Adversity In Life Of Pi, By Yann Martel

Religion is “the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods” (Dictionary). In society, many people follow the ethics of certain religions in order to make decisions about their life. The author Yann Martel uses Piscine Molitor Patel in the novel Life of Pi to send a message to readers about using ambiguity to create a theme about morality through the use of religion as spiritual beliefs can stabilize and nourish one in times of hardship. The use of religion, story-telling and science compared to religion resulted in ambiguity and therefore illustrated the theme of the importance of morality.

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.

In part two, life is constant battle of emotions for Pi who faces adversity throughout his two-hundred-twenty seven days on a lifeboat. In the beggining, Pi watches the Tsimtsum as it sinks swallowing his family in the raging waves. He is now the passenger of a lifeboat alongside a zebra with injured leg, a spotted hyena, an orangutan, and a sea-sick tiger. Below him a sea full of sharks; above him a tempest. Pi stricken with fear and grief, but he clings to survival like a child clings to their mother. Pi defenseless like a child only glares as the hyena eats away at the zebra; who is still alive. The hyena savagely decapitates the orangutan with its blood lust unfulfilled from the death of the zebra. Pi retreats to a the safety of a raft

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

On its surface, Martel’s Life of Pi proceeds as a far-fetched yet not completely unbelievable tale about a young Indian boy named Pi who survives after two hundred twenty-seven days on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. It is an uplifting and entertaining story, with a few themes about companionship and survival sprinkled throughout. The ending, however, reveals a second story – a more realistic and dark account replacing the animals from the beginning with crude human counterparts. Suddenly, Life of Pi becomes more than an inspiring tale and transforms into a point to be made about rationality, faith, and how storytelling correlates the two. The point of the book is not for the reader to decide which

“To travel is to take a journey into yourself” (Logothethis 1). We are the heroes of our own lives and are given the opportunities to make decisions that will shape our own personal stories. Life of Pi is a beautiful novel which fits Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth (Hero’s Journey) archetype, a pattern which has been used to structure stories for generations from all around the world. Piscine Molitor Patel (Pi), the protagonist of the novel, finds himself shaping his life, knowing that each mistake puts his survival at stake. Yann Martel has written a breathtaking story about the voyage and erudition of Pi. He uses the Monomyth archetype to show the measures one would take to survive, even if it requires putting their religion

In the novel Life of Pi, Yann Martel’s story of a young Indian boy who survived a shipwreck and months in a lifeboat lost at sea with a bengal tiger, the main character Pi tells the reader the story of his life and where it started. He mentions that “people move because of the wear and tear of anxiety. Because of the growing feeling that no matter how hard they work their efforts will yield nothing, that what they build up in one year will be torn down in one day by others… feeling that nothing will change, that happiness and prosperity are possible somewhere else” (79). Fear is the one controlling factor that determines how individuals decide how to take the next step in life. However, this can be discarded if the individual looks

Surviving a tragic situation is a true test of external strengths and, more importantly, internal strength. The use of mental strength allows for many people to conquer various obstacles throughout a journey. The novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel allows readers to imagine a young boy named Piscine Patel trying to survive a shipwreck using everything that he learns and experiences. Piscine Patel survives many things such as dehydration, starvation, living on a lifeboat with animals, drowning, and crashing on a foreign island. The personality traits of Piscine Patel are what enable him to survive and the three most important character traits that he possesses are optimism, intelligence and perseverance.

It is helpful when someone has an object, person or belief that provides them with a source of joy and comfort when times are tough. For some people, this may be a photograph, for others, a dog, and for many more, God. However, if someone relies on only this specific item for their happiness and hope, there can be consequences. What if they discover a disturbing fact about the item? What if the item gets lost? In Life of Pi by Yann Martel, a deeply religious sixteen year old named Pi becomes lost in the Pacific. His health dwindles as he struggles through the ordeal, until he miraculously stumbles upon a floating algae island. Unusual characteristics of the island, both lifesaving and dangerous, mirror Pi’s religious beliefs. In the novel,

These lines are thought out by Pi near the end of the novel. Pi has been stranded on the lifeboat and is starting to lose hope and thinks that he cannot go any further. Pi turns to God for hope and strength as he has reached his breaking point. When Pi talks about the “low” this is a metaphor for the suffering he has endured and when Pi uses the word “high” he is referring to a higher power, God. When you combine the whole sentence “High calls low and low calls high” this means that not only do individuals who are suffering call on a higher power for support but the higher power calls on those who are suffering to have faith and believe that there is a light at the end of their suffering. Pi is desperate to be rescued and get off the boat

Organization is essential in any good book, as in The Life of Pi by Yann Martel. The way Yann Martel sets up part one in his book, The Life of Pi, is very different from most authors styles. Part one of The Life of Pi mainly consists of Pi’s childhood, with the exception of the observations of Pi made by the author of Pi’s story. It is inferred Pi has had some struggle in between his transition from India to Canada as Martel starts the book off with Pi stating, “[his] suffering left [him] sad and gloomy” (Martel, 4). Pi grew up in a zoo that was filled with adventure and exotic organisms.

The movie, Life of Pi is a movie that is one of my favorites and is most inspiring for many reasons. The director, Ang Lee, wanted the movie to have “depth and realism.” It is a story-within-a-story that is based on a fictional novel written in 2001 by Yann Martel, a Canadian author. The author tells the story about a boy named Piscine Molitor Patel (known as Pi) who survives insurmountable odds. Pi loses his entire family when their ship sank. He is left to the shipwreck’s inhabitants of a lifeboat. In the lifeboat is a tiger, named Richard Parker, who survives with Pi for 227 days in the vast Pacific Ocean after shipwrecked by an atrocious storm. There are four major themes in the movie. They are 1. Primacy of Survival; 2. Religion and Faith; 3. Power of Storytelling; and 4. Loss of Innocence. Focusing on Primacy of Survival theme, the movie Life of Pi explores this theme at sea through the main character, Pi. The obstinate pursuit for survival demands perseverance mentally, physically and spiritually.

The saying “desperate times call for desperate measures” holds truth to an extent. In the award winning novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel, drastic measures are taken by characters in order to survive while stranded on a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean. Through his journey, main character, Pi Patel, endures many hardships and witnesses several deaths. Significantly, the death of the zebra accompanying Pi and the other animals establishes a generalization of human nature being sophisticated yet inherently vicious according to methods of survival.

Piscine Molitor Patel (commonly referred to as “Pi”) is one of the two narrators on the book Life of Pi which was written by Yann Martel in 2001. The main plot of the book is a young man who, after his ship sunk, found himself in a boat together with a Bengal tiger. The nook features not only the fierce battle for survival but also a multifarious discussion regarding topics such as whether you can believe in multiple religions. The book however hardly features any actions and can almost be called a “fantasy” because a 227 day survival with a tiger on board in practically absurd. On the other hand this is not a book aimed at uncovering the details about survival in an open ocean. Martel uses Pi adeptly

Survival is the most vital aspect of a human life. Without the instinct to survive, humanity would be extinct. In Yann Martel’s novel, The Life of Pi, Pi is somehow able to survive being stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean after a shipwreck in which he loses his family. The turmoil that ensues as he spends two hundred and twenty seven days lost at sea comes with numerous repercussions. Throughout Pi’s journey on the lifeboat he learns that in order to survive several sacrifices must be made such as lifestyles and morals, however faith never has to die.