Life of Pi as an Exercise in Existential Dread

 

I read Yann Martel’s novel, Life of Pi, almost a year before its film adaptation was released — and I remember really liking it, despite only understanding some of its key themes. At 11, any notion of spirituality or metaphysics flew over my head, but I recognized the weight of these discussions when they appeared within the book. It meant something when Pi converted to Christianity and Islam while still practicing as a Hindu. It meant something when Richard Parker, Pi’s Bengal tiger companion, did not say goodbye after they survived 227 days at sea together. And it meant something when Pi told two (very different) versions of his story to the Japanese transport officials and allowed them to choose which one they wrote in their report. But I couldn’t understand what. 

The story compelled me in a way few books previously had. It itched in the back of my mind and made me feel like I had stones in my heart. My hands shook with nervous energy every time I turned a page. For a year, I carried it with me, hoping that one day I would figure out why I found this book so utterly enthralling. And then, one evening in December, I understood. 

It was my friend Julia’s idea to see the movie. She liked animals and wanted to see the tiger, while I was foaming at the mouth at the possibility of seeing Life of Pi onscreen. The movie theater was packed when we got there, and our seats were all the way in the front, so I had to crane my neck back to see the screen, but I didn’t care. The lights dimmed, the singing began, and I held my breath. Nothing could ruin this moment. 

This scene was particularly horrifying. 

127 minutes later, I couldn’t stop crying. Julia’s dad had to pull me aside and ask if I wanted to go home. I shook my head, but snot and tears kept running down my face, so he suggested we just go home anyway. I agreed. In the days after, the nervous excitement I had once held for Life of Pi twisted into a suffocating anxiety. I had received my answers, but now I was consumed by this wave of existential dread. I was going to die. My family was going to die. I’m just a dust particle floating through space. And maybe there is a God, like Pi said. Or maybe there isn’t, and death was just one long black Mariana trench-like pit where the monster fish from Finding Nemo waits to eat you. 

I felt more helpless and insignificant than I ever had in my entire life, and it terrified me. After a few days, however, I was able to reign myself in and deconstruct what had freaked me out so badly. I realized that the questions that had plagued me for a year — questions of divine purpose, death, grief, life, and the universe — were just precursors to my newfound existentialism, priming me for the day when I would possess the visual language needed to understand my fears. In this sense, I unintentionally invoked Diana Eck’s understanding of darsán: the worship of a “divine sight” (Eck 9). Through witnessing my own “divine images” (Pi, Pondicherry, Richard Parker) reflected back at me, I was able to “acquire [their] vitality” and finally “give form” to the ideas I had so fervently worshipped (Eck 9). 

I still can't watch this without crying. 

Now, whenever I feel particularly existentially anxious, I make my own pilgrimage to watch Life of Pi. The images that once frightened me, now allow for a kind of catharsis — a “ritual of truth” in which I can tether myself to the realities of the universe. For Hindus, “to see is to know” and to know is to affirm the meaning of life, death, and suffering with…eyes wide open” (Eck 11). I can't help but agree.