“It just barely missed me, but in my place it swallowed everything that mattered most to me and swept it off to another world. I took years to find it again and to recover from the experience-precious years that can never be replaced” (133). Individuals who find themselves in life or death situations experience a spectrum of factors that play into the aftermath, including, mental, moral, and costly forms of accountability. The decisions individuals are forced to make in order to survive is what causes this accountability. Therefore, individuals should not be held responsible for their decisions when in survival situations.
The actions survivors make during a life or death situation do not determine who they are. In The Life of Pi by Yann Martel,
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In “The Moral Logic of Survivor Guilt” by Nancy Sherman, this argument describes an illogical form of guilt that survivors receive when a victim in the same situation as them dies or is injured. According to Sherman, this guilt carries other emotions along with it, including self indictment, empathetic distress, responsibility, and sheer pain. A number of soldiers go through this guilt after coming home from war. “Indeed, the soldiers I talked to, involved in friendly fire accidents that took their comrades’ lives, did not feel regret for what happened, but raw, deep, unabashed guilt,” says Sherman. This guilt sticks with survivors years after the event. It is enough accountability as it is, and any other form is simply even more mentally painful to the survivor. Another instance where this accountability appears is in “The Seventh” by Haruki Murakami. This story portrays the seventh man's life after witnessing the death of his very close friend. His friend’s death sticks with him throughout most of his life, and he constantly feels guilt as if he could have done something to prevent it. “That is probably why I never married. I didn't want to wake someone next to me with my screams in the middle of the night.” The seventh man, who is in utter pain, has missed out on most of his life. This guilt and self tormenting that the man experiences kept him from living …show more content…
People can plan and predict their future as much as they desire but outside forces are sometimes unavoidable. However, some people may disagree with this thesis. For example, in “The Cost of Survival” by Theo Tucker, the author believes some people willingly put themselves in life-and-death situations and know before hand the danger that they are about to face. “The idea of holding people responsible is not to stop rescuing them. It's to discourage them from behaving in foolish and dangerous ways. That can only be a good thing!” says Tucker. This idea is absurd; it fails to make any sense whatsoever. Tucker also contradicts himself with providing this evidence from 2014: “In one, a family of four called for help when their child became ill. They were on a sailboat 900 miles off the coast of Mexico. There rescue involved the U.S Navy, the Coast Guard, and the California Air National Guard.” This example is in no way a foolish, dangerous, or uncommon circumstance. The family did not anticipate that their child would fall ill and definitely had no way of preventing it. Not speaking for Tucker, but sicknesses are inevitable. This family should not be held responsible for the rescue. As well as In The Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Pi happens to also find himself in an unexpected situation. Pi and his family decide
These men are transformed into guilt-laden soldiers in less than a day, as they all grapple for a way to come to terms with the pain of losing a comrade. In an isolated situation, removed from the stressors, anxieties, and uncertainties of war, perhaps they may have come to a more rational conclusion as to who is deserving of blame. But tragically, they cannot come to forgive themselves for something for which they are not even guilty. As Norman Bowker so insightfully put it prior to his unfortunate demise, war is “Nobody’s fault, everybody’s” (197).
The survivor takes the responsibility for the death of their loved one is caused by survivor's guilt. “The Seventh Man” by Haruki Murakami is a short story about a boy losing his best friend during a storm and he goes through a tragic time. The text states “ I stayed away from my home town for over forty years.”(Murakami pg.141) This shows that he had to stay away for many years to get over his guilt. This proves survivors should not feel survivor's guilt.
That feeling is extremely hard to explain. It’s not the same for everyone. “What makes survivor guilt especially complex is that the experience varies dramatically for each individual.”(whatsyourgrief) If you feel responsible for a friend dying to help you or if you feel accountable for someone dying when you could have prevented it is two totally different things. “But the underlying feelings are similar: feeling guilty that you survived when someone else died and that you do not deserve to live when another person did not. In some cases, this includes feeling you could have done more to save another person, in other cases it is feeling guilty that another person died saving you…”(whatsyourgrief). You always have to remember that you do deserve to live! There was a reason that you did not die and it was not to feel guilty that you are alive. K. would not want his friend to live his life feeling guilt. K. wasn’t mad that the narrator couldn’t save him, and he should live his life, forgive himself, the narrator is the only person who believes that he is at fault for K.’s death.
Sometimes we find ourselves in a situation with difficult choices. Sometimes people don't take full responsibility with their choices. Making poor decisions slowly leads to consequences.In Homer’s Odyssey Eurylochus should not have killed Helios’s cattle because they were not in need of food, promised they would not, and they knew there would be consequences. Eurylochus should not have killed the cattle because they were not starving.
another social support needed for Katrina’s endurance. Chris is a single father of four who understands
Furthermore, free will has been closely connected to the moral responsibility, in that one acts knowing they will be res for their own actions. There should be philosophical conditions regarding responsibility such like the alternatives that one has for action and moral significance of those alternatives. Nevertheless, moral responsibility does not exhaust the implication of free will.
“You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.” Adapting to a new situation or experience like violent crashing waves can be difficult. Nevertheless, a person needs to learn how to surf in order to outlast the pounding waves. In a similar fashion, individuals need to learn how to adapt to a challenging situation in order to survive. This idea of the significance of adapting to new situations is often explored in literature. In the novel, Life of Pi, Yann Martel makes powerful use of character development to suggest that individuals may be able to adapt to situations in life through a sense of determination, or through denying reality and using their imagination instead.
Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, is a fictional novel written in 2001 that explores the primacy of survival by employing symbolism, foreshadowing and motifs. This story follows the life of the protagonist, Piscine Molitor “Pi” Patel, as he embarks on his journey as a castaway. After boarding the Tsimtsum which carries Pi and his family along with a menagerie of animals, an abysmal storm capsizes the ship leaving Pi as the only survivor, though he is not alone. The great Bengal tiger, Richard Parker, also survives the shipwreck and during the 227 days that Pi and Richard Parker are stranded at sea together, the two must learn to coexist and trust one another for survival. Through Pi and Richard Parker’s struggles to remain alive, Martel explores the primal idea of survival by employing literary techniques.
“It is easy to argue that people should be stopped from putting themselves in danger.” Many people argue whether or not survivors of life & death situations, should or should not feel survivor's guilt. Some people believe people should feel guilt, others feel they should not. Survivor's guilt is a condition you could have when the individual has done something wrong or has traumatized them. From my perspective I feel as if the survivors should not feel survivor’s guilt.
The Life of Pi, written by Yann Martel, is the story of a young man, Piscine, or Pi for short, who experiences unbelievable and unrealistic events, which are so unrealistic ambiguity is aroused amongst the reader. Duality reoccurs over the course of the novel through every aspect of Pi’s world view and is particularly seen in the two contradictory stories, which displays the brutal nature of the world. Martel wonderfully crafts and image of duality and skepticism though each story incorporated in this novel.
This alternate ending plays a key role in understanding how to view the novel through Freudian lenses. Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis clarifies many troubling issues raised in the novel Life of Pi. Martel’s novel is about the journey of a young man being forced to test his limits in order to survive the unthinkable predicament of being lost at sea alongside an adult Bengal tiger. Life of Pi starts out by introducing an anonymous author on a quest to find his next big story and goes to a man by the name of Piscine Molitor Patel who supposedly has a story worth hearing. Patel begins his story talking about his childhood and the main events that shaped him such as his family’s zoo, the constant curiosity in religion he sought as a young boy and also how he got his nickname Pi.
Man is faced with uncountable amounts of trials and hardships throughout life. Terrible things occur in the lives of everybody, every story has its hardships just as every has its villain. What is often failed to be realized is that in most circumstances our biggest villain is ourselves. This concept is shown in the novel Life Of Pi by Yann Martel as he portrays Pi as the villain of his own story. The novel is a story concerning survival and in this situation of man v. nature Pi acts as his own greatest enemy alongside his sadness, delirium, and basic human needs.
The novel, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, talks about a sixteen-year old man named Pi Patel, who unbelievably survives a dreadful shipwreck after 227 days with the animals in a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean. Different ideas and themes in the book can be found in which the readers can gain an understanding about. The author communicated to the reader by using an ample amount of symbolisms to talk about the themes. The main themes of this novel are religion and faith. His religion and him being faithful have helped him throughout the journey, and this eventually led to an incredible precedent.
In drastic situations, human psychology uses coping mechanisms to help them through it. In the novel, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Pi’s coping mechanism is his religions and his projection of Richard Parker. Martel’s Life of Pi shows how the projection of Richard Parker played a greater role in keeping Pi alive in comparison to his beliefs in his religions. During the period in which Pi was stranded on the lifeboat, Richard Parker kept Pi aware, helped Pi make the right decisions, and was Pi’s sub-consciousness.
We make choices every hour, every minute, and every second of our lives; whether big or small our choices are slowly putting us in the direction we choose or end up. Many of us do not realize what contributes to the choices we make and why it affects others the same way if affects us and because of this many authors and writers have written stories and articles about coming to terms with making a choice and how to better ourselves when it comes to decision-making for the future.