An Eco-tour of returning to nature

AcknowledgementsThanks for giving me this chance to achieve this paper and to make the conclusion for my four years education. Through writing this paper, I have gained more knowledge than i imagined.My deeply thanks are due to my supervisor Ms.Shi for helping me clarify my thought and complete my paper. If without her encouragement and guidance, I am afraid that I would not finish this paper.摘 要李安的首部3D电影作品少年派的奇幻漂流改编自加拿大作家扬马特尔的同名畅销小说。华人导演李安也由此再获奥斯卡最佳导演奖。2012年影片上映之后，国内外好评如潮，人们开始多方位地解读这部电影。目前，国内外有关少年派的奇幻漂流的研究多为各类影评，这些评论集于探讨电影中故事的信仰、真伪、隐喻等。而对于电影中体现的生态思想以及故事的两个主人公Pi和老虎却少有较为系统的的分析和阐述。在生态问题日益严峻的当代社会，重新审视人与动物、人与自然的关系已成为文学批评领域的一个重要的议题。其中生态批评旨在探讨文学与自然的关系，提倡回归自然，人与自然和谐相处。奈斯的深层生态学是生态批评的一个重要分支，其两个基本原则是：自我实现和生态中心主义平等。本文试图以奈斯的深层生态学理论为基础，对电影的主人公Pi与老虎进行全面解析。首先，从奈斯的“生态中心主义平等”这一准则对Pi和老虎的性格特点进行了分析。然后，从Pi与老虎在漂流过程中表现出的双重性格以及老虎理查德帕克的名字深层寓意，分析了Pi“自我实现”的历程。本文最后指出，Pi与老虎在救生艇上的关系是人类与自然关系的一个缩影。解决生态危机的关键是去除人类中心主义思想并不断充实人类的精神世界，这样才能真正实现人与动物、人与自然的和谐发展。关键词：少年派的奇幻漂流；深层生态学；生态中心主义平等；自我实现；人与动物；人 与自然ABSTRACTAng Lee's first 3D film is adapted from the same name novel Life of Pi,written by the Canadian writer Yann Martel. And that brought Ang Lee his second Oscar Award for Best Director. Since it debuting in 2012, Life of Pi has earned a series of high praises from home and abroad. And many critics have interpreted the film from different perspectives. Up to now, both in China and abroad the studies about the film Life of Pi are mainly film reviews, which are paying more attention on the faith, truth and metaphor of the story, while ignoring the ecological awareness and the interpretation of characters Pi and tiger.With increasingly severe ecological problems in human's society, it is a significant topic in literary critical field to reexamine the relationship of human with animals, human with nature. Ecocriticism aims to probe the relationship of literature with nature and calls for human's return to nature and achieves the harmonious coexistence between human and nature. Naess' deep ecology is one of significant parts of ecocriticism, which has two norms: Self-realization and Biocentric Equality. This study attempts to make an overall analysis to the characters Pi and tiger from the theory of deep ecology. At first, the paper interprets the personalities of Pi and tiger based on the Naess' norms of " biocentric equality". Secondly, through analyzing the dual characters of Pi and tiger and interpreting the deep meaning of Richard Parker then reveal that Pi's Self-realization process.Finally, this paper indicates that the relationship of Pi with tiger on the lifeboat is an epitome of the relationship of human with nature. Therefore, the essential solution to ecological crisis lies in that people themselves should eliminate the anthropocentric thought and fulfill their spiritual world. Only by this way, can human achieve the harmonious development with animals and nature.Key Words: Life of Pi; deep ecology; biocentric equality; Self-realization; human and animals; humans and natureContents1. Introduction 11.1 Brief Introduction to the Film Life of Pi 11.2 Ecological Thought in Life of Pi 21.3 Literature Review 32. Ecocriticism 42.1 Brief Introduction 42.2 Deep Ecology and Its Two Norms 43. Analysis of the Main Characters in the Film Life of Pi 73.1 Pi's Biocentric Equality Thought and His Limits 73.1.1 Harmony of Pi with Animals 73.1.2 Harmony of Pi with Nature 93.1.3 Pi's Anthropocentric Dominance over Tiger 103.2 The Overall Analysis of the Tiger 113.2.1 Deep Understanding of Tiger's Name "Richard Parker" 123.2.2 Duality of Tiger's Personality 134. The Process of Pi's Self-Realization 154.1 The Process of Pi's Identification to Tiger 164.2 Becoming an Ecological Self 174.3 The Social Significance of Self-Realization 185. Conclusion 19Bibliography 21An Eco-tour of Returning to NatureThe Ecological Interpretation of the Film Life of Pi1.Introduction1.1 Brief Introduction to the Film Life of PiThe film Life of Pi is based on the Canadian writer Yann Martel's same name novel and directed by Ang Lee, who got worldwide attention and took his second Oscar Award for Best Director by this film. The movie, starring Suraj Sharma, Rafe Spall and Irrfan Khan etc, first showed in the cinema on the 28,9,2012 in New York. The film tells a story about an Indian boy named Pi, who is abundant in knowledge of animal behavior and has a strong love of stories. Pi was born in India and believes in Christianity, Islam and Hinduism in the meantime. The film begins with a writer who wanted to seek inspiration for his writing. And he attempted to find a story from Pi. Pis father manage a zoo in India. Due to the government policy reforms, his family decided to immigrate to Canada for a better life. Unfortunately, in the Pacific Ocean, the ship ran into a rainstorm and sank. Pis families all died in the ocean and lots of animals drowned in this shipwreck. Pi dropped on a small lifeboat with a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena and a tiger soon climb into his boat later. In the first three days, the fierce hyena killed the zebra and the orangutan and the tiger bit the hyena to death after that. At first, Pi felt afraid of tiger but with the days passed, his feeling of tiger changed from fear into dependent. And then the tiger gradually become an indispensable power for Pi to live.During his journey, Pi found a miraculous islands where was a cannibal place and thousands of meerkats live on. Pi found a mans tooth and knew its a place inhospitable to life, so after a short stay in that cannibal islands, Pi and tiger left in panic and began their drifting again. After a few days, Pi was rescued in Mexico beach. In the meantime, the tiger Richard Parker returned to the forest and left Pi without looking. When Pi was rescued, two Japaneses wanted to ask for the truth about the shipwreck, but they cant believe the first story told by the Pi, so Pi told a second story. He said there was no animal in lifeboat, only a cook, a seaman whose leg was broken, Pi and his mother. A few days after the shipwreck, the cook killed the seaman and Pis mother, finally Pi killed and ate the cook. However, the two Japaneses would more likely to believe the first story. Eventually Pi leads a new life and gets a happy ending.1.2 Ecological Thought in Life of PiThe film Life of Pi revolves around a 17-year old Indian boy and a Bengal tiger Richard Parker drifted together on the boundless Pacific Ocean for 227 days. In this movie, the director adopts the ecological thought as its central theme. This ecological ideas is first showed in the criticism of the human conquest and governance of the nature. In the second place, It also criticize the increasing desire of Pis parents who wanted to sell all animals for their best interest. In addition, the hero Pi in this film saved himself by overcoming the anthropocentrism, which has greatly reflected the biocentric equality thought and let the audience completely review their vision of relationship between human and animal, human and nature. Finally, the idea of returning to the natural harmony also fully reflected the ecological thought of the film.It is the commonest of mistakes for human beings to consider that they are the master of all things on the earth. They also believe that all living creatures are created by mankind. The anthropocentrism thought has been criticized strongly in the film. For instance, Pis father ran a zoo at first, under the pressure from the Indian government, his family decided to immigrate to Canada and sell all animals for a better life. The behavior of Pis fathers governance of nature violates the natural attributes of animals badly. Furthermore, in the movie, Pis father was the most typical representative of human desires. Fevered by hopes of living a better life, Pis father announced that they had to move to Canada, where he planed to settle and sell all animals. While the family encountered a storm in Pacific Ocean, so their dreams was killed by the nature. The sudden fall disaster was just about the criticism for increasing desires of human beings and this was natures revenge against humankind. The film followed on from the death of Pis family and Pis destiny was changed in the shipwreck. After the storm,only Pi and the tiger Richard Parker on the lifeboat, Pi never let down his guard for the fierce tiger at first, but after some time, Pi realized that he should regard the tiger Richard Parker as the equal species with him, so he started to meet the various requirements of the tiger. Finally, Pi benefited from his reconsideration of the relationship of human with nature and his overcoming of the anthropocentrism view. The biocentric equality thought was built by the Pi who put the human and the all living beings in the equal level, which established a hard foundation for the Pi returning to the natural harmony.1.3 Literature ReviewYann Martel's novel Life of Pi has attained great achievements and won a good many of acclaims and reviews since it was published in 2002, however, it is known in China owing to the same name film directed by the American-Chinese director Ang Lee in 2012. Since the release of the film, Life of Pi has invited a variety of comments, remarks and research achievements. All these can classify into several aspects. In the first place, some of comments locate it as a religious film. For example, Zhang Zhipeng argues that "Pi's experience told us believing one or more religions is no more than the repeated fulfilling of human spiritual needs, and all religions can achieve the same goal by different routes"(1).However, in the second place, others hold the different ideas, some reviewers assaulting the believability of the story, such as "behind one story is another completely different story and all these can find evidence in the film, however, there isn't a right answer for the truth"(Xing 1). Besides, many different voices also can be heard , some authors focus on the way of storytelling, they believe that film has metaphor meaning, for instance,"the director has extracted a highly metaphorical life through the film is that how individuals get on with himself "(Yang 1).In a word , many critics are interested in the themes of the religions, the truth and the storytelling of the film. But few reviewers analyze the hero Pi and the tiger and concern on their relationship. Besides, there also are few articles to analyze the film from ecocritical angles. According to the study by Zhang Wei, man and animals are a critical part of the natural food chain, so people should promote harmony between man and animals and nature(62-62). Liu Xiaohua's paper (2015) explains the ecological thoughts of the film in general. Although these two theses all conclude that human should respect and protect the animals and nature and have a harmonious relationship with them, they unable to show that how to keep a harmonious relationship.Through analyzing the above comments, remarks and papers, we find that almost authors have the great interests on the religions, the ways of storytelling and the truth of the film, while pay a little attention on the characters of Pi and tiger and the ecocritical angles. Therefore, this paper argues that it is a film about teaching us how we can live with animals and nature together.2.EcocriticismWith the ecosystem and environment increasingly being destroyed, various people like statesmen, scientists and diplomatists have been paying more and more attention on environmental protection. Consequently, a good many authors and critics also devote themselves to study new thoughts and methodologies to deal with these environmental problems. Through the years, ecocriticism has grown as a main critical theory on account of its relationship between human and environment. Besides, deep ecology has grown as a new branch of ecocriticism on account of its new thoughts and principles. Accordingly, this part will introduce ecocriticism and deep ecology briefly and lay stress on its two norms that are used to interpret the film Life of Pi.2.1 Brief IntroductionEcocriticism, a kind of new literature criticism appeared in 1970s and developed in 1990s. Now, it is in a fast-growing development. It probes into the relationship between literary works and environment. It appears in many literary texts and cultural studies. It offers a new way for human to reconsider the relationship between people and the nature. Cheryll Glotfely redefines the definition of ecocriticism in The Ecocriticism Reader, which claims that “what then is ecocriticism? Simply put, ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature and physical environment "(Harold & Glatfelter, 1996:107).The purpose of ecocriticism is to reexamine the culture and criticize the anthropocentrism which is the ideological roots led to the environmental concerns and ecological crisis. Ecocriticism is a kind of critical theory which devotes to raise man's awareness of environmental conservation, to establish a new ecological perspective and to realize the harmonious relationship of man with nature. Furthermore, ecocriticism calls for the human to return to the nature, rebuilding the natural thought of human beings and dealing with the trouble of human's alienation from nature. The ultimate aim of ecocriticism is to avoid the ecological crisis.2.2 Deep Ecology and Its Two NormsThe ecocriticism has been evolved into several branches. For example, Social ecology, Eco-feminism and Deep Ecology. The ecocritical theory chiefly mentioned in this paper is Deep Ecology. Therefore, the brief introduction of this theory is necessary. Deep Ecology is one of significant parts of ecocriticism. It reexamines human's behaviors in a philosophical and ecological way and reconsiders the relationship of human with nature.The theory of Deep Ecology was coined by the Arne Naess, a Norwegian philosopher, in 1973. He first used this term "Deep Ecology" in his article, The shallow and the Deep, Lone-Range Ecology Movement: A summary which was published in 1973. Deep Ecology is also known as Ecosophy, which means the harmonious relationship of ecosphere. The term "deep", to some degree, is questioning human's values and aims when discuss the ecological crisis. However, the term "Ecosophy" derives from the "ecology " and "sophia" which means "wisdom". Deep Ecology holds that all beings in nature have its own existing value rather than all possessed by human. It deems that the whole biosphere is connected and requires human race to venerate and respect the natural world and all living beings. Deep Ecology opposes the man's mistaken view which believes that human is the most powerful species in nature , considers that human is the master of nature. Besides, Deep Ecology ascribes the environmental crisis to the culture crisis and social system crisis. It solves the environmental issues not on the surface but at a deeper level. It claims that the root causes of present environmental problems are human behaviour patterns, human's social and value system. Therefore, it is high time for human to change their social and value system and make themselves and nature integrated as soon as possible. Only by this way, can we work out the environmental problems and ecological crisis.In Arne Naess' opioion, according to the Deep Ecology, we have no right to ruin the other living beings. However, in fact, human already have the powerful destructive tools they can use at their disposal, so they are not mature due to their emotion. Up to now, a great many people's emotion is still narrow-minded. Therefore, Naess has developed two norms of Deep Ecology that are Self-realization and Biocentric Equality.(1) Self-realizationThe norm of “self-realization" is the greatest contribution in Deep Ecology. The capital term "Self" refers to the whole biosphere that surpassess the “self” in individualism sense. The "self" connected with "ego" which expands to a much broader version of "Self" that covering the whole ecosphere. In fact, the term "Self" refers to the whole organics.In the view of Naess, he believes that the "Self" is a metaphysical "Self" in "Self-realization" and its needs to be undergone three stages can achieve maturity. Namely, human has to undergo the "ego" to "social self" and to "Metaphysical Self”. According to Naess, he claims that the "metaphysical Self" is "ecological Self" that means the capital "Self" includes not only the individuals but also the all human race even includes other living forms, for instance, the various animals, plants, mountains and microorganisms, ect. Besides, Naess maintains that only if one can realize all the selves, whether organic or inorganic, can he finally realize his Self. Self-realization is a process which people continually expand their scope of self-identity, and finally go beyond the all human race to a whole identification including other living forms. Due to the expansion of the range of self-identity, human will gradually overcome their alienation from the nature. If this process attains the degree of "ecological Self", human can find Self in others, also can find others in Self. The word "find" means finding the interest from each other. From Naess' perspective, if the self is developed into including the whole nature and all living forms, one's interest can develop into the nature's and vice versa.(2) Biocentric EqualityThe other norm of Deep Ecology is Biocentric Equality which is closely linked to "Self-realization". Biocentric Equality means the whole things in the ecosphere should be able to enjoy basis and equal right of living. It is an absolute equalitarianism that extends its equal scope to the whole ecosphere. The whole things in ecosphere, including the human beings and the all objects we have identified, which we all can call intrinsic value. Human is closely connected with other living beings, so when we maintain that we have the intrinsic value, that is to say, other living beings should possess the intrinsic value too. According to the Naess,"Both the blossoms of human and no-human have the intrinsic values. The life value form of no-human is independent from the usefulness in the narrow human's aim sense" (Devall & Sessions, 1958:60). Therefore, the essence of Biocentric Equality is that the whole living beings in the ecosphere all possess the same intrinsic value. They should be respected and viewed equally. Some deep ecologists claim that we can intuit the intrinsic value without any logical proving. This intuition is derived from the further understanding of nature. Everything has its own value within the ecosystem. They live in the equal status and has no hierarchy in this ecosystem. Humans are only one among many social species, neither superior to other living forms, nor inferior to others of nature. The interrelated world including two parts are humans and no-humans. We human do not have the right to exploit the lives of others things. Hurting the nature is equal to hurting ourselves. All things are interrelated in the world without any boundaries. Biocentric Equality calls for human to respect the nature.In a word, the two norms of Deep Ecology, Self-realization and Biocentric Equality, are closely connected. Respecting for other living forms and the equality of life is the precondition of "Self-realization". Namely, Biocentric equality is the premise of Self-realization. Furthermore, human in order to attain the process of Self-realization, they continually expand the range of Self-realization from ego to social self and to the ecological Self, however, the finally aim of the Biocentric Equality is to achieve the Self-realization.3.Analysis of the Main Characters in the Film Life of PiIn the last part, we have introduced the theory of ecocriticism and the deep ecology briefly and explored the