Category Archives: movies

The Life of Pi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_of_Pi_(film)

A strong sub-plot of this story is the progression from Pi’s offering meat to the tiger Richard Parker in his keep in the zoo, to his reaching out and touching him just before their apparently impending deaths, near the end of their voyage in the life boat.  It can be seen as Jungian integration of the shadow (the tiger) into the personality, central to the process of individuation.  As Pi explains to the novelist at the end of the story, he (Pi) is the tiger.

Sometimes religion seems like the tail feather offered by the crow to Dumbo in the movie of the same name.  This magic will enable you to fly.  This religion will enable you to live forever.  It can bestow confidence that may not already be there.  You learn eventually that you may not live forever, you may not be interested in living forever, but you find that you would rather be a mensch than a schmuck.  Religion is or can be the key.

Karen Armstrong speaks of two senses of truth, Logos (factual, scientific, literal) and Mythos (meaningful, spiritual, allegorical, metaphoric, poetic).  The movie/novel touches on this at the end, when Pi asks the novelist which account of his ordeal he prefers: the factual (?) one the insurance investigators requested, or the fictional (?) one involving an actual tiger.  Pi:  “And so it goes with God.”