UMBC Application Essays

"The arts are a necessity, like food and water, for true civilization." (200-350 Words)

When Mrs. McElderry, my art teacher, told me that we would be spending four hours in the Uffizi, a legendary art gallery in Florence, Italy on our school trip, I thought it was far too much time. I was sure that in four hours I would have time to see the whole museum, carefully peruse the entire gift shop before buying a souvenir, and sit idly for at least an hour. But since I had no choice in the matter, I did not even bother to complain.

I entered through a large doorway, not quite realizing how far the building extended, and began breezing through rooms. I walked through a hallway lined with busts of famous historical figures from Sappho to Napolean Bonaparte. I paused in rooms where Aphrodite gazed outward and sighed. I stared at paintings so renowned that the mere fact I was in the same room sent shivers up my spine. After four hours, I could have been officially declared dead. My head had been filled with so many beautiful and startling images that I could barely function.

As I gaped at the building that now loomed impossibly tall, I thought to myself that the world would be a dull and unstimulating place without the Uffizi, without artists like Michelangelo and Giotto, without paintings like Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus”. Art gives civilization meaning just as food gives a stomach meaning. At that moment, I was filled with so much hope and so much pride in what mere human beings had been able to accomplish that anything seemed possible.

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“It has been said that ambiguity pervades the human condition. Illustrate this sentiment by discussing a book you have read . . .” (600 Words)

Imagine that you are stranded on a lifeboat and your only companions are an orangutan, a wounded zebra, a hyena and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. Imagine that you stumble onto an island comprised solely of carnivorous vegetation on which there is no life save a population of meerkats. And later in the middle of the Pacific Ocean when you are blind, thirsty, and starving you find another man drifting with the tides who, in desperation, tries to eat you. Is this difficult to envision? Would it be easier if I said that your companions were your mother, a Chinese sailor with a broken leg, and a cannibalistic cook? If instead of seeing the wonders of God’s creation, you saw your only companions murder each other one by one until you were the only one left alive?

This is the journey on which Yann Martel takes you in Life of Pi. The tale starts out simply enough with the boast that “this is a story that will make you believe in God”. In fact, it starts out with a young boy who has such strong faith in God that he is a devoted Christian, Muslim, and Hindu, much to the dismay of his religious mentors. He looks at Christ’s suffering and sees God’s humanity. He bows in Muslim prayer and feels an instant, irreversible connection with the earth and everything inhabiting it. He understands the universe through Hindu eyes, the finite within the infinite. He looks at the world as a marvel, as something to be appreciated and loved, even when adrift in the middle of the ocean. Pi’s story is full of hope and suffering, fear and jubilation, instinct and rationale.

Yet at the very moment that Pi convinces you of the existence of God, he gives you reason to doubt. He retells his story with humans instead of animals, and this time there is no hope, no jubilation, only pain and suffering. And without pausing he asks you, which story do you like better?

In this way, Life of Pi reads much more like a religious text than an ordinary novel. Pi is the prophet and these are his parables. His miracle is his survival; his compassion is evidenced by his care of Richard Parker. He too went into the wilderness and was tempted by the devil. Yet it is the smaller phenomena that drive the message home, the lightening that strikes three feet to the left, the dolphins that dance on either side of the lifeboat, the ever-changing beauty of the sky. He cannot make you believe in God; and he does not want to, he only wishes to present you with that choice. There is nothing ambiguous in the search for God, and yet there is nothing unambiguous about what you find.

As Martel explains in the Author’s Note, “That’s what fiction is about, isn’t it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence?” In the end, it does not matter which story is true, it only matters which one you choose to believe. Life of Pi starts out as a story about the test of one boy’s faith and ends as a test for you, the reader. You can live in a world where there is no life after death, where people kill each other without pain of punishment, and where there is no greater purpose than survival. Or you can choose not to. It does not matter whether there is a God or not; it only matters what you choose to believe, and whether that belief nourishes you.