Critical Lens Essay On Life Of Pi

In an Author’s Note, an anonymous author figure explains that he traveled from his home in Canada to India because he was feeling restless. There, while sipping coffee in a café in the town of Pondicherry, he met an elderly man named Francis Adirubasamy who offered to tell him a story fantastic enough to give him faith in God. This story is that of Pi Patel. The author then shifts into the story itself, but not before telling his reader that the account will come across more naturally if he tells it in Pi’s own voice.

The Life of Pi, an award-winning novel by Yann Martel, tells the story of Pi Patel, a young boy stranded at sea with an adult Bengal tiger. Marooned on a tiny lifeboat adrift in the Pacific Ocean, Pi finds himself struggling to survive. Faced with imminent suffering and death brought on by hunger, thirst, and an unending battle with the elements, Pi must make a decision between upholding his and society’s strict set of morals and values, or letting his survival instincts take over. Through compelling language and imagery, Martel gives Pi’s conflict between morals, fear, and survival a sense of excitement, suspense, and climax.

In Pi's 227 days of being stranded in the sea, he has had many problems that have

Karanvir Dhami Ms. Yu ENG3U March 7, 2011 Symbolism in Life of Pi In Life of Pi there are many literary devices used to present the different themes in the novel. The main literary device used in Life of Pi is symbolism. Symbolism is often used to represent an object to something else, either by association or by resemblance. Most of the names of animals, objects and even humans in this novel have a symbolic meaning. In Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, symbolism such as pi’s name, the colour orange and the algae island, are used throughout the novel to provide Pi with protection to help him either survive or overcome his emotional pain. The mathematical pi is undefined, infinite and unable to be understood, just like Piscine Patel.

Survival is an instinct. Often times, in order to survive, people must shed a part of their innocence. For some, it may be subtle, taken in tiny bites along the way, and for others it could be in one traumatizing moment. Ang Lee, director of “The Life of Pi,” explores this theme throughout his film. Lee shows the viewer this loss in the use of imagery, lighting, and color. He takes the viewer on a journey through the eyes of Piscine Patel as his innocence and humanity slowly get chipped away and he is forced to do what is necessary to survive and the lengths he goes to to regain that lost innocence.

What happens when an Individual seeks union with divinity Where the protagonist Piscine Molitor Patel “Pi” is visited by the most extraordinary dreams, trances, visions, thoughts, sensations, and remembrances. In this 2012 American survival drama film Life Of Pi written by David Magee and directed by Ang Lee, Pi is

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.

Yann Martel's novel (2001) and Ang Lee's film adaption (2012) of Life of Pi harbour themes such as isolation and the extent one would go to in order to survive. The story is split into two parts, the first part focuses on Piscine "Pi" Patel's background and his religious journey. Part two focuses on Pi's predicaments while he is stranded out at sea for 227 days. The second section of the story is renown for Pi's situation with a tiger named Richard Parker. Not only does the protagonist have to focus on his own survival, Pi needed to be attentive of the Bengal tiger; all whilst dealing with his loneliness. Martel and Led convey the ideas of isolation and survivability through the use of several literary and stylistic features throughout the texts.

The will to live is a strong urge of survival that occurs when one’s life is threatened. The novel and film Life of Pi is about a boy named Piscine Molitor Patel who is lost in the middle of the Pacific Ocean due to a shipwreck with a 450 pound Bengal Tiger. The theme that fits the novel and film the best is the will to live. The novel and film effectively prove the theme by using symbols to portray how badly Pi wants to live. Characterization also plays an important role in proving the theme as the novel and book show how Pi and his tiger have to change themselves to live. Cinematic techniques such as different types of camera angles are used as well to prove that the will to live is the essential theme in the film. In the novel, Yann Martel shows how the camera angles prove what they prove. The film and novel Life of Pi effectively capture the theme of the will to live by the effective use of symbolism, characterization, and cinematic techniques.

When writing, authors need to think of their audience and involve an element of surprise. Authors use plot twists in their writing to help them accomplish surprising the audience, allowing them to keep their audience’s interest. Not only do plot twists help keep the audience’s attention, they also make the audience question their beliefs about what they think of the story. Authors can use this tool to advance their themes. Yann Martel uses a crazy plot twist in his book, the Life of Pi, to suggest to readers that truth is relative.

In “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings”, a mysterious old man with wings is found in a village. The family that has found him place him in a chicken coop, where crowds soon flock to so that they may pay a fee to see him. In the Life of Pi, Piscine recounts to a writer the story about his childhood experience of being stranded in the ocean. He claims to have been accompanied on a lifeboat by zoo animals, most notably a tiger named Richard Parker. In “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” and in Life of Pi religion takes the role of a fantasy invented to satisfy the desire for a more satisfying reality.

Embellished storytelling has remained an art form among human civilizations since the dawn of humanity. Stories were passed down through generations with each version obtaining new elements thrown in by the next storyteller. The modifications made to each story added specific fictional elements to better convey the meaning and emotions of the story. Many of these stories attempt to explain unexplainable phenomenon through stories of Gods like in Greek mythology. Yann Martel, in his famed work Life of Pi, depicts a story with a structure manipulated to create a fictional representation of the truth. The main character, Pi, who tells this story asks the narrator, “Which story do you prefer? Which is the better story?” (Martel 178). Martel explains the fictional twist of the story as a way to bring out the true essence of it. This fictional variation can be observed as a representation of Pi’s faith and it greater captivates the listener than in what is likely the truthful version.

Given the amount of depth in the film Life of Pi it provides endless thought and speculation on the meaning. Because of the open ended aspect of the film it’s grown to become one of my favorable films. Although it may require some thinking and an open mind, the film is well worth watching and analyzing the meaning of

Due to Pi’s devotion to all of his faiths, particularly Hinduism, not only changed how he thought about his current situation, but also changed how he would think about every single situation after in Martel’s Life of Pi.

Live or die seems like an easy decision right? But imagine being in a life-or-death situation. Making decisions you thought you would never have to make in life. Most think that people that end up in a life-or-death situation should be held accountable for what they do. But people don’t think about what THEY would do if THEY were in the situation the person is in. What inhuman things would would do all just to survive.