How does Yann Martel use Philosophy to draw meaning from an extract of 'The Life Of Pie'.
How does Yann Martel use Philosophy to draw meaning from an extract of ‘The Life Of Pie’
Yann Martel’s, ‘The Life Of Pi’ is a tale that serves to jostle our perception of our world, and question the means by which we base our view of everyday customs. In the famous words of Mr David Hume, ‘Custom is the great guide of human life,’ without these customs that we come to accept as truths, our world becomes a dangerous and intimidating place. This is why in the extract, the reporters attempt to falsify the possibility of a carnivorous Island because it challenges their already unsure perception of the world to the extreme.
Within the extract starting on p.294, Pi provokes the rationalist attitude of the reporters to be tested to the limit. This unconsciously philosophical position that the businessmen take proves to further Pi’s own empirical view of the world. The thought that Pi takes this view is perhaps due to his certainly of a higher principle. That if god was good, he would be safe in whatever choice he made, as long as he was thankful to him. As humans, it is our nature to logically induce that what lies in the future can be judged using the experience of the world that we have accumulated so far, For instance, that the sun will rise everyday. We have no certainty of this. No amount of scientific proof can prove what is going to happen. It may well be able to predict what might happen with numerous experiences of the same occurrence in the past, but there is no guaranty that the same will happen tomorrow. Moreover, we refuse to look outside our phenomenal world because of this, and make judgements upon prior learned experience or reason. These experiences are then turned into ideas.