The Tiger
By William Blake
1757-1827
TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
David Walsh in his review, the Life of Pi: In a Lifeboat alone with a tiger has missed the symbolism of this beautiful movie.It disturbs me that the movie is represented as a put down of science, as I don’t see that as a theme of the movie at all. It is impressive in its acknowledgement of our fantastic mental abilities to fantasize, and represent conflicts, problems and desires with symbols and stories. For me the life of Pi is the story of a coming of age story for a boy who is a thinker, a romantic, and deeply tied to his culture, his land and his parents. you step into the darkened theater, and put on the glasses that will remove you from the contour of the seats , and aisles, and accept their invitation to you to abandon yourself to this story, and let the fantastic intimate portrayal of animals, the music, dance, the ocean, harsh and beautiful nature envelope you for two hours. If you can’t abandon yourself to this, try a different movie.
Piscine Molitor Patel as a young boy in school, is called Pis or Pissy which evokes much laughter, and teasing.He is rather an inhibited, polite, studious boy, and this attention directed to his physical needs and his genitals is something he needs to escape. there are scenes in various classrooms..where he has failed to misdirect the teasing, but finally he figures out a way. He shortens his name to Pi..which now only has a rather mathematical suggestion and much less humiliating resolves his problem. This important introduction to this young man tells us he is a problem solver.He doesn’t continue to suffer, he doesn’t wallow in misery…he sees the problem and he resolves it. this is an important key to his character.Other basic early scenes tell us about the nature of Pi. He loves his father, his mother, his brother and has an intense identification with them, that he looks for in others as he starts to mature, and starts to develop substitutions in life for his parents so that he will be able to leave them someday. The easiest place for him to start these substitutions is with the animals as his father owns a zoo, and the animals are part of his everyday scene. He is a child and innocent of the savage and beast behavior of the animals. The eloquent eyes of the tiger attract him, and he wants to hand feed the tiger. The father knows the best way to teach his son to understand the nature of the wild animal will be a drama, that nature easily provides and which the young boy will not forget. He tells Pi that the tiger is not kind and loving, and what Pi sees in the tigers eyes is only a reflection of Pi’s feelings. Of course Pi does not believe him. The father asks a zoo keeper to bring a young deer to the outside of the cage of the tiger….the outside, not the inside,but very very close. the Mother and others are upset…they tell the father the boy is too young and innocent to see this, but the father is adamant. He needs to protect his son and the truth will protect him. the deer is placed close to the the cage….in an instant, the giant paw goes out…the deer is killed, torn through the bars, and carted away by the tiger, to the shock of the young boy.
Pi wants answers to his concerns about life.Whatever one thinks about the subjective answers that various religions offer as “truth”, religions certainly deal with issues of life,how to live, ethics, morality, and Pi has this on his mind. The religions he selects that are available to him certainly have different answers and interpretations…and he welcomes all three because it provides a well rounded discussion of these issues for him. He is absorbed in the thoughts…the answers are not necessary yet…there is nothing strange about embracing the 3 religions. they give him what he needs…the thought process that occupies his excellent mind. He tells the writer, that he was also interested in Kaballah to round it out with Judaism.
In his early teens he plays the drum for rhythms for a dance school of native dances, where all the gestures and movements have meaning and are symbols. He is fascinated by this, and also attracted to the young dancers beauty, and begs to know what the gestures mean. He cannot decipher one, and pursues the dancer to get the answer.This is another scene to again show the kind of mind this young explorer/discoverer has.
The parents decide to leave India for Canada and to sell the zoo.This being India,The father rules..this is a kind father, but we know that Pi’s opinion was not asked or considered. Does he want to leave everything that he has known and loved all his life. Of course not. there is a major trauma here. He must leave and go to an unknown land far away, and to a culture that is not his own. Can you believe that he is frightened and angry?
A storm happens. Let me tell you that with the 3D glasses on, and the technology that is available to film makers …you are immersed in this angry storm of chaos, and danger, and bewilderment, and helplessness. When the child fantasizes, the story and the figures are not verbal representations….they are real.If a child sees an alligator under the bed,you can bet it is (to him) a real alligator with real jaws..and color and odor. fantasy is powerful…and to a child terribly terribly real.He is leaving everything he knows. He is angry at parents who have robbed him of his history, his friends, his language, his religions…he is in a no mans land and knows not where he goes. Can we suspend ourselves, engage in the ferocious storm that his fantasy has whipped up…that destroys the past…the boat, his family, and leaves him alone in a strange land….to survive or not.We might note that he has killed off his parents….or is in the process of doing that as we shall see in the next scene.(btw, the storm is horrible…you will feel the fright)
He is left with a hyena,a zebra,an orangutan…and only later finds hidden in the lower part of the boat, a tiger named Richard Parker. He explains the mixup how the tiger got this name..a humorous incident…but Parker is the P of his name, and richard is a Western world name to suggest the new and fearsome life ahead.
I suggest the Hyena,the zebra and the orangutan are his mother,father and brother…and they are all dispensed with in frightening ways….a dangerous killer of a screaming hyena that leaves no doubt of the savagery of the animal. He is left alone with the tiger, and lives for 227 days with it when it disappears into the forest of an island they find,never to be seen again.(Blake again, “in the forests of the night)
I propose the tiger is Pi. He must learn to accept himself…his angers, his violence, his frustrations, his appetite, his narcissism, his isolation, his drive for life more important than any one else. and when he has mastered this, the tiger leaves into the forest….doesn’t die, isn’t killed but disappears into the dark thick forest, we call the unconscious, and Pi is saved, and begins his new life.
Is God in this story? Of course, the concept of God as a power is here.. perhaps as genetic heritage..”Did he who made the lamb make thee?” Perhaps Blake saw the lamb as Jesus. It is often interpreted that way. But who has been doing the interpretation? It certainly can also be seen as the nature of the human…to be gentle, and loving, and meek….and to be savage, and brutal,and murderous…it must all be accepted by us to live a good life….some might say to be blessed by God…others might say to be mature…to be integrated. It can be a matter of language. But it is Pi’s struggle.It is this struggle, told in the compelling narrative with the boy and the tiger that makes it such an outstanding, and marvelous movie.
So please see the Life of Pi…it is a phenomenal visual treat…and choose the way you will see it….the David Walsh way feeling that reason and science are dismissed.. or of the way of fantasy, of imagination, of dance and music and story that incorporate reason and science as part of the whole structure and not dangling as a separate hostile entity. Blakes poem leaves all its questions unanswered, and so does the movie. Sometimes that’s the way it is.