The Unconscience

1. The Unconscience • Things that the conscious mind wants to keep • hidden from awareness, • unacceptable motives or desires, such as traumatic memories and • taboo desires, are repressed into the • unconscious mind. While we are unaware of • these feelings, thoughts, urges and emotions, Freud believed that the unconscious mind exerted the greatest influence over our personalities and behaviours.

2. To help you visualisze…

3. Aggression • “Evolutionary analysis suggests that a drive for • survival may have endowed many or most • species with an innate predisposition toward • some forms of violence” (Gerriget al. 596). • Hormonal differences in the brain, particularly • the amygdala, affect a person’s ability to • regulate negative emotions which lead to aggression. • The stress hormone, cortisol, also affect saggression.

4. The Emergence of Richard Parker • Pi directs Richard Parker to the lifeboat, “’Hold on tight, I’ll pull you in. Don’t let go. Pull with your eyes while I pull with my hands. In a few seconds you’ll be aboard and we’ll be together. Wait a second. Together? We’ll be together? Have I gone mad?” (109) • “Truly I was the next goat” (110). • “Now I understood why Richard Parker hadnot killed the zebra: he was no longer aboard” • (121).

5. Emerging… • “But the great beast was not behaving like a greatbeast. Richard Parker’s passivity, and for threelong days, needed explaining…Had the shock of • the shipwreck – the noises, the falling into the sea,the terrible struggle to swim to the lifeboat – increased the effort of the sedative” (151). “I concluded that it was not a dream or delusion or a misplaced memory or a fancy or any other falsity, but a solid, true thing witnessed while in a weakened, highly agitated state. The truth would be confirmed as soon as I felt well enough to investigate” (148). • “I had my first, unambiguous, clear – headed glimpse of Richard Parker” (155).

6. Richard Parker’s Kill • “I heard the merest clicking of claws against • the bottom of the boat, no more than the sound • of a pair of spectacles against the bottom of theboat, and the next moment my dear brother • shrieked in my face like I’ve never heard a man • shriek before…This was the terrible cost of • Richard Parker. He gave me a life, my own, but • at the expense of taking one” (283).

7. Richard Parker under the tarpaulin • Richard Parker sleeps during the day but is more active at night, emerging only to eat. • Pi discusses the loneliness of night and it iswhen he is the most upset.

8. Survival • “I didn’t have pity to spare for long for the zebra. When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by terrible, selfish hunger for survival” (133). • “I was in a wild and triumphant mood” (204). “I watched sullenly as he loudly appreciated my gift and made a joyous mess of himself” (224). • “I needed safe access to the locker and the top of the tarpaulin, no matter the time of day or the weather, no matter his mood. It was rights ineeded, the sort of rights that come with might (224).”

9. Trying to Survive a Hostile Environment… • “Fear, rage, madness, hopelessness, apathy” (239). • “Physically it is extraordinarily arduous, and morally it is killing. You must make adjustments if you want to survive. Much becomes expendable” (241). • “It came as an unmistakable indication to me of how low I had sunk the day I noticed, with a pinching of the heart, that I ate like an animal” (249). • “Worse still, he meet the evil in me – selfishness, anger, ruthlessness. I must live with that” (345).

10. Hints… • “Richard Parker was not perfect, that despite his honed instincts he too could bumble” (243). • Both Pi and Richard Parker go blind aroundthe same time.

11. Taming Richard Parker • “Suddenly his brute strength meant moral weakness. It was nothing compared to the strength in my mind” (246). • “But I don’t want to take too much credit for what I managed to do with Richard Parker. My good fortune, the fortune that saved my life, was that he was not only a young adult but a pliable young adult, an omega animal” (303). • When Pi touches Richard Parker, it symbolizes his mastery over him, which is when Pi is in control of his unconscious. • Richard Parker leaves when Pi is reunited with humanity.

12. Richard Parker’s Disappearance • “And they expected to find -ha! In the middle of a Mexican tropical jungle, imagine! Ha! Ha! It’s • laughable, simply laughable. What were they thinking?” (46). • “He’s hiding somewhere you’ll never find him” (352). • “I look closely, trying to extract personality from appearance. Unfortunately, it’s in black and white again and a little out of focus. A photo taken in better days, casually. Richard Parker is looking away. He doesn’t even realize that his picture is being taken” (96).

13. Aggression continued… • Can be impulsive or instrumental • Impulsive aggression is reactionary and • emotion-driven • Instrumental aggression is goal-directed and • cognitive-based