Sydney Clarysse
Ms. McLennan
ENG 4UV-02
27 March 2015
U2A3: The Hero

Quotation: “Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.” (Martel). 1) This quotation spoke to me while I was reading the book because when I put thought into it, I thought that it was a brilliant portrayal of life itself. As we grow individually, we start to learn more and develop more. There are many theories of development and it can be defined as the series of age-related changes that happen over the course of a life span. By this stage in my life I have come to realize that many people are taken too soon from us, that we lose important things in our life, and that we may be sad about it for a while but sadness and gloom are just a “…passing shadow of a cloud,” (Martel) everything is eventually going to be okay and the sun will soon shine when the shadow passes.

NOTE:
The variation of stage theories all share three similar characteristics: 1. People pass through stages in a specific order, with each stage building on capacities developed in the previous stage. 2. Stages are related to age. 3. Development is discontinuous, with qualitatively different capacities emerging in each stage.

2) Since development is in stages related to age I think that I have grown to learn about this through my life experiences. For example, I have lost a close family member and although very hard in the beginning you begin to feel comfort in knowing that they are in a better place opposed to their suffering. When you start to feel this comfort you begin to cope, things start to feel okay again, and life moves on whether or not you want it to. When something like that happens to you, you have to learn how to cope with it which mentally develops you as an individual. You have become stronger by making it through this tough time in your life and you are now prepared to take on the worst or something very similar to the situation itself. Losing a family member creates a drastic change in your life. But, life throws curve balls and that is when you must learn to adapt and work around the change- everything is always okay in the end. I believe that as I take on these life experiences I am developing into my own person, I am building a purpose to my life that is true to me. I have grown up with my father, he is my biggest inspiration. I used to be scared of being a mother because of the lack of experiences I had with my very own mother. For me, this is just another bump in the road that has led me to believe that anything is possible, I can work around anything and if I want to be a good mother- I will be. Through my stages of development even without a mother, I have learned right from wrong which is more than enough to teach unto my children. Although her leaving was a sad time in my life I learned that everything happens for a reason and that I am still living here today with or without her. I would say that the lack of her presence has actually benefited me; I want to be a good mother when I am older and I don’t want to be another statistic of kids who are not successful because of the loss of a parent. Her absence has been motivation for me, as bad as that sounds I have learned that you need to try to make the best of something and she has helped me develop as an individual. I have learned to personally deal with my problems at a younger age, cope with absence, to be independent, and to never give up on something if you truly want it. I believe that because of this I can relate to “the caregiver” character archetype because all I want to do is love others, be there for them when nobody else is, and help them. I know what it’s like to be left and unloved and I want to make sure that nobody ever has to feel that way because it’s not a good feeling. My development has started from day one, as has yours, and if two events in my life have immensely helped me I can only imagine how many little life experiences have also developed me throughout my lifetime. Many we may not even notice, and others will shine as bright as day but all I know is that bad things may happen throughout our lifetime but you can either let it consume you or learn from it-develop from it; because in the end everything is alright and you become a better, stronger person. It’s all part of the journey, everyone’s is different- we all develop differently and become our own person, we are all unique.

3) I do believe that Pi Patel’s story is very honest but there are a few things we must take into consideration. My first point is that after a certain amount of days lost at sea Pi may have become disoriented, which means even his own story may be skewed. Although, I do think that he did try to tell the story to the best of his ability. Also keep in mind that some things may be edited by the author for the book to sound better however, the author did mention that he tried to write the book to match Pi’s quest to the best of his ability. I mean, personally I think it would be very hard not to change certain parts of the story especially when you can think of several better scenarios for the situation.

Works Cited
"Development." SparkNotes. SparkNotes. Web. 27 Mar. 2015.
<http://www.sparknotes.com/psychology/psych101/development/section1.rhtml>.

Martel, Yann. Life of Pi. New York: Harcourt, Inc., 2001. 27 Mar. 2015.

NOTE:
The sparknotes citation is for the developmental theories I included.