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Life of Pi An Introduction
A Quick Glimpse The author’s note, preceeding chapter 1, explains that the author has traveled to India, restless and in need of inspiration for a story. At the coffeehouse in Pondicherry, an elderly man named Francis Adirubasamy strikes up a conversation with the author saying, “I have a story that will make you believe in God.” He refers the author to Piscine Molitor Patel who lives in Toronto, Cnanda. The novel then begins in Piscine’s voice…
Things To Discover… • Survival • Religion • Faith vs. Belief • Magic Realism • Frame Narratives • Ritual…
Things to Discover Cont’d… • Territory • Dominance • Hunger and Thirst • Life and Death • Truth vs. Lies • Fantasy vs. Reality • Colour Motifs • Pi
Critical Concepts: • Freudian Theory: • Conscious and Unconscious Mind • Personality Theory • Jungian Theory: • Shadow Self and Individuation
About Freud: • Sigmund Freud was was a Jewish Austrian neurologist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychiatry. • Freud is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind • Freud is also renowned for his redefinition of sexual desire as the primary motivational energy of human life • Freud also used his theories of the conscious and unconscious mind to study dream analysis
About Jung: • Born July 26, 1875 in Kesswil, Switzerland. Died June 6, 1961 in Zurich, Switzerland. • A prominent Swiss psychiatrist, and influential thinker and founder of analytical psychology. • Jung’s investigations into the human mind brought forth two ideas especially important and influential for literary criticism: • Collective unconscious • The theory of the archetype
Lets start with Freud: • Major Theory #1- Conscious vs. Unconscious Mind: HINT: Remember the ICEBURG!
Iceberg Theory: • Freud believed that our psyche, or our mind, can be broken down into two major sections: the consciousmind and the unconsciousmind. • The conscious mind represents everything we are “conscious” of, our every day lives, and reality. • Our conscious mind is aware of our surroundings, our thoughts, our ideas and choices.
Iceberg Theory: • The conscious mind is the aspect of our mental processing that we can think and talk about rationally. • A part of this includes our memory, which is not always part of consciousness but can be retrieved easily at any time and brought into our awareness. • Freud called our regular memory, that we use on a regular basis the “preconscious”.
Iceberg Theory: • Freud called the other part of our minds the unconscious mind. • This part of our psyche is a reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges and memories that exist outside of our conscious awareness. • According to Freud, the unconscious continues to influence our behaviour and experiences, even though we are unaware of the underlying influences.
Iceberg Theory: • Much of the contents of our unconscious mind are unpleasant, such as feelings of pain, anxiety or internal conflict. • Because the unconscious mind exists outside our awareness, this means we are unaware of its contents. • It is pushed down, deep inside our minds in a place that we cannot see or access, even though this is the larger portion or our psyche. • An example of the unconscious mind is what has come to be known as a “Freudian Slip”.
Conscious vs. Unconsious • What symbol can help you remember this theory? • Why does this symbol work? • Explain the conscious mind. • Explain the unconscious mind. • Give an example of the Freudian Slip. • Why do you think Dream Analysis resulted from this theory? • Let’s test Dream Analysis. • Let’s make a web of key words!
Next Freudian Theory… • Major Theory #2 - Personality Theory HINT: Remember the Scale!
Personality Theory • According to Sigmund Freud’spsychoanalytic theory of personality, personality is composed of three elements. These three elements of personality--known as the id, the ego and the superego--work together to create complex human behaviors
Personality Theory … • These three parts represent who we are and how we represent ourselves to the world. • We use the image of the scale to help us remember this theory because the three parts are constantly swaying back and forth, trying to find some kind of balance. • The Ego and Id are in a constant battle with each other
Personality Theory THE ID: • The id is the only component of personality that is present from birth. • This aspect of personality is entirely unconscious and includes all of the instinctive and primitive behaviours. • The id represents primitive desires • It is the human “want” • Represents chaos • The id is driven by the pleasure principle which strives for immediate gratification of all desires, wants, and needs. If these needs are not satisfied immediately, the result is a state anxiety or tension.
Personality Theory THE SUPEREGO: • The superego is the aspect of personality that holds all of our internalized moral standards and ideals that we acquire from both our parents and society--our sense of right and wrong. • The superego provides guidelines for making judgments. • The superego represents the conscience • It is the “should” of human beings • It is socialized and represents order • The superego acts to perfect and civilize our behavior. It works to suppress all unacceptable urges of the id and struggles to make the ego act upon idealistic standards rather that upon realistic principles.
Personality Theory THE EGO: • The ego is the component of personality that is responsible for dealing with reality. • According to Freud, the ego develops from the id and ensures that the impulses of the id can be expressed in a manner acceptable in the real world. • Essentially the ego works as a balancing force between the id and superego. It is like the center of the scale. • The ego functions in all of the conscious, preconscious and the conscious mind. • This is the “self”, or who you view yourself as. • It is your personality and the way you portray yourself to the world.
Review: • What helps us remember Freud’s first theory? • What helps us remember Freud’s second theory? • Explain the Superego. • Explain the Id. • Explain the Ego. • What is the role of the ego? • Lets draw a chart…
Next Stop- Carl Jung • Carl Jung’s major concepts that we will look at are: • The Collective Unconscious • The Theory of the Archetype • From here, we will learn about our main focus which will be the archetype of the: • Shadow Self
The Collective Unconscious • While Carl Jung shared some commonalities with Freud, he felt that dreams were more than an expression of repressed wishes. Jung suggested that dreams revealed both the personal and collective unconscious and believed that dreams serve to compensate for parts of the psyche that are underdeveloped in waking life. However, later research by Hall discovered that the traits people exhibit while they awake are also expressed in dreams.
The Collective Unconscious • Jung agreed with Freud on the idea that everyone has a personal unconscious from which our motivations derive, however, Jung developed this theory further to suggest that one aspect of an individual’s psyche is identical to all other members of the same species. • Therefore a part of all minds go beyond personal experience and draw upon a common source. • This concept goes beyond the spiritual, with Jung describing it as a biological function of the mind.
The Collective Unconscious • For Jung, the experiences of the individual are conditioned by the experiences of the human race (all who have gone before). The unconscious mental record of these experiences, Jung called the collective unconscious. • Essentially, Jung believed that each one of us have our own individual consciousness, but we also have a separate consciousness, one that has been passed down and is shared with all humans. We can relate this to our human instincts. • Jung believed that the collective unconscious is not directly knowable but that it expresses itself in the form of an archetype.
Collective Unconscious • HINT: Remember the analogy of the FILING CABINET
The Archetype • According to Jung an archetype is “a figure…that repeats itself in the course of history whenever creative fantasy is fully manifested.” • The three fundamental qualities of an archetype are: • An archetype is a preconscious, instinctual expression of man’s basic nature. • An archetype is universal; it is generated by man’s psyche regardless of time of place. • An archetype is recurrent. From prehistoric times until the end of the earth, it expresses man’s reaction to essentially changeless situations.
Archetypes The number of possible archetypes is as unlimited as man’s experiences, however, they may be grouped in three major categories: • Characters • Situations • Symbols or associations
Archetypes and the Shadow • Jung recognizes a plethora of archetypes that exist within our collective unconscious. • He believed that these models are innate, universal and hereditary. • They outline how we experience the world around us. • The “Self”, the “Persona”, the “Anima” or “Animus” and the “Shadow” are a short list of human archetypes that exist.
The Shadow • The Shadow is a very common archetype that reflects deeper elements of our psyche, where “latent dispositions”, which are common to us all arise. • It also reflects something that was once split from us in our early lives. • It is, like its name’s sake, dark, shadowy, unknown and potentially troubling. • It is, essentially, our opposite character. • We can often see the shadow in others and recognize it in ourselves, however we more typically deny it in ourselves and project it onto others.
The Shadow • It is the "dark side" of the ego, and the evil that we are capable of is often stored there. • In actuality, the shadow is amoral -- neither good nor bad, just like animals. An animal is capable of tender care for its young and vicious killing for food, but it doesn't choose to do either. • It is instinctive and irrational. • It is also prone to projecting our issues onto others- for instance turning a personal inferiority into a perceived moral deficiency in someone else. • The shadow may show itself in others, as stated above, in dreams or in hallucinations, but we frequently have interactions with it in some way.
Individuation • Individuation is a process we undergo in order to develop our “Self”. • This process is a life-long one and has many different levels. • The ultimate goal is to merge our conscious and unconscious minds.
Individuation • Part of this process involves encountering our shadow. • During this merger with the shadow, there are two possibilities: we can either • Assimilate with it - meaning that we get a step closer to developing our sense of self or we • Identify with it - meaning we lost the moral battle and do not come any closer to our own self-awareness.
Now what does any of this have to do with Pi? That is what you need to find out in your lit circles… GOOD LUCK!
