Life of Pi Edward Said

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Life of Pi Alissa navarro Period 3 10.16.14 Palestinian American literary theorist and cultural critic Edward Said has written that “Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted.” Yet Said has also said that exile can become “a potent, even enriching” experience. Select a novel, play, or epic in which a character experiences such a rift and becomes cut off from “home,” whether that home is the character’s birthplace, family, homeland, or other special place. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the character’s experience with exile is both alienating and enriching, and how this experience illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot. Edward Said wrote “Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience.” He proposes that exile can be “a potent, even enriching experience” as well as “unhealable rift”. While the common person would say that these two statements could not possibly relate, Said is right in his assumption. In Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, Pi is fortuitously cast away at sea when a ship inhabiting his family and there many zoo animals is wrecked in the middle of the ocean, he was so lucky to survive unlike his fellow passengers. He is confronted with the heart wrenching loss of his parents, making him vulnerable. But, while Pi is damaged by alienation, he is also enriched by it with his ability to grow in himself and in his soul. To change from a boy to a man. In his life Pi was regularly the boy casted out. He was soft spoken, and dependent on the community around him for self-identity and meaning. He was especially fond of the

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