How Did Pi Survive Without Animals?

As Pi reaches the second level of the hierarchy of needs, he finds himself on the level of safety he needs to figure out how to stay safe while on the life boat. While Pi was on the boat he was so scared of Richard Parker that he had jumped off the boat to go in the water, but then realizes that there are predators just as scary as Richard parker or maybe even worse that he has to avoid to staying safe. “I noticed the presence of sharks around the life boat…The sharks were makos-swift, point-snouted predators with long murderous teeth that protruded noticeable from their mouths” (Martel 179). Once Pi tries to overcome his fears and tames Richard like a zookeeper would do and once he does, he ends up having a companion that helps Pi get through the struggle to survive. Pi finds an island where he is safe and is able to regain his strength but as he finds a tooth in the algae, Pi

Pi is alone with Richard Parker on the lifeboat and they both starve and suffer with dehydration. Pi starts catching fishes for both of them. He always gives the biggest share to Richard Parker as he is the strongest. One day, he decides to eat the largest part. He wants to calm his desire for hunger. He does not want to share anything with Richard Parker. Pi starts eating like an animal. Pi tells, “It came as an unmistakable indication to me of how I had sunk the day I noticed, with a pinching of the heart, that I ate like an animal” (Martel 183). The innocent boy is now as dangerous as an animal that can do anything for the food. His yearning for food makes him selfish. It is in pi’s hand not to sacrifices his integrity, but he chooses to sacrifice because he knows that at this critical situation it is right to do. Even though Pi loses his integrity, he gains the power of being the strongest one on the

Once Pi has finished telling both of his stories, he asks which one the men prefer to believe, since neither of them make a difference (317). They both reply that the story with the animals makes for a much more interesting story (317) and then reference that story in their official report (319). Each person decides what they believe and that decides what becomes truth to them. To every individual what is true can be completely different based on their thoughts and

I found the human version to be particularly interesting because when Pi described each of the animals in his narrative, he anthropomorphized them. For example, Pi talked of Orange Juice as if she were a human, commenting on the appearance of shock her eyes and the way she sat, also her compassion maternal instincts. Originally, we might have thought that Pi’s zoo-oriented upbringing was the cause of his human-like descriptions, but the alternate story raises the notion that perhaps these animals were never really animals in the first place.

While this is almost certainly the way that it is meant to be received, the second interpretation makes the book fall just short of what it could be. My initial interpretation is that the two stories given seems like lazy writing. The author could have spent more time fleshing out the humans. Then, later, during Pi’s adventure he could have dropped more hints that the animals represent said people. This would allow the reader to come to the conclusion alone. Even if he did reveal the alternate story in the end, it is more satisfactory for the reader to be curious about it beforehand. There was little evidence pointing to these minor human characters being told as animals and the result was what seems almost like a cheap twist. While the author clearly thought out what he wanted the story to make the reader think about, he did not do it in a way that made the ending satisfying. With either story, there are moments that seem out of place and unexplained. Although this discomfort may have been the author's goal, it did seem a little out of place and poorly executed. Despite what the reader believes about the stories this novel is full of metaphors and symbolism that can keep a conversation going for a long time, with

After being rescued Pi’s tells his and Richard Parker’s amazing survival story, but no one believes it. Pi then begins to tell a different version of events without animals. While similar to the original story the survival of a young boy lost at sea the new story depicts

On his journey to North America, Pi experienced many unfortunate events that no one, especially a sixteen year old should ever have to face. The environment that surrounded Pi was unfamiliar and came with many obstacles. Accompanied by a sailor, taiwanese cook, and his mother, Pi had to face the gruesome truth; his acquaintances were all willing to go to any extent in order to survive. Since food is a necessity of life, these innocent humans were all forced to kill and eat their own kind to stop their hunger. To make this story tolerable, Pi retells it with animals instead of people by replacing: the cook for a hyena, the taiwanese man for a zebra, his mother for Orange Juice and himself for Richard Parker. By altering reality, Pi was able

In addition, Pi decides to feed a “450-pound” (Martel 61) bengal tiger named Richard Parker for his own self preservation. He acknowledges, “I had to tame him. It was at that moment that I realized this necessity…More likely the worst would happen: the simple passage of time, in which his animal toughness would easily outlast my human frailty” (Martel 164). This means that Pi fears that the fierce animal strength and power of Richard Parker would eventually kill and eat him for food.

He starts out with a zebra, hyena, an orangutan, and a tiger, but the animals slowly diminish leaving only Pi and Richard Parker. Pi works to tame and care for Richard Parker, and the two survive for two hundred twenty-seven days. Pi encounters a fellow French castaway who is eaten by Richard Parker (Martel 311-320). Pi also comes across a man-eating island (Martel 322-358). The events that take place are fairly far-fetched, and the probability of all of them occurring to the same person in the period of time given is even less believable. The second story, on the other hand, is a perhaps more believable retelling of the original story. Pi relates the second tale upon the request of his interviewers for “‘a story without animals’” (Martel 381). In this story the animals are replaced with human representatives including an injured Chinese sailor, a French cook, Pi’s mother, and Pi himself. The second story, like the first, begins with many passengers on the boat, but in the end it leaves only Pi to survive by himself after brutally murdering and eating the cook who killed both the sailor and Pi’s own mother (Martel 381-391). Unlike Pi’s first story, this account is dark, desperate, and harshly realistic, without any sense of hope to counter it all. After relating both of these stories to his interviewers, Pi asks them which story they think is better (Martel 398). Although the

In this journal, I will be questioning whether Pi will survive in the ocean. First, Pi has animals to keep him company aboard the raft. Even though the animals like to fight with each other it still makes Pi feel less lonely, and therefore more willing to try and survive. This shows how Pi will survive because he is determined to. Secondly, Pi begins to learn how to gather food and water to survive. “With time and experience I became a better hunter” (Martel 173). Pi begins to eat quality amounts of fish and turtles, and feeds Richard Parker the tiger some of the fish. This shows how Pi will learn to survive and adapt to the climate around him. Lastly, Pi is realizing what he has to do to survive. Pi was a vegetarian before he became stranded, so having to eat fish is different to him.

Having nothing left to live for brings out a lot in a person so be prepared for the unbelievable to be believable. The book Life Of Pi by Yann Martel is a book about a boy named pi that is trapped at sea with little to no resources on a lifeboat with a tiger named Richard Parker they got trapped on the lifeboat while pi was trying to move with his family and their zoo to Canada but the ship sunk leaving Pi and the Bengal tiger the sole survivors and at the end of the book it is questionable if the tiger was just an entity in pi trying to keep him alive. Richard Parker and pi are two different people because pi is a human and Richard is an animal the reason why they are different is they got smacked off the boat by Richard Parker's feces and finally how they slept and went to different places.

Life of Pi is a very interesting book. There are two different versions of Pi’s story that are given near the end of the book. There is one story with Pi, a hyena, zebra, orangutan and a tiger named Richard Parker. The other story is without animals. This story has a sailor, a chef, Pi and his mother replacing the animals. The question is, which story is true?

As the menagerie of animals aboard Pi’s lifeboat is an unlikely combination, a valid way to interpret their appearance, whether they existed on the lifeboat or not, is to show that each of them represents a part of Pi during his struggle. The presence of each of the animals on the lifeboat is representative of Pi’s multi-faceted nature of his personality and way he must dissociate his actions and feelings from himself to survive. The zebra, orangutan, and hyena, all paralleled to human beings in the latter version of events, seem to represent values and tendencies that evolve through the course of Pi’s existence on the lifeboat. The zebra, a beautiful sailor in the other version of events, seems to represent Pi’s innocence and his inexperience with

The Intelligent use of Animals in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi On the Pacific Ocean, stranded, with only a tiger and a few other animals as company, is how Pi Patel spent 227 days. Life of Pi is written as a fable which M. H. Abrams defines as, “a short narrative, in prose or verse, that exemplifies an abstract moral thesis or principle of human behaviour”. Its association with animals makes it a beast fable, “In which animals talk and act like the human types they represent” (Abrams). In the novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel, the function of the zebra, orangutang, hyena and tiger are to help associate what Pi goes through to survive the harsh, isolated, and terrifying events he faces during his extensively long period on the Pacific Ocean.

Pi contacted with animals when he was very young. Therefore, when he was in trouble and afraid to solve the problem, his savagery will help him. “We fight to the very end. It’s not a question of courage. Its something constitutional, and inability to let go. It maybe nothing more than life-hungry stupidity. Richard Parker started growing that very instant as if he had been waiting for me to become a worthy opponent. My chest became tight with fear”( Martel p.187). Pi finally chose to face the tiger, and save himself. He did not choose to stay until the tiger eats him. Even if he knows that it’s difficult to survive, he did not give up. Pi stayed with animals when he was a child. His curiosity made him have a great interest in animals. He might learn something from the wild animals. Moreover, if animals did something very cruel and their behavior will probably leave a deep impression about those things in Pi’s mind. Therefore, Pi’s savagery leads him to have the determination to against the tiger, Richard