*Writing this author's note, I tried something considerably different. I waited until the end to write it. Existential subjects are literally the hardest subjects to write about. I am aware that I had almost no text evidence, but that's because trying to respond to a novel like this the only single subject that was on my mind was the life questions! Not the character Pi. Why do we capitalize the word God? I could easily write an entire essay about that. I believe the strongest point in an essay is getting the reader to look at it through my eyes, which is exceptionally impossible.*
The virtue of death. People always wake up in the morning without a worry of life or death, imagination guides them like a sign on a road. But I find it a luxury, to know you're close to the end. It's a certain time to take priority, take things slower. Yet although many tell me I mustn't fear death and to come to it with open arms, I still fear death. If there was a tunnel with life on one side and death on the other. I would fight with all my will to get to the life, because will to live is what gives life so much value. Pi Patel references this concept in the novel Life of Pi.
There comes a point in every single individuals life, when they begin questioning their own existence. They start to imagine themselves in a world inside a world. The freedom of life is to discover. What comforts me in all these existential conceptions is one simple thing. The fact that I am asking these questions in my own mind. Sure all my judgment has been based off what I've learned from past experiences in my life, but that is me and myself, not you. Was I born with imagination strong enough to ask me these life question, or has my life in the past fourteen years had a major effect? Experiments have been performed on the mind. One subject was giving three people a baseball and a target. The first person was simply directed to throw the ball at the target for practice, the second person was told to imagine themselves throwing the ball at the target and then proceeding for practice, finally the third was to visualize themselves. Both people imagined themselves first, did better than the first. Imagination is indeed a powerful thing.
Everything imagination rests in our minds; Ethic imagination, Artistic imagination, Theological imagination. It gets to such a point that the various inceptions that our own sub conscious gathers and feeds off of don't develop fantasies, but tries to build off the knowledge of what is around it. A computer, in my eyes the death of civilization. It is a perfect statement to say that eventually its collection of values will all begin to be considered and taken into personal consideration. Not from a human. But why does an idea like this scare you and I so much? Because it isn't sacred, every conveyor of imagination so far has been developed by God. God is a fictional story in our imagination, made to comfort it, to allow our mind to still perceive many ethical values. Now the Science of God can't be proved, but that's what makes him so fascinating. Our evolution and our death all lay in his hands. In our faith everything that can think, everything that may comprehend thoughts was made by him, therefore we assume he made imagination. Imagination is what makes us human. This is why we despise a non-human object imagining something!
Honestly every single person fears death, I understand. In other terms it is in my faith that everyone around me has the same fears I do. What happens when we die? The mystery of earth. God is an idea made from the mind of mankind, almost to counsel all our fears of death. From life we discover and our imagination grows, from imagination we fear death, with the fear of death we are able to cherish life like as if it is everything. Close your eyes, what do you see? Black? Black is a color, it is only a word invented by our founders. What truly makes black so dark is the memory in our minds of something brighter, to contrast that darkness. Frankly I am unsure how any other being imagines death. However if it isn't our creator God or any other soul, I imagine it as life without any imagination at all. My argument between the novel Life of Pi and Life/ Death is in Pi's mind from all the discoveries he made in his life so far, what caused his imagination such a strong will to live. Even though he followed so many different religions, why is it he feared dying?
Life of Pi may just be the single most boring novel known to mankind! Yann Martel just wrote a book that would make you yawn, that is if you don’t actually read it beyond the characteristics of the story. To get caught up in Piscine's good nature and humor, would honestly be the most tragic mistake to reading. Pi lives in India at a zoo with his mother, father, and his brother. They move to Toronto, Canada, however amidst that voyage the ship sinks. Later he is saved, the end. Beyond all the text, beyond a fourteen year old boy stranded in the middle of the ocean with a tiger, (which frankly isn't even real in case you didn't know) is Martel's brilliant philosophies towards the triangle of life, death, and imagination. All the questions this book truly has beyond the words makes it a lot more interesting than before. It's almost as if when Yann Martel wrote this in 1990, he didn't even intend for it to be an award winning book, rather a simple journal to comprehend all the questions thrown at him in his life.
Controversies is the reason of Pi's well being, like the idea of fire and water. They both over come one another. Fire can be put out by water, and water can be dissolved by fire. The wars that have been caused by religious faiths, the murders, the hatred. How does Piscine follow all three religions; Hinduism, Christianity, and Muslim without any downfalls? He would answer, "Without a hint of jealousy." In the book while Pi is still seeking more knowledge of these religions, he asks. Why from all the power a God would have, (for example in Hinduism the God is rich, powerful, and dominant) why it is that he is born in a cave and a life to poverty, humble and obedient in the mercy of others? With all this power there wouldn't be more priority or any more will to live, only jealousy of immortals and less sense of imagination. With mountains of gold and zero friends a man is just as well dead, however with one life long friend a man is rich and humble in the arms of life. To keep Pi in an uncorrupt sense, his imagination developed a friend, a companion to counsel him. Almost like a God. Richard Parker in a way was in fact Pi's religion. How? Richard Parker the Tiger was a brute, a manifest in every single concept of Pi's faith. So every rule Pi would break on his voyage through the Pacific Ocean, he would blame on the Bengal Tiger. To keep even a single hint of despair of death growing inside him.
In our minds even in the deepest darkness, our mind plants an inception, a flare or a spark to keep us motivated. Day and night Pi would lay in that small raft with a little survival book glaring into the distance, because what kept his will to live so strong was that spark of hope. The inception that as soon as a ship did truly find him standing before him would be his family with open arms. This is just like our own life, because every day we embrace death as a virtue. One to keep us alive.
