Pi accepts his superego
Pi Accepts his Superego An individual has conflicts within their minds of what is morally right and wrong. In the novel, Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, there is an Indian boy named Piscine Molitor Patel, otherwise known as Pi who faces these conflicts. Pi lives at Pondicherry with his father, mother, and a brother named Ravi. Their family runs a zoo with various kinds of animal that Pi fascinates. Pi and his family decided to move to Canada due to the political problems in India. However, on their way to Canada, Pi faces a tragic disaster in which he lost his family, belongings, and his innocence. An unexplainable event caused the ship, The Tsimtsum, to sink, leaving Pi stranded on a boat with a hyena, zebra, orangutan, and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. Living with the animals was a huge burden for Pi, who was once a strict vegetarian. Through his journey, Pi arrived upon a mysterious island with a tiger who is the only survivor on the boat. After 227 days at sea, Pi has found paradise where there is plenty of food and water to be seen. His id, Richard Parker, was distracted by all the necessities on the island that he failed to understand the secrets that lay within the island. It was Pi’s superego that has awakened Pi back to reality by alerting him that the island was carnivorous. After fleeing the island with Richard Parker, Pi was washed upon land in Mexico and was soon transferred to a hospital. Pi was heartbroken upon realizing that he lost both his family and his companion, Richard Parker. According to Sigmund Freud, a human’s personality is composed of three elements: id, ego, and the superego. The id, present in our unconscious mind, represents chaos which is driven by pleasure. In this novel, the id represents Richard Parker, who wanted to stay on the island and enjoy all the pleasures. The superego represents Pi himself and the conscious part of our mind. In contrast to