Addiction In Yann Martel's Life Of Pi

Throughout his young life, Pi has been guided by a strong set of morals and values. A strict pacifist and vegetarian, Pi never dreamed of killing an animal, especially for food. Pi states, “…When I was a child I always shuddered when I snapped open a banana because it sounded to me like the breaking of an animal’s neck” (Martel 197). However, faced with starvation at sea, Pi must decide between adhering to his morals and satisfying his ravenous hunger when a school of flying fish descends upon the lifeboat. He chooses his own survival and decides he must butcher a fish to feed himself. Martel uses vivid details and language to convey Pi’s feelings about the necessity of violence and killing a living creature for survival. Martel conveys a sense of suspense to the reader as Pi raises his hatchet several times to

When Pi gets stranded on the boat with the animals, this quakes his perfect reality from events going as planned to what he should do in order to stay alive.” He then had to accept the death of his parents and also his brother. pi being so haunted by the thoughts of Mortality, brought him to create mental blocks in order to eat raw meats and raw fish. The biggest obsticle he had to face was learning how to tame a Bengal tiger with no experience. “ I had to tame him. It was at that very moment i realized this necessity.” This quote conveys pi’s logical thoughts to his survival thoughts. This quote also gives pi the

Pi’s mind instructed him to hold on. All the forces of his body were aching him to let go of life but, his mind overcame. The author reveals the mind’s ability to subdue the human body and its needs by establishing Pi’s distractions. “I kept a diary. It’s hard to read.

Yann Martel manipulates the narrative style and structural devices within this passage to support the will to survive theme that is present in Life of Pi. Before the shipwreck, Pi was a spiritual individual with a strong appreciation for the joy and peace in life. Pi commonly experienced cruelty and doubt from his family and friends; however, he remained calm by following the guidance from his three religions. After the shipwreck, the spirituality within Pi’s life was tampered with because the chaotic and brute actions of the animals threatened to separate Pi from his peaceful demeanour. At first, Pi maintained his interaction with God, but as the days passed and the conditions worsened, Pi’s animal instincts began to develop.

First of all, the island was full of enticement. It was like the Garden of Eden in paradise. Pi is comfortable until temptation overcomes him when he picks the fruit. He becomes similar to Eve when he mentions, “I wanted to try the fruit [...]”. Once he grabs it, he must leave the island. Richard Parker is then forced to leave along with him, similarly to Adam. Another show of temptation occurs when Pi figures out how the island works. “The island attracted saltwater fish into its subterranean tunnels-how, I don't know; perhaps fish ate the algae as gluttonously as I did.” Through this quote, Pil explains how the fish are eaten by the island. They are brought to their death by the algae. The temptations that the island showed were powerful but, Pi decided he had to leave.

Humans generally face struggles in their lifetime. Such struggles could be within themselves or with someone or something else but commonly stem from some sort of opposition in lifestyle. In Yann Martel’s novel, Life of Pi, Pi’s passion for personal survival conflicts with his moral obligations to himself internally, morphing his external character.

Humans have diverse habits of coping with difficulties. In Yann Martel’s novel, Life of Pi, Pi, after having endured unimaginable circumstances, fabricates an alternate story to the original. However, the outcomes of both stories are the same; the Tsimtsum sinks, Pi's family dies, and Pi survives. As a way of coping with the tragedies he has endured, Pi creates a different story which expresses the characters prodigiously, all the while inhibiting his suffering and freeing him from his survival instincts.

To simply be alive consists of the acts of breathing and having blood pump through the body, but to be a human being consists of much more complexity. The nature composed of a human being involves having self sovereignty on our own emotions, opinions, desires, faiths as well as having a moral subconscious. Yet, what occurs when a situation allows an individual to react in a behaviour that doesn’t follow these defining factors of human nature? In Yann Martel 's Life of Pi, he creates the conflict of a cargo ship sinking, and the only notable survivors on the life raft consists of a hyena, a zebra with a broken leg, an orangutan, and a 16-year-old Indian boy. The protagonist of the novel, Pi Patel, is faced with a personal survival conflict

Being a castaway on the verge of death, the carnivorous algae island became a crucial element in Pi’s survival. It offered Pi a sense of not only hope, but salvation. In many ways, the island shows a parallel to the Garden of Eden. It is a sacred garden created by God for Adam and Eve, who lived on his plants as a source of food. With the animals that lived alongside them, the Garden of Eden was truly a paradise, a place of peace and happiness. However, this did not last long. After being tricked by a snake to steal the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, they were banished to Earth. Adam and Eve, once so pure, lost their innocence as they became tainted with knowledge, of both evil and good.

Bengali polymath, Rabindranath Tagore, once said “you can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.” In the novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel, the protagonist, Pi, faces many challenges at sea while being accompanied by a tiger by the name of Richard Parker. This tiger, though a nuisance, proves to be essential in the role of Pi’s survival. Throughout the story, Richard Parker symbolizes survival, a reflection of Pi, and a being of God.

Throughout Yann Martel’s Life of Pi many elements of the novel blur the lines of reality and fantasy. This leaves multiple facets of perspectives in his readers. I Patel is thrust to the forefront of a catastrophic ordeal resulting in the loss of everything he knows s and loves. As this occurs we begin to see the total brutality of survival in both stories. Martel’s phenomenal use of symbolism, dualism, and religious allegory eloquently convey this imaginative world of brutality, savagery, and thirst for survival.

Dispelling his desire for physical comfort, he decides to continue his journey. Therefore, Pi’s realization about the danger of the island and determination for survival fuel him through the “abyss” stage, the final obstacle of his

When I was growing up, I wanted to open up a pet store. I would constantly tell my parents, from before I began school to around 6th grade, that I would get a business license and a rented out building and sell rescued animals my whole life. It didn’t seemed to matter to me that the few pets stores that have existed around our area have come and gone, making little to no money before the owners’ dreams of opening a pet store were destroyed. If my parents had asked me where I would accumulate the money to support rescued animals and how I would manage to accomplish this goal on my own, I wouldn’t have had the answer. Maybe that’s partly because I was so young and couldn’t realistically comprehend the importance of money in this circumstance,

When faced with traumatic circumstances and events, each individual develops their own personal ways to cope. Life of Pi, written by Yann Martel, is a fictional adventure novel that follows the expeditions of a castaway and a Bengal tiger. In Life of Pi, Piscine (Pi) Patel subconsciously translates his story into one that aids him in coping with recent events. He begins to parallel human characters with the animals that personify them; each illusion stemming from his very own past experiences.

There are certain events in our lives that can change a person. When an Individual goes through traumatic events, their subconscious has a method to trick them into believing events that have not occurred. In Life of Pi, Yann Martel creates two stories of what happens to the main character Pi. One about the animals and other about Pi being a murderer and turning cannibalistic. The two stories that are told are so identical, it seems that all Pi did was replace animals with humans. This gives us a deeper insight into Pi's subconscious and his method of dealing with the trauma and struggle caused by his journey.