Horror’s Effect on Identity in Life of Pi and Arthur Gordon Pym

• Main Author: Alyx Steensma
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ratnabali Publisher 2014-07-01
• Series: Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry
• Online Access: http://sanglap-journal.in/index.php/sanglap/article/view/33

Both Life of Pi by Yann Martel and The Narative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allen Poe provide climatic moments of horror that lead to a change of motivation. Specifically, I will be taking a look at one important scene from each novel: the arrival and departure of the ‘death ship’ when Arthur Gordon Pym is stranded on a slightly sunk ship and the materialization of the mystical green island that Pi comes across. With the entrance of horror, both scenes portray a change in the narrator, a renewal then subsequent loss of hope, a moment of self-assessment that changes the young boys’ lives. I will be evaluating the effect of horror through the lens of Julia Kristeva’s “The Powers of Horror: an Essay on Abjection”. According to Kristeva, the abject refers to the human reaction (which is horror) to a threatened breakdown in meaning caused by the loss of the distinction between subject and object or between self and other. The primary example for what causes such a reaction is the corpse (which traumatically reminds us of our own materiality) which is the object of horror that changes the identities of Pi and Pym. The questions I will pursue are: Why does horror change the identities or conscious motivations of these boys? Are their reactions universal or individualized? What previous notions do they project on the horror they face?   Keywords: Abjection, Identity, Universality, Isolation, Survival.