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Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam > Blaise Pascal Instituut > Girard Studiekring > COV&R 2007 > Abstracts Papers
Elsie Cloete
Heroes and Tigers
Email - Profile - Subtheme # 6 - Paper
ABSTRACT
This
paper begins by tracing some of the engagements between authors, literary heroes
and animals (specifically tigers) over the past few hundred years and how
Girard's theory of scapegoating -
ways in which the other can be transformed into the 'malign alien' - and
Derrida's plea for "absolute hospitality" - justly accommodating the
absolute stranger - intersect. In the light of new ecocritical concerns in
literature I shall briefly discuss the embodiment of tigers (as guise/mask
for human others) in various texts such as Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle
Book, some Bengal folk verses and William Blake's The Tyger before
turning to Yann Martel's Life of Pi (2003).
The multiple narrative loops and coils in Life of Pi as well as
connected extratextual threads all engage with the hero, Pi Patel, who is
rendered vulnerable from physical, cultural and religious perspectives when he
finds himself adrift in a lifeboat on the Pacific Ocean. Literally "at sea",
Pi's desire for spiritual, mental and physical salvation and survival generates
a narrative that will make the writer/reader "believe in God" despite
the cold, factual story that is teased out of him by Japanese martime officials
when Pi eventually makes land. Pi's companion/double in the first narrative is a
tiger called Richard Parker. This name has occurred in a number of extratextual
tales of survival over the last 170 years and in the light of this one has to
consider who the victim actually is. The question as to whether Girard's
theories of mimetic desire and the scapegoat when it comes to the animal other,
may be reconciled with Derrida's calls for a just and unconditional hospitality
toward the other ( and the problems attendant on being host/hostage) will be
examined in the light of Martel's Life of Pi.
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