My advice: type up your response somewhere else, copy it, and then post it. You don't want to risk losing everything you've typed :) If you have posting difficulty, email me your response and I'll post it for you. Make sure you sign your name on your post if posting "anonymously."
SAMPLE: To give you a better idea of my expectations for this blog entry, here is a post written by one of my former students. I am especially moved by this student's level of thoughtfulness and interaction with the novel :)
THE QUESTION:What's up with the Blind Dude?
Let's see if we can come up with some viable interpretations of pp. 242-256. Analyze the conversation between Pi and the other person he miraculously encounters on the ocean when he is at his lowest point in his journey. Consider the following:Who is Pi speaking to? At first he thinks it's Richard Parker (p.246), but then he thinks it's a random Frenchman (p. 248), but then the voice claims he's merely an "echo" (p.248) and he just happens to also be blind. And then, because R.P. "amply supped on him, including his face" (255), Pi "never saw who [his] brother was" (255-6).What is going on in his scene?
Student Response:
First, I think that it is important to look back a Pi's view of light and darkness. At the beginning of chapter 45, soon after the ship sank, when morning finally came, Pi was ecstatic at the sight of the light. He said,"With the very first rays of light it came alive in me: hope." The light was a sign of hope for Pi, and gave him a reason to continue.
Pi mentions that when he went blind, it was not the physical suffering that was the worst, but the "mental torture." "Everything was pitch-black": he could no longer see the light. This torture began because going blind marked the end of his "story"—the story with the animals that allowed him to survive thus far. At the end of chapter 89, Pi says, "This was my last entry. I went on from there, endured, but without noting it. Do you see these invisible spirals on the margins of the page? I thought I would run our of paper. It was the pens that ran out." Pi's suffering began "the day [he] went blind" because he could no longer twist the cold, hard facts of his situation into a story that would help preserve his sanity, dignity, and hope.
At this point, Pi basically decided that he was done. He would die. But just as he tried to say goodbye to Richard Parker, Richard Parker (though at first Pi doesn't know t was RP who spoke) responded. In response to this, Pi comments that "to be blind is to hear otherwise." He can no longer create a story before his eyes, and he is forced coexist within the confines of his mind. (Remember, earlier in the book (toward the end of chapter 78), he says that "you open your eyes wide to escape your loneliness.")
And then he meets this blind guy in the middle of the ocean. What are the chances?
I think the blind man represents Pi's will to survive, while Richard Parker represents Pi's will to live. Now, remember how Pi mentioned that Richard Parker gave him a "will to live"? And when Pi tries to reason with his survival-oriented counterpart by offering a story, the other blind man has no interest in Pi's story about the banana because he is only concerned with survival: "Of what use is a story? I'm hungry." He does not care about making what remains of his life livable, he only cares about surviving and avoiding death for as long as he can.
It is almost as if Pi, as himself, is hosting a debate between "the will to survive" and "the will to live," and he will act as the final judge. When the blind man tries to kill Pi, which the blind man does in order to survive, Richard Parker (Pi's will to live) kills the blind man. Martel uses this part of the book to show Pi's internal struggle with deciding whether it's better to survive or to truly live. The voice within Pi that said that merely surviving would be enough? That voice "died" that day, which is why Pi regained his sight. Richard Parker did, indeed, make Pi "whole" once again, by bringing light into Pi's darkest moment.
