Animal, Another Me
Hello everyone, welcome to Ellen’s presentation of the progress of HUMA 1000 essay ‘Animal, Another Me’.
You must be confused by my title – why is animal another me? Well, in my essay, I’ll be talking about my observation of the representation of animals and the implications. Here is my thesis statement – As human beings, we always present in the literature the other side of us in the form of animals that contain projections of our deepest hopes, fears, and aspirations. When we look at animals, we are seeing our own emotions reflected back at ourselves because our understanding of animals is intimately bound up with our own self-concept as human beings.
To support my statement, I will give two examples:
The first one is the movie ‘Life of Pi’ directed by Ang Lee.
The storyline revolves around a 16-year-old Indian boy "Pi" Patel, who survives from a shipwreck in which he loss his family, and is stranded in the Pacific Ocean on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. This tiger is not a real animal but another Pi. While Pi himself represents the morality, the belief, and the strong desire of living; the tiger represents his fear of death and his instinct of surviving in the nature. Their friendship in the journey implies that the belief gives human beings the peace in mind and the instinct let human beings survive.
The second example is the short story ‘Super-Frog Saves Tokyo’ written by Haruki Murakami.
In this story, Frog together with the main character Katagiri successfully fights with the worm to prevent the Tokyo earthquake from happening. The worm represents the hates that has been cumulated for years in Katagiri’s mind, which would never be noticed by silent and depressive Katagiri. Another part of him is Frog which embodies his consciousness and deepest hopes. It helps him to see his life in a different way and protect himself from destruction.
These two examples demonstrate that animals contain our emotion and represent another
You must be confused by my title – why is animal another me? Well, in my essay, I’ll be talking about my observation of the representation of animals and the implications. Here is my thesis statement – As human beings, we always present in the literature the other side of us in the form of animals that contain projections of our deepest hopes, fears, and aspirations. When we look at animals, we are seeing our own emotions reflected back at ourselves because our understanding of animals is intimately bound up with our own self-concept as human beings.
To support my statement, I will give two examples:
The first one is the movie ‘Life of Pi’ directed by Ang Lee.
The storyline revolves around a 16-year-old Indian boy "Pi" Patel, who survives from a shipwreck in which he loss his family, and is stranded in the Pacific Ocean on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. This tiger is not a real animal but another Pi. While Pi himself represents the morality, the belief, and the strong desire of living; the tiger represents his fear of death and his instinct of surviving in the nature. Their friendship in the journey implies that the belief gives human beings the peace in mind and the instinct let human beings survive.
The second example is the short story ‘Super-Frog Saves Tokyo’ written by Haruki Murakami.
In this story, Frog together with the main character Katagiri successfully fights with the worm to prevent the Tokyo earthquake from happening. The worm represents the hates that has been cumulated for years in Katagiri’s mind, which would never be noticed by silent and depressive Katagiri. Another part of him is Frog which embodies his consciousness and deepest hopes. It helps him to see his life in a different way and protect himself from destruction.
These two examples demonstrate that animals contain our emotion and represent another