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Emotions, reasons, and beliefs are three important tools of the human mind. They all operate in the human mind but in different ways. Mohandas Gandhi once said, “Faith must be enforced by reason, when faith becomes blind it dies,” (Seshagiri 59). This quote shows that reason is more important than belief. Without reason, humans will never have faith and belief. The novel Life of Pi written by Yann Martel portrays how reason helps the main character, Pi to survive in struggle. Pi is the only survivor of a shipwreck, he stays with a Bengal tiger, Richard Parker in a lifeboat for 227 days. Although Pi uses both belief and reason to help him survive, reason plays a more important role in his struggle. Firstly, reason helps Pi to think rationally before taking action. Secondly, the limitations of Pi will be revealed through reasonable thinking. Thirdly, with the help of reason, Pi is able to make a wise decision when he is in a struggling situation. Thus, reason helps Pi to get through the struggle and makes him survive.
First and foremost, reason helps Pi to think rationally and logically. The reason is “the power of the mind to think, understand, and form judgements logically,” (“reason”). Reason helps people to think about the effects and make a logical judgment before taking any action. In order to survive in a struggling situation, correct judgment is very important. This can be seen in the novel Life of Pi, Pi lives on a lifeboat with Richard Parker for many days. However, Pi feels that Richard Parker is a dangerous animal that tries to attack and harm him. When Pi discovers the presence of a tiger, he says: “There was a tiger in the lifeboat. I could hardly believe it, yet I knew I had to. And I had to save myself,”(Martel 195). Thus, Pi decided to build a raft by using the life jackets in the boat and also the ropes from the locker. So that he can stay away from the tiger, the raft is floating away at a safe distance from the lifeboat. Pi builds the raft because he is able to think rationally according to reason. The reason he wants to build the raft is to ensure his personal safety. This can be seen when Pi says: “I had fled the lifeboat to save my life,”(Martel 206). He knows that if he lives with a tiger, the tiger may harm him. Nevertheless, Pi and Richard Parker stop at the algae island for a time. Pi is very excited when he reaches the island, he says: “Richard Parker! Land! Land! We are saved!”(Martel 347). They wanted to eat the vegetation and drink the fresh water found on the island which is covered entirely with algae. This can be seen when Pi said: “I passed the day eating, resting, attempting to stand and, in a general way, bathing in bliss,”(Martel 350). Pi can think rationally before he takes action. He is thinking according to reason, reason helps him to think about the importance of nursing themselves back to health. Thus, Pi and Richard Parker spend their time on the algae island in order to survive. In addition, man was considered to be moral then because of his possession of reason: “A human act which we term a moral act, has its specific character from an objective which is in relation to the source of human acts namely the reason,”(Donnelly 71). According to Donnelly, people are required to have reasonable thinking before taking action, “For all human beings there is a requirement to act according to reason, the quality which defines humanity,” (Donnelly 71). This shows that people are required to act according to reason. This is because reason makes people have rational and logical thinking which can lead people to the pathway of survival. Reason makes Pi think rationally and hence he is able to survive in his struggle.
Secondly, Pi’s limitation is discovered by reason when Pi is in the struggle. His limitation is helping him to survive in critical condition. When people are suffering in a struggle, reason will help them to discover their own limitations. Struggle is “making forceful or violent efforts to get free of restraint or constriction,”(“struggle”). People tend to make any effort in order to get rid of their struggling situation. The limitation of people is able to help people to go through the struggle and hence survive. This is because people are able to cope with the things that they cannot do it usually. In Life of Pi, the main character, Pi portrays that reason is able to discover human limitations. Before the shipwreck tragedy happened, Pi was a vegetarian. He doesn’t eat meat and he was unable to kill animals. However, during the process of survival, Pi transfers from being a vegetarian to eating meat. When Pi finds some survival supplies in the lifeboat, he immediately drinks some canned water and eats animal fat-enhanced biscuits. At that time, Pi had to eat the biscuits that contained animal fat, Pi said: “Pity about the fat, but given the exceptional circumstances the vegetarian part of me would simply pinch its nose and bear it,”(Martel 191). Reason makes Pi realize that he will need to get rid of his vegetarian diet in order to survive. Furthermore, Pi is able to kill a fish as bait to catch Dorado. As a lifelong vegetarian, he cries during his first time killing a fish on the boat, because he never kills a fish before. This can be seen when “tears flowing down my cheeks, I egged myself on until I heard a cracking sound and I no longer felt any life-fighting in my hands.”(Martel 245). Before this, he thought that killing animals was a cruel action. Reason has discovered his limitation and makes Pi kill the fish in order to survive, “Killing it was no problem,”(Martel 247) said Pi. Pi even slaughters the sea turtle by cutting the turtle’s neck and he drains the blood into a beaker, “bright red blood shot out. I grabbed the beaker and collected about three hundred milliliters,”(Martel 270). Pi drinks the turtle’s blood, he said: “I drank the blood to the last drop,”(Martel 270). He is able to drink the turtle’s blood and shell off the turtle’s shell with a knife. This can be seen when Pi says: “As confidently as if I had done it a thousand times, I jammed the knife just to the right of the turtle’s head, at an angle. I pushed the blade deep into the folds of skin and twisted it.”(Martel 269). This shows that Pi kills and eats animals in order to survive. Reason discovers his limitations and makes him do the things that he was unable to do in the past. Blaise Pascal once said that “Reason’s last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it,” (O’Hear 20). Actually, people can do anything beyond their own expectations. However, there are not many motivations that can help to discover it. People’s limitations can be revealed by reason and people are able to cope with it. In order to survive, people will need the help of reason. Reason helps to discover and recognize their limitation. Reason helps Pi to discover his own limitations when he is in struggle and the limitation makes Pi to survive.
Lastly, reason helps Pi to make a wise decision when he is in a struggling situation. People are unable to make a correct judgment or a wise decision without reason. It is very important for people to make wise decisions when they are in critical condition. A decision can determine whether they can survive or not. This can be seen in the Pi’s character in Life of Pi. Pi decides to leave the algae island after he finds out that the island is a carnivorous island, “This island is carnivorous. This explained the disappearance of the fish in the pond,”(Martel 378). Pi discovered a tree that holds a human tooth. After that, he tests this by dropping a meerkat onto the algae. At night, he watches the meerkat scurry back up the tree. Thus, he decides to leave the island which he thinks has some kind of acid that can digest whatever is on it at night. This can be seen when Pi says: “My grim decision was taken. I preferred to set off and perish in search of my own kind than to live a lonely half-live of physical comfort and spiritual death on this murderous island.”(Martel 380). He brings a plentiful of water, meerkats, and fish when he leaves. The lifeboat finally comes ashore in Mexico and Pi is rescued. In addition, Pi decides to tame the Richard Parker. Pi said that: “I had to tame him. It was at that moment that I realized this necessity,”(Martel 218). During his struggle on the sea, Pi discovers that it is important for both Richard and him to survive. The only way to accomplish this task is to tame the tiger. Pi uses a whistle to tame Richard Parker. “We were, literally and figuratively, in the same boat. We would live – or we would die – together.”(Martel 219). Pi knows that the reason to keep the tamed Richard Parker alive is that Richard Parker acts as a companion. The decision is very important in people’s life and it can make changes to people’s life easily. For instance, “decision was the source of John F. Kennedy’s power as he faced off Nikita Khrushchev during the tense Cuban Missile Crisis and averted World War III,”(Robbins 36). Kennedy made a decision to have a secret agreement with Khrushchev which stated that the Soviets would withdraw their nuclear missiles from Cuba and the United States would withdraw their nuclear missiles from Turkey. This decision had successfully prevented World War III from happening. This incident shows that making a correct decision is very important, while reason plays a very important role in helping people make their decisions. The correct decision will help people to survive in the struggle. Pi has made the correct decision that helps to survive when he stays in the lifeboat for 227 days.
In a nutshell, reason is very important to help Pi survive in his struggle. The existence of reason helps people to think rationally whenever people are in a struggling situation. Besides that, Pi’s limitation is discovered and revealed with the help of reason. Pi is willing to do anything that can help him to survive, including those that he was unable to make it in the past. Apart from that, reason also helps Pi to make some correct judgments and decisions that make him survive. In the process of survival, reason plays a more important role compared to belief.
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