Metaphorical Representation Of Trauma

Ang Lee’s Life of Pi was based on Yann Martel’s2002novel under the same title.It achieved great success in the85thAcademy Awards. It won Best Director, BestOriginal Score, Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects. The film tells theprotagonist, Pi, who represents two different versions of his story in the shipwreck. Thethesis applies for psychoanalysis theory and borrows other scholars’ theories abouttrauma and metaphor to explore Pi’s trauma and his replacement of trauma withmetaphor.The thesis first discusses the influence of faith and reason on Pi’s perception.Chapter one works as the lead-in of the thesis. Through analyzing faith and reason’sdifferent functions, the author figures out their relation with paralleling stories of Pi’straumatic experiences. Then, the chapter two focuses on the revealing Pi’s traumathrough the detailed analysis Pi’s two versions of his ordeal. The beautified animal story,traumatic human story, absent bloody scenes in human story, traumatized subject andthe role of three direct listeners all make contribution to the revealing of Pi’s trauma.And last chapter analyzes Pi’s substitution of trauma in a metaphorical way and provesPi uses the animal story to replace the trauma brought by cruel human story. And it alsopoints out that Life of Pi is a miniature of metaphorical reality, the negative side ofwhich always forces human to flee from it.