Superego In Life Of Pi

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Many, when they read Life of Pi, read it only as a story. These people see the book simply as an uplifting tale of a boy overcoming Nature, taming a tiger, and surviving at sea for months. However these people only see the surface of what the book actually has to offer, instead of its true depths. Because, at its heart, Life of Pi is actually an intense allegorical tale, a psychological character study in the vein of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy.

Throughout the story Pi is faced with intense scenes of gore and tragedy but he is able to cope with it because it’s just animals doing what animals are meant to do to survive. However at the end of the story he tells the Japanese officials the story of the animals, but he also told a story without animals. Instead, the second story has humans, who represent the various animals that Pi encounters. In this new story, Pi represents Richard Parker, Mrs. Patel is Orange Juice the orangutan, the French Cook is the hyena, and the Wounded Chinese Sailor is the zebra. This story is left, to the reader, as a possible alternative, wherein it’s possible that Pi only hallucinated the animals, but the human
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This manifestation is the superego, or, in layman's terms, the conscience. The superego absorbs the moral values we are taught by society, and controls the urges of the id and ego; it turns them from simply pleasurable goals to moral goals. When we apply this to the story we see that Pi may just have projected these concepts on to the people surviving with him to be able to comprehend and accept the goal of living through the ordeal he was thrust into. Richard Parker was simply Pi’s id; simply pure desire to satisfy his needs without morals. This alone highlights a deeper level to this tale; it shows a more complex understanding of what one might actually do to allow survival without insanity setting in due to the tragedy of the actions and situations the mind has committed and been

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