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

Abstract

Both Life of Pi by Yann Martel and The Narrative 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 a 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?