy buddhist was fatally injured. The brudish French sailor made a modest proposal that the sailor, Pi, and his mother eat the buddhist in order to survive. The mother was appalled and attacked the sailor. The sailor overreacted and then fatally struck Pi’s mother. Pi was so shocked at seeing his mother get attacked that he himself struck the sailor down and killed him.
The Parable
So just in case you don’t see the connection between the two stories, they are in fact the same story, but one of them has an additional character.
The dying zebra from the first version of the story is a parable for the happy buddhist in the second version of the story. Orange Juice, the female orangutan, is a parable representation of Pi’s mother. The hyena is the French sailor. Pi himself is in both versions of the story. But there is one more animal in the first version and no other characters in the second version. So who does Richard Parker, the tiger represent?
Monsters Are Real
The tiger represents the killer within Pi himself that took the life of the sailor. Pi says about Richard Parker that they were both raised by the same monster, lamenting the difficult way that his father taught such harsh life lessons. Pi was naive thinking of himself as only an innocent young boy who loved religion. He didn’t know to what extremes he would go to to survive. On one hand he thinks of himself as a devout young vegetarian faithful to more than one religion. Yet somehow he has to face up to the contradiction that he is also a monster with a murderous instinct for survival.
One of my students even said that the island itself could be a parable for Pi’s cannibalism! This would be too much for any moral civilized person to handle, so perhaps dividing himself into two characters was Pi’s way of coping with his own potential for animalistic evil.
The second version of the story is a far more grim and realistic story. It is a cold, violent, and abhorrent yet factual retelling. The Japanese investigators have to then decide, which is the better story? The subjectively mythological fiction told through the parables of people as animals? Or the objective version filled with violence?
Everyone likes the first version better. It makes for a greater movie. Even the Japanese insurance men choose to report the first version despite how it might threaten their credibility.
And so it is with God
In the beginning of the movie an atheist agrees to listen to this story because he is promised that it will make him believe in God. At the end there is a great line that Pi says to the atheist after telling him both versions of the story. He asks him which is the better story. The atheist agrees that the first version is better. And Pi responds, “And so it is with God.”
What do you think Pi meant by this statement?
If we look at the Bible, or religion more broadly, it’s hard to believe in these tales of Gods, demigods, human beings, and beasts all interacting with each other. Why tell the story so over dramatically? Isn’t this what makes it so difficult for rational people to have faith in God?
But what if a story like Adam & Eve, with its talking snake and strangely powerful forbidden fruit in a garden of paradise, is just a parable for a much more realistic and relatable event in human history? If the biblical version is more like the first telling of Pi’s story, what would a more realistic cold objective telling of Adam & Eve’s story look like?
The Bible tells its stories this way for the same reason that everyone agrees the first version of Pi’s story is the better story. It’s mysteriously fantastic, and by that I mean full of fantasy and epic imagery. It may seem far more epic than each of our own lives, but its tragedy makes it just human enough that any of us can relate to it. In reality, Adam and Eve may just be the story of two adolescents, with some potential to be special, trying to live up to the expectations placed on them by a benevolent father figure. They gave up us His protection for a moment’s temptation, which now leaves them exposed to the cruelties of nature. Has not every one of us at some point in our lives felt the shame of our shortcomings?
Our Lives Are Tragically Epic
Adam & Eve is the tragic origin story of humanity. But really it is my life and yours. But if our story has yet to be written and the ending is determined by our choices, perhaps our lives still have the potential to become epics about the redemption of humanity. Because though the Bible starts with tragedy, it doesn’t end with it.
Throughout the Bible, in the story of Life of Pi, and in the last book of the Bible, Revelations, we find monsters in the form of serpents, tigers, and dragons. If we have it within ourselves to face these evils and overcome them, perhaps we can aspire to restore humanity as each of us becomes the hero of our own epic.
Last Call
That’s it for today’s lesson. Be sure to return for the next lesson when we will explore Game Theory, the study of how to find the ultimate strategy in a competitive environment. If you would like to read a transcript for this lesson, see any of the previous lessons, or subscribe to the Best Class Ever podcast, you can find all of this and more at www.BestClassEver.org.
