Life Of Pi Figurative Language Essay

Pi is an eager, outgoing, and excitable child, dependent on his family for comfort and support. In school, his few main concerns were to prevent his schoolmates from mispronouncing his name and learning as much and as fast as he can about religion and zoology. But when the ship went down Pi is torn from his family and left alone on a lifeboat with wild animals which would make anyone believe that they weren’t going to even make it through the night. The disaster gives him a reality check which makes him realize that he has to become self-sufficient. He mourns the loss of his family and fears for his life, which any normal sane person would do but he realizes that he has to take this challenge and make the best of what he can. He finds a survival guide and emergency provisions. He had to force himself to question his on values and decides that his vegetarianism is a luxury, and he wouldn’t make it a week without teaching himself how to fish. He manages to protect himself from Richard Parker the bangle tiger that has managed to get stuck on this boat with him and take on a parental relationship with the tiger, providing him with food and keeping him in line, to protect himself as well as keeping Richard Parker alive. The devastating shipwreck turns Pi into an adult, able to fend for himself out in the world alone. Which gives him good morals, and

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.

Even after he kills a fish in a seemingly careless fashion, in his sleep “[his] mind lit up by the…flickering of the dying [fish]” seems to haunt him with resentment (Martel 186). This subconscious image is a product of Pi’s internal conflict with his new methods of survival. Therefore, Pi is unable to completely eliminate his feelings while trying to survive due to his torn thoughts between morality and necessity.

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.

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

If something terrible happens to you, would you make up a story to cope with the consequences? Life of Pi by Yann Martel, is about a boy named Pi, who survives two hundred and twenty seven days stranded at sea with a bengal tiger. Throughout this horrifying ordeal, he experience extreme hunger and thirst and the deaths of the people that he holds dear. Yann Martel portrays, through the use of two stories, and the consequences of Pi’s ordeal, that people blur the lines between reality and illusion in order to cope with the truth.

Pi is struck by how vibrant the colors are of the island and begins eating the algae. Pi describes the algae as having a “light sweetness that outdid in delight even the sap of our maple trees here in Canada” (Martel 142). While on the island, Pi continues to exalt praises to both God and Allah. Pi continues to survive on the islands for a while, but soon realizes he must let go and step back into the ocean if he is to have a chance at rescue. Even in the face of the storms of his life, Pi never loses focus or faith in his religious beliefs. The island became the safe refuge, as his religious beliefs have done so many other times in his life, that he was able to rest and rejuvenate before setting off again for rescue. Even as we sometimes struggle in life, we know it is oftentimes our faith which carries us through the dark and difficult times, such as those experienced by

Pi connects with the readers throughout the story and allows the reader to experience the emotions and hard decision making that Pi has to go through. One of the main themes in “Life of Pi” is that Pi has to put his will to survive above everything else. Martel writes “I was either fixed on practical details of immediate survival or transfixed by pain, weeping silently, my mouth open and my hands at my head” (63) portraying that Pi knows his options of survival or death, forcing him to choose. Pi is forced to put his beliefs and wants behind his need to survive. Pi, being a

“To start with details, I saw that the whole island is covered with the algae, not just its edges. I saw a great green plateau with a green forest in its centre. I saw all around this forest hundreds of evenly scattered, identically sized palm ponds with trees sparsely distributed in a uniform way between them, the whole arrangement giving the unmistakable impression of following a design.” (Martel, Page 265). This description allows the reader to visualize this miraculous island that Pi has come across of. Now one would be astonished by this mystery island that has never been discovered until Pi, and possibly wouldn’t believe its authenticity. They could also believe that this whole island was just another figment of imagination as Pi’s mental delusion got worse. On the other hand, some would believe that there is the chance that Pi did discover an incredible vegetation island as the Pacific is fairly large and likely filled with concealed entities. This algae island exhibits that the relativism of the truth is solely based on the person’s perception of what is true and not the literal truthfulness of it.

"You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it." In the fiction novel, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Survival is a major topic. Personally, I feel this is one of the biggest themes of the book. It is easily identifiable based on the various settings, characters and events.

After spying a fruit-like looking substance in a tree, Pi grabs it and begins unpeeling. Unfortunately, he becomes enveloped in a “ feeling of horror... [he] had time to pick at the other fruit. Each contained a tooth” (Martel 280). The tooth represents Pi, who was shielded in God’s protective peel. He was relying on God to keep him assured and safe out on the sea, but now he is exposed, vulnerable, and has lost the feeling of hope. The tooth also represents God’s failure to protect another human, resulting in a lost life on the horrific island. Faith seemed promising and reliable when the island was stumbled upon, but Pi is let down by this disturbing discovery. This incident shows that counting on God to protect someone certainly does not ensure a perfect future. Another dark element of the island is revealed to Pi as he steps onto the ground at night and a searing pain shoots up his foot. The island proves to be carnivorous and eats people at night, which wreaks havoc in Pi. He has planned to stay there for possibly the rest of his life, and now is lost. Pi describes, “I spent the day in turmoil, weighing my options. They were all bad” (Martel 281). If Pi solely relies on God to solve his problems or lets God consume him, his mind will be eaten alive, similar to how the island kills humans. Pi will become even more insane. Uncovering the secret of the island makes Pi’s reason to stay nestled in its protection pointless. The truth behind this seemingly welcoming land proves that one should not rely on God to determine the future, because things can change

Life of Pi Literary Analysis Essay In the novel, Life of Pi, there’s a storyline that revolves around a young boy named Piscine Molitor Patel. It depicts his days as a child to his life or death situation aboard a lifeboat. At the end of the book, through an interview, the reader encounters a plot twist, an alternative story emerges. Although both stories account for what happened, they are not that different and show a various amount of similarities.

“ My foot sank into the clear water and met the rubbery resistance of something flexible but solid. I put more weight down. The illusion would not give. I put the full weight of my foot. Still I did not sink. Still I did not believe. (289)” This island represents the time after Pi lost his faith. He becomes content on the island, there is water and plenty of food. He faces no struggles, yet he discovers that the island is poisonous. While it is nice during the day, at night it becomes deadly and is not sustainable. The teeth that Pi finds in the fruit are supposed to be teeth of someone who died on the island. This represents how dangerous the island is in the long run. You’ll become so content, but in the end it will be the death of you. It will suck you up into the soil and present you as something beautiful to fit in with the rest of the

To begin, the use of the major conflict within the story, rooting from the lost life of many including his family, and the various horrendous events that took place afterwards, the passage is to be believed as part of the resolution used by Pi. While using the fictional story to come to terms with a universe where a God truly exist whether knowable facts are provided to assist in proving this or not. He becomes content to recover in such a way, his religion and faith are there to help. In addition, the authors use of imagery and language in every part of the novel, such as the animals bring forth an emotional and devastating connection to the reader. While on the other hand, a sense of reality is present through the main character's shipwreck story by the contexts relation to worldwide views and issues of mental health, and the power of religion and faith. Therefore, within this passage, it is brought to the attention of the investigators that the fantasy retelling (with the mixture of crucial themes) of the terrifying story is the only way Pi could survive mentally in order to not come to terms with the events which

Life of Pi by Yann Martel is a compelling, profound, and a well written book. The main character, Piscine Motor Patel is a particularly loving and caring boy, especially for animals. When Pi was younger, he “always shuddered when [he] snapped open a banana because it sounded to [him] as the breaking of an animal's neck.” (page 197). Throughout chapter 61 in Life of Pi, Pi demonstrates how humans act more as animals when put under the right circumstances.