In my final year of University, I took an English course on animal signs in literature and media. At the time I thought this was the most bizarre course I had ever come across. I was surprised to find that contemporary literary theory and cinematic theory had for a long time delved into a meticulous philosophical examination of the significance of the animal in human thought. Indeed, the animal has been partly neglected by Western philosophy and religion. Such forms of thought have placed human beings in the centre of existence. Martin Heidegger, an existentialist philosopher throughout the twentieth century, believed that human beings exist in isolation, in a realm of language, separated by an abyss of disconnect from all living things.
Since we access Pi’s experience through language, his experience of the approach of death becomes very different than the animals’ experience of death on the life boat. According to Heidegger, animals cannot die, they can only perish and so we have denied animals the experience of death, not only in Western philosophy and religion, but simply due to the fact that they are unable to conceptualize death from a lack of intellect and higher language capability. It seems fitting that in a novel that addresses religious questions, particularly the Christian religion which denies the animal a significance, Pi’s character then illustrates how the human experience neglects to give the same experience to animals in the moment of death.
Perhaps I am wrong about this though. Could the bizarre circumstances of a young religious boy trapped on a life boat with predatory animals, finally allow for the proper acknowledgement of the animals experience of death, rather than a simple perishing from predation or starvation. Arguably, Orange Juices’s death comes close to the human experience, especially since the monkey resembles the human so closely, as a genetic relative. (Juice’s death gets compared to Jesus’s crucifixion!) The Hyenas last moment before being killed by the Tiger gets captured in Pi’s narrative and Pi describes the look of fear on the face of the Hyena. We of course do not get inside the experience of the Hyena though, because we are outside the animal experience of reality that does not exist in our realm of language. Subsequently, Pi’s fear of death is only ever what concerns the reader. This applies again to what Heidegger believed and that was that humans carry around the burden of an awareness of mortality throughout life and therefore this is a part of the human experience of death, not able to be experienced by animals, since animals cannot contemplate their death. Pi’s own contemplation of death gets experienced by the reader in detail, with his constant description of fear and encroaching danger. Are the other animals actually aware of their immortality in their final moments? Is this conveyed in the narrative? In other words, is there a possible animal experience of a death made accessible, in some way, through Pi’s narrative?