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Life Of Pi Allegory

Decent Essays

An Allegory as an Antidote

“That's what fiction is about, isn't it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence?” – Life of Pi (Author’s Note VI)
Allegory has played a major role in all aspects of storytelling – literature, films, and art – and is employed prominently in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi. The character of Pi uses an altered version of the events (one that substitutes the humans for animals) in order to soothe the pain and raw horror of being on the boat, seeing his mother’s murder, witnessing the cook’s cannibalistic actions, and ultimately having to kill the cook.
The animal allegory becomes apparent at the end of the book when the Japanese interviewers realize that Pi’s differing stories contain …show more content…

The orangutan, fairly early on during Pi’s journey on the lifeboat, is attacked by the hyena (the cook). Orange juice’s death, being Pi’s mother, forces Pi to use the animal allegory to deflect the pain off of him and onto Richard Parker. “Bearing an expression profoundly sad and mournful, she began to look about, slowly turning her head from side to side… She had given birth at the zoo to two young ones, strapping males five and eight years old that… It was unmistakably these she had on her mind as she searched over the water” (Martel 138). Orange Juice has two sons as does Gita (Pi and Ravi) and is shown to be searching for those that she had lost in the sinking of the ship. Pi also uses these words to describe Orange Juice, although the same words could be used to describe his mother, “She came floating on an island of bananas in a halo of light, as lovely as the Virgin Mary. The rising sun was behind her. Her flaming hair looked stunning” (123). Here we see Pi comparing the orangutan to the Virgin Mary – a very well known perfect mother to Jesus Christ. This solidifies the connection between Orange Juice, motherhood, and Pi’s mother, showing them to be the same character, only in different versions of the same

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