Nobody wants to be unextrordinary, unremarkable, unmemorable. Tim Burton’s Big Fish and Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, both together and individually, teach that sometimes the best story stretches the truth, because of an aversion to “dry, yeastless factuality” or simply an aspiration to be remembered.
Edward Bloom, the dying father in Big Fish, and Pi Patel, the shipwreck survivor in Life of Pi, are prime examples of storytellers who use exaggeration to add excitement to the “dry, yeastless factuality” which is the truth. Both Big Fish and Life of Pi have characters who doubt the stories they hear. Will Bloom and the Japanese men who interview Pi say that “Everything you said was impossible- everything” (Big Fish). “You don’t really expect us
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Dr. Bennett tells Will that if Edward had been present for Will’s birth, nothing would have changed. The truth would have ended the same way, but Edward’s tall tale was certainly more exciting. In the same way, Pi’s story would have ended the same way with or without animals, but having a tiger on the lifeboat obviously made it more interesting. “So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can’t prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story?” (Martel 317). “I suppose if I had to choose between the real version and an elaborate one . . . I might choose the fancy version” (Dr. Bennett, Big Fish). In each novel, there is a point where death looms, with time to spare, and “all the happiness that was yours and all the happiness that might have been yours becomes clear to you. You see with utter lucidity all that you are losing” (Martel 147). Edward is dying and Pi, who experienced a near-death situation, is sharing his story before proceeding to his new life as an orphan. Neither wants to be forgotten, they want to leave a legacy, to be a legend to be passed on for generations to come. They both realized “my suffering was taking place in a grand setting. I saw my suffering for what it was, finite and insignificant” (Martel 177). This is the continuation of the fear of being forgotten. But, they overcome. Edward’s grandson is seen later, telling his friends about Edward and Karl. Pi gets his story written, so that it can endure. “It’s important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go” (Martel 285). Succeeding in a proper conclusion, Edward getting Will to understand, and Pi explaining his views to the Japanese scientists, they can finish their life stories in peace. In conclusion, both Edward and Pi succeed in entertaining through
Storytelling is a way of expressing one’s imagination through fanciful adventures and serve a variety of purposes. One important reason is to capture a special moment and endure it but mostly because it unites us and of course entertains us. In Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, and Tim Burton’s The Big Fish, storytelling is seen as more important than the truth. Throughout the novel Life of Pi, and the film The Big Fish, it can be argued that the truth is intertwined with the lies in each story to form a new kind of truth. An example of this would be when Pi retells his story to the two Japanese men in a way in which he makes the animals human and introduces a different version of the truth. Both the film and movie also share a unique way of story telling because what they both share is a common moral “quest” which involves the main character, who is usually the hero, must overcome challenges in order to achieve a goal or reward at the end.
Pi Patel in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi is a young Indian boy who is put through a tremendous traumatic experience; he gets lost at sea! Not only does he lose all his family, but he is forced to survive 227 days at sea with very limited resources. This ordeal causes great psychological pressure on Pi and causes his mind to find ways to cope with all the stress. When asked to describe what happened, Pi tells two stories: one with him surviving with animals including an adult Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, and a parallel story with humans in which Pi is forced to bend morality. Pi’s story of his survival with Richard Parker is a fiction that he creates to cope with a reality that is too difficult to face.
The definition of story is “an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment,” and both of these novels take this term to heart. Using their stories to hide their pain and emotions, it is easier to come up with a majestic tale then to tell the cold hard truth. In Life of Pi the author says, “That’s what fiction is about, isn't it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence,” (vi) and that is something both Edward Bloom and Pi Patel doesn’t. Despite Life of Pi and Big Fish’s obvious differences, they have one thing in common they both revolve around the topic of story telling. The novels are about struggling to come to terms with reality and being stuck
In the movie Big Fish there is a very important quote that is said at the end of the movie. The quote is,”The man tells his stories so many times, that he becomes the stories. They live on after him. And in that way he becomes immortal.” In this quote it is telling about Edward, and how he told his stories all through his life. Every opportunity that he had to tell a story he took. Stories were very important to Edward because they added more excitement, and more meaning to his life, they give life flavor. When someone tells a story so many times, people remember them and then they start to tell those stories. Once this person, this storyteller passes away their stories have influenced people and those stories will be told and passed on for
Last but not least, O’Connor confirms that even a short story is a multi-layer compound that on the surface may deter even the most enthusiastic reader, but when handled with more care, it conveys universal truths by means of straightforward or violent situations. She herself wished her message to appeal to the readers who, if careful enough, “(…)will come to see it as something more than an account of a family murdered on the way to Florida.”
of how John Steinbeck uses extraordinary circumstances to create appeal and realism to the reader.
In much of The Things They Carried, stories are retold time and time again. One reason for this is the idea of keeping a story’s story-truth alive. In “Good Form,” O’Brien differentiates what he calls story-truth from happening-truth. Story-truth seems to give us a better understanding of O’Brien’s sentiment in a particular story even though the story itself may not be true at all. On the other hand, happening-truth is what actually happened in the story, but may not contain as much emotional authenticity as story-truth. According to O’Brien, story-truth is therefore truer than happening-truth. Relating back to storytelling, O’Brien retells stories continuously to maintain their sentiment and emotional value. Without this continuous repetition, this sentiment fades away and the emotional value of the story is lost.
Society is known to put everyone and everything into roles that, if or when the role assigned is changed, all hell breaks loose. Through Freud’s theory, he explains the behaviors that are associated with the id, the ego, and the superego. Being that Pi was someone who had been relatively well-off prior to embarking on his trip to Canada and then thrown into a new scenario that involves him becoming a starving survivor of a boat wreck stuck in a boat with a tiger that is threatening to eat him, it can be seen that Freud’s theory is displayed. When observing the events that take place throughout Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, it is observable that he creates an impressive relationship between Freud’s theory of the id, ego, and superego and Pi’s mental facade while using a paradox within the specific animals, as well as his strive for survival.
This unimaginable tale, is the course of events upon Pi’s journey in the Pacific ocean after the ship that Pi and his family were aboard crashes, leaving him stranded with a tiger named Richard Parker, an orangutan, a zebra, and a hyena. Pi loses everything he has and starts to question why this is happening to him. This is parallel to the story of Job. Job is left with nothing and is experiencing great suffering and he begins to demand answers from God. Both Pi and Job receive no answers, only being left with their faith and trust. To deal with this great suffering Pi begins to describe odd things which begin to get even more unbelievable and ultimately become utterly unrealistic when he reaches the cannibalistic island. Richard Parker’s companionship serves to help Pi through these events. When the reader first is intoduced to Richard Parker he emerges from the water, making this symbolic of the subconscious. Richard Parker is created to embody Pi’s alter ego. Ironically, each of these other animals that Pi is stranded with comes to symbolize another person. The orangutan represents Pi’s mother, the zebra represents the injured sailor, and the hyena represents the cook. Pi fabricated the people into animals in his mind to cope with the disillusion and trails that came upon him while stranded at the erratic and uncontrollable sea,
...knowledge his shadow self. He was able to survive his plight on the lifeboat because of the characteristics of his shadow self, Richard Parker. Even at the loss of his shadow self, Pi remains connected and constantly misses this part of his persona. After his ordeal on the lifeboat, Pi becomes rational and humane; however his experiences has scarred him, and will forever remain with him. Readers can definitely learn from Pi’s experience with his shadow self. The more we refute our shadow, the more it weighs us down. However, if we are willing to come to terms with the reality of our shadow, learn how it works, “tame” it so that it does not control us, we would be more literate and enlightened.
... The collection of information given towards the end of the story when Pi is expressing his experience to the investigators ends up being key to understanding how it has a connection to Freud’s idea of psychoanalysis. When Pi reveals an alternate story of the events that unraveled and led him to the Mexican beach, it brings his story to a halt. The reader has to decide for themselves which story to believe. When looking at both stories, it is easy to match up the connections on the characters being switched.
In making stories: Law, Literature, Life, Jerome Brunner drives one to contemplate about the characteristics of stories, but also to consider the various ways one uses them to sail across the predicament of a human beings experiences. Narratives are set to be congenital and one understands allegedly how they work. We hardly take the time to think on how our narratives or whoever’s, constrain us, and why chronicles have the power to overhaul our beliefs as well as get in the way of our intellect, or how they brunt our humanoid institutions. In addition, it’s contended that stories are the “building blocks” of human experiences and are also a very important piece to what we call “Self” along with the emblem to our interactions with society, it also distinguishes one apart from the exceedingly assertive humanoid institutions, in spite of, Law. Making Stories drifts in the argument that narrative is crucial for our soundness, reason and education in explaining and understanding human experiences.
The novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel emphasizes on the fictional “better story”. Pi tells two different stories for the sinking of the TSIMSTUM, but none actually explain why it sank. The two stories are quite controversial and really make the reader question what is fact from fiction. The better story is filled with flowery details to mask the real facts; a fictional tale Pi uses to cope with his suffering. The better story includes an imaginary island, a hallucinated carnivorous sailor, and reveals that the “animals” are actually people. It is evident that Pi came up with “the better story” to cope with the traumatic events that took place.
The power of Imagination can give humans the will power to accomplish anything. In the book Life of Pi by Yann Martell Imagination helped Pi the main character get through his long journey aboard a lifeboat. Over the course of this story Pi encounters many different situations where he needs to use his imagination. Towards the end of the book you as the reader have the option to believe the story you just read or a second story, a more vulgar and less interesting story. As the reader you have to use your imagination just like how Pi needed to use his imagination. Imagination allowed Pi to survive by keeping him sane, protecting him and lastly to acquire the traits of telling a beautiful story.
We, as humans, often underestimate the fragility of our morals and “humanity”. In Life of Pi, author Yann Martel tells the story of a young boy named Pi who, after being shipwrecked and losing his entire family, must somehow survive in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with a grown tiger for days on end by abandoning all the morals he once valued. Through Pi’s story, Martel shows how easily humans can become akin to animals when finding themselves in a desperate situation.