The Life of Pi Essays

The Life of Pi Essays The Life of Pi Paper The Life of Pi Paper Essay Topic: Life Of Pi The book Life of Pi by Yann Martel is a story about a young Indian boy named Piscine Molitor Patel and his Journey stranded in a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean with only a tiger, Richard Parker. The Japanese cargo ship carrying his fathers zoo animals, his family, and workers, was traveling from India to Canada, where the Patels hoped to start a new life. Unfortunately, the ship sank from an unknown cause and Pi along with a tiger, orangutan, zebra, and hyena were the only survivors of the wreck. Eventually, Pi and Richard Parker were the last ones remaining. A part in the book hat really stuck out to me was in the beginning of the book where Piscene, known to all as P' (Martel, 22), was in Pondicherry, India with a strong desire to learn about different religions. Although the rest of his family believed they didnt need religion, Pi went his own way and let his curiosity get the best of him. His first religion was Hindu. Later, along with Hinduism, he practiced Christianity. Finally, he added Islam to his list of practicing faiths. I admire his steady devotion for learning about the different religions. Pi would show up as often as he could with a new question urning within him. I want to become more like P, having a strong desire and fascination to learn something new. In my opinion, it is one of the most fascinating quests in life. Practicing three different religions caused a lot of trouble between his family and his different religious leaders, who together all found out he was devout in all three sects. After much arguing between the pastor, imam, and pandit of which church he should Join, saying he must only choose one, Pis mother turned to him and asked what his thoughts were. Pi responded by saying, Bapu Ghandi said, All religions are true. I Just want to love God (Martel, 69). Whether your desire is to love God or something else, it is important to Just have that desire. Without it, what is the purpose of existing? From this, I was reminded that it is important to learn as much as you can and that it is okay to still be confused about life, for that will only help you to understand it more so long as you have a deep desire to understand, Just like Pl. I loved the way Martel opened my eyes showing me a new and positive perspective on such an abstract subject: the beauty of the relationship between life and death. I have never thought of this relationship as one being beautiful, nor have I ever sympathized with death before happening upon this quote. The reason death sticks so closely to life isnt biological necessity†its envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a Jealous, possessive love that grabs at whatever it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud (Martel, 6). The way he personifies life and death is truly a delightful image to apprehend. I wish I could sit down with he author and discuss this further over some tea. For the topic of life and death being one of the most fascinating and complex ideas known to mankind, he seems to have a lovely view on it. Martel describing life as being beautiful in a personified way enticed me to think about it in a way I havent before. I realized that yes life is indeed very beautiful; its stunning. Life is a sacred gift given to each of us and though we have the agency to spend it as we choose, I prefer to spend it wisely and with gratitude, not wasting a moment dwelling on anything that would not benefit or make ay Journey, Pi was interviewed in the hospital by two men from the Japanese Ministry of Transport who were hoping to find the cause of the sinking cargo ship. Pi told them the story of his Journey. In his story, he noticed the cargo ship was starting to sink in the midst of a terrible storm. He frantically alerted the crewmembers, which only spoke Chinese. They put a life Jacket on him and tossed him into the lifeboat, where a tiger was hiding under the tarpaulin. Soon after, a zebra Jumped in breaking its leg on the landing followed by a hyena. After the ship had sunk, an rangutan appeared floating on a large bundle of bananas. Because the zebra was helpless, the hyena decided to start eating it. This upset the orangutan, but it couldnt put up with a fght against the vicious, starving hyena. Once the hyena was finished eating what it could of the zebra and orangutan, the Bengal tiger also known as Richard Parker, attacked the hyena, which hopelessly surrendered. The Japanese men didnt believe him. They found it impossible that there could have been a tiger on the lifeboat and that an orangutan floated its way to the lifeboat on a bundle of ananas, saying that bananas dont even float. To test the validity of the story, Pi insisted that they fill the nearby sink with water and a bundle of bananas. To their surprise, the bananas floated. Still, they had plenty of doubts. The Japanese men wanted to bring back a story that was more believable. So, Pi told a different story. Instead of a hyena, it was the cook; his mother took place of the orangutan, and the sailor represented the zebra. He paralleled his original story to the second one, in disturbing, graphic detail. Instead of the hyena killing and eating the zebra and rangutan, it was the cook who killed and ate the sailor and his mother; instead of Richard Parker killing the hyena, it was Pi who killed the cook. The two men decided that they liked the first story more. Pi represented himself as Richard Parker. I am still struggling to figure out what the stories mean, especially the one about the Meerkat Island, where Pi and Richard Parker drifted to an island covered in algae and populated with thousands of meerkats. One night, after a few weeks of making themselves feel at home, Pi noticed something strange as he was getting his bed situated in a tree. As it got dark, all of the meerkats ran towards the forest and up the trees. He started to wonder why they were all frantically running away until he saw many dead fish floating to the top of one of the fresh water ponds. Meanwhile, Richard Parker slept in the lifeboat. It turned out that at night, the ground scorched their feet. In the morning, Pi noticed some fruit wrapped in vines and leaves hanging in only one specific tree and Just a small part of it. He climbed up the tree to pick one of the fruit, but as he unraveled the leaves, he found something else: a human tooth. Puzzled, he checked the rest of them. There were a total of thirty-two rotting human teeth. This caused him to suspect that the island was carnivorous and that an unlucky soul must have found the island but made the mistake of staying too long. Pi took this as his sign to leave the island and continue on his way in the Pacific. Though I dont know the meaning of some of these stories, I do have an idea that the Bengal tiger represents Pis animal instinct. With this in mind, I find it interesting that the only time Pi and Richard Parker were separated was when they were on the island. They were rarely seen together and Richard Parker even slept in the boat off the shore of the island while Pi slept high in a tree. But once he left the island, he and have survived. For example, on the Journey he had to apply it by killing and eating fish, which as a vegetarian he had never thought he would do. Life of Pi challenged me to think in ways I normally wouldnt. It took me out of my happy, blessed world, and instead put me in one life-threatening situation after another. Every time an event would happen in the book, I had to stop for a moment and ponder how I would have reacted or what I would have done in Pis position. Its easy for me to say that I would never hurt a living soul such as a fish even if I were under the influence of starvation, but maybe I would be so desperate that I wouldnt have to think twice. I certainly know I wouldnt be able to last as long as P. I think part of what helped him survive was his task of keeping Richard Parker alive. It gave him a sense of purpose and a reason to continue living. Perhaps it is important that I find my Richard Parker so that I may have a purpose to living a satisfying life. Martel, Yann. Life of Pi: A Novel. New York: Harcourt, 2001. Print.

A Beginners Guide to the Enlightenment

A Beginners Guide to the Enlightenment The Enlightenment has been defined in many different ways, but at its broadest was a philosophical, intellectual and cultural movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It stressed reason, logic, criticism, and freedom of thought over dogma, blind faith, and superstition. Logic wasn’t a new invention, having been used by the ancient Greeks, but it was now included in a worldview which argued that empirical observation and the examination of human life could reveal the truth behind human society and self, as well as the universe. All were deemed to be rational and understandable. The Enlightenment held that there could be a science of man  and that the history of mankind was one of progress, which could be continued with the right thinking. Consequently, the Enlightenment also argued that human life and character could be improved through the use of education and reason. The mechanistic universe – that is to say, the universe when considered to be a functioning machine – could also be altered. The Enlightenment thus brought interested thinkers into direct conflict with the political and religious establishment; these thinkers have even been described as intellectual â€Å"terrorists† against the norm. They challenged religion with the scientific method, often instead favoring deism. The Enlightenment thinkers wanted to do more than understand, they wanted to change for, as they believed, the better: they thought reason and science would improve lives. When Was the Enlightenment? There is no definitive starting or ending point for the Enlightenment, which leads many works to simply say it was a seventeenth and eighteenth-century phenomena. Certainly, the key era was the second half of the seventeenth century and almost all of the eighteenth. When historians have given dates, the English Civil wars and revolutions are sometimes given as the start, as they influenced Thomas Hobbes and one of the Enlightenment’s (and indeed Europe’s) key political works, Leviathan. Hobbes felt that the old political system had contributed to the bloody civil wars and searched for a new one, based on the rationality of scientific inquiry. The end is usually given as either the death of Voltaire, one of the key Enlightenment figures, or the start of the French Revolution. This is often claimed to have marked the downfall of the Enlightenment, as attempts to rework Europe into a more logical and egalitarian system collapsed into bloodshed which killed leading writers. Its possible to say that we are still in the Enlightenment, as we still have many of the benefits of their development, but Ive also seen it said were in a post-Enlightenment age. These dates do not, in themselves, constitute a value judgment. Variations and Self-Consciousness One problem in defining the Enlightenment is that there was a great deal of divergence in the leading thinkers views, and it is important to recognize that they argued and debated with each other over the correct ways to think and proceed. Enlightenment views also varied geographically, with thinkers in different countries going in slightly different ways. For instance, the search for a â€Å"science of man† led some thinkers to search for the physiology of a body without a soul, while others searched for answers to how humanity thought. Still, others tried to map humanity’s development from a primitive state, and others still looked at the economics and politics behind social interaction. This might have led to some historians wishing to drop the label Enlightenment were it not for the fact that the Enlightenment thinkers actually called their era one of Enlightenment. The thinkers believed that they were intellectually better off than many of their peers, who were still in a superstitious darkness, and they wished to literally ‘lighten’ them and their views. Kant’s key essay of the era, â€Å"Was ist Aufklrung† literally means â€Å"What is Enlightenment?†, and was one of a number of responses to a journal which had been trying to pin down a definition. Variations in thought are still seen as part of the general movement. Who Was Enlightened? The spearhead of the Enlightenment was a body of well-connected writers and thinkers from across Europe and North America who became known as the philosophes, which is the French for philosophers. These leading thinkers formulated, spread and debated the Enlightenment in works including, arguably the dominant text of the period, the Encyclopà ©die. Where historians once believed that the philosophes were the sole carriers of Enlightenment thought, they now generally accept that they were merely the vocal tip of a much more widespread intellectual awakening among the middle and upper classes, turning them into a new social force. These were professionals such as lawyers and administrators, office holders, higher clergy and landed aristocracy, and it was these who read the many volumes of Enlightenment writing, including the Encyclopà ©die and soaked up their thinking. Origins of the Enlightenment The scientific revolution of the seventeenth century shattered old systems of thinking  and allowed new ones to emerge. The teachings of the church and Bible, as well as the works of classical antiquity so beloved of the Renaissance, were suddenly found lacking when dealing with scientific developments. It became both necessary and possible for philosophes (Enlightenment thinkers) to begin applying the new scientific methods - where empirical observation was first applied to the physical universe - to the study of humanity itself to create a â€Å"science of man†. There was not a total break, as the Enlightenment thinkers still owed a lot to Renaissance humanists, but they believed they were undergoing a radical change from past thought. Historian Roy Porter has argued that what in effect happened during the Enlightenment was that the overarching Christian myths were replaced by new scientific ones. There is a lot to be said for this conclusion, and an examination of how science is being used by commentators does seem to greatly support it, although thats a highly controversial conclusion. Politics and Religion In general, Enlightenment thinkers argued for freedom of thought, religion, and politics. The philosophes were largely critical of Europe’s absolutist rulers, especially of the French government, but there was little consistency: Voltaire, critic of the French crown, spent some time at the court of Frederick II of Prussia, while Diderot traveled to Russia to work with Catherine the Great; both left disillusioned. Rousseau has attracted criticism, especially since World War 2, for appearing to call for authoritarian rule. On the other hand, liberty was widely espoused by Enlightenment thinkers, who were also largely against nationalism and more in favor of international and cosmopolitan thinking. The philosophes were deeply critical, indeed even openly hostile, to the organized religions of Europe, especially the Catholic Church whose priests, pope, and practices came in for severe criticism. The philosophes were not, with perhaps some exceptions like Voltaire at the end of his life, atheists, for many still believed in a god behind the mechanisms of the universe, but they railed against the perceived excesses and constraints of a church they attacked for using magic and superstition. Few Enlightenment thinkers attacked personal piety and many believed religion performed useful services. Indeed some, like Rousseau, were deeply religious, and others, like Locke, worked out a new form of rational Christianity; others became deists. It was not religion which irked them, but the forms and corruption of those religions. Effects of the Enlightenment The Enlightenment affected many areas of human existence, including politics; perhaps the most famous examples of the latter are the US Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. Parts of the French Revolution are often attributed to the Enlightenment, either as recognition or as a way to attack the philosophes by pointing to violence such as the Terror as something they unwittingly unleashed. There is also debate about whether the Enlightenment actually transformed popular society to match it, or whether it was itself transformed by society. The Enlightenment era saw a general turn away from the dominance of the church and the supernatural, with a reduction in belief in the occult, literal interpretations of the Bible and the emergence of a largely secular public culture, and a secular â€Å"intelligentsia† able to challenge the previously dominant clergy. The Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries era was followed by that of a reaction, Romanticism, a turn back to the emotional instead of the rational, and a counter-Enlightenment. For a while, in the nineteenth century, it was common for the Enlightenment to be attacked as the liberal work of utopian fantasists, with critics pointing out there were plenty of good things about humanity not based on reason. Enlightenment thought was also attacked for not criticizing the emerging capitalist systems. There is now a growing trend to arguing that the results of the Enlightenment are still with us, in science, politics and increasingly in western views of religion, and that we are still in an Enlightenment, or heavily influenced post-Enlightenment, age. More on the effects of the Enlightenment. There has been a lean away from calling anything progress when it comes to history, but youll find the Enlightenment easily attracts people willing to call it a great step forward.