Summative Test Prep
Your summative next week will be a five paragraph
in-class essay. You will be allowed to use your
book and your notes for this test.
For the test, please make sure that you have solid
knowledge of the following concepts:
1. Postmodern worldview vs. Christian worldview
(God, truth, faith)
2. Allegory
3. Archetype
4. Structure
5. Trauma
Yann Martel’s
Worldview
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Yann Martel’s worldview
is postmodernism.
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What is
Postmodernism?
In a postmodern worldview, there
is no absolute truth.
Reality does not come from God.
Instead, reality is constructed
from the words and stories people
tell.
These words and stories
eventually make up paradigms,
the rules of the culture they’re
used in.
Postmodernists believe that
people get so used to these rules
that they start to accept them as
truth, even though they’re made
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An Example of
Paradigm: 선배
“You must respect your
sunbae.”
This is true in Korean culture.
In Canadian culture, this is not
true because this paradigm
does not even exist.
There is no word for “sunbae”
in either English or French.
What is true in the Korean
paradigm is not true in the
Canadian paradigm.
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Example: Only
Skinny Girls are
Pretty
“Skinny is beautiful” is considered a
true statement today.
But in the late 1800s, “large is
beautiful” was considered a true
statement.
Postmodernists would say that one
view of beauty is not more true than
the other. Each is “true” in its time
because people hear it until they
Famous American actress Lillian Russell
believe it is true.
would probably be considered “too fat”
today, but in the 1800s she was thought to
Postmodernism and
Religion
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Postmodernism’s worldview on religion is that all
religions were created by humans who needed to
explain their worlds.
In that sense, to a postmodernist, no one religion is
more “true” than any other.
The spread of postmodernism in the West has
contributed to a drop in church members. People
ask, “If nothing is really true, why should I believe in
God?”
This can often lead to agnosticism.
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Christianity and
Postmodernism
Even though Yann Martel is a
postmodernist, he also
criticizes postmodernism in
Life of Pi.
To him, agnosticism (or having
no story) means missing out
on a connection to God.
So although Yann never
specifically says that any one
religion is true, he is not totally
a postmodernist either.
The Better Story
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At the end of Life of Pi,
Mr. Okamoto, who
rejected Pi’s story with
the animals at first,
comes to believe it by
the end of the book.
What is the value of
choosing the “better
story?”
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The Better Story
Mr. Okamoto
concludes that there is
no way to know how
the Tsimtsum really
sank.
The truth of the sinking
will never be known (a
very postmodern
thing!).
However, he chooses
to go with Pi’s version
of events.
Life of Pi Structure
Yann’s interviews with Pi
The novel Life of Pi
is structured like a
picture frame.
Story #1
Pi in the lifeboat with tiger,
hyena, orangutan, zebra
What happened to Pi
between
July 2, 1977 and
February 14, 1978
The first story could be
an allegory of the second.
Both of Pi’s stories are
the right size to fit inside
the frame, but we don’t
know which one was
actually inside.
Story #2
Pi in the lifeboat with
his mother, cook,
Taiwanese sailor