Life Of Pi By Yann Martel

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 Life of Pi, his long journey and ardent will to stay alive can alone discribe pi’s transformation from a confused and sheltered boy, into a young man who is now mentally broke but somehow uses his psychological experience to strengthen himself. Pi’s spirituality and religion pushes the reader to shift its perspective.

Pi Patel’s heroic journey of staying sane, keeping focus, and living on. Yann Martel incorporated the concepts he admires into his novel. In all these times of Pi’s desperation his intellect provides some form of hope. Pi Patel would not have survived the treacherous waters if he had not had his instincts to aid him along. The author understood the mind and body’s importance in life and felt the need to express their wonders within his works.

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.

Humans have diverse habits of coping with difficulties. In Yann Martel’s novel, Life of Pi, Pi, after having endured unimaginable circumstances, fabricates an alternate story to the original. However, the outcomes of both stories are the same; the Tsimtsum sinks, Pi's family dies, and Pi survives. As a way of coping with the tragedies he has endured, Pi creates a different story which expresses the characters prodigiously, all the while inhibiting his suffering and freeing him from his survival instincts.

Life of Pi, written by Yann Martel, is a novel about a young boy, Pi, trapped with a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker who survive together in the Pacific Ocean for 227 days. The central theme of the novel is Pi’s faith in God, which proves to be a crucial part of his survival during the extreme situation. In the book, How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas Foster, the author talks about the importance of literary elements such as symbols, geography, and stories to a literary piece. These elements are used in Life of Pi to develop its compelling story about growing up.

Throughout Yann Martel’s Life of Pi many elements of the novel blur the lines of reality and fantasy. This leaves multiple facets of perspectives in his readers. I Patel is thrust to the forefront of a catastrophic ordeal resulting in the loss of everything he knows s and loves. As this occurs we begin to see the total brutality of survival in both stories. Martel’s phenomenal use of symbolism, dualism, and religious allegory eloquently convey this imaginative world of brutality, savagery, and thirst for survival.

Everyone must learn to overcome, or acclimate to fear. It is an unavoidable part of life. People do not usually address all of their fears at one time, but occasionally, unlikely situations occur. In Life Of Pi, by Yann Martel, Piscine (Pi) Patel overcomes many fears, in a slight 227 days aboard a lifeboat, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He and his family are in the process of moving, when the Tsimtsum, the boat they are boarding, mysteriously sinks. Pi is the only survivor, along with an orangutan, a zebra, a hyena, and a Bengal tiger. Although many themes are present, the most prominent through the whole book is learning to live with and overcome the very thing that causes the most grief, the most anxiety, and a lot of reflection; Fear.

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

Yann Martel’s theme of truth being relative is again established when Pi experiences a shipwrecked. On the lifeboat, Pi continues to survive living with a bengal tiger, he survives after seeing the other animals on the boat kill each other, and he survives by eating fish even though he is a vegetarian. Inspite of all the suffering Pi is going through he still turns towards God. This is proved when Pi says, “I practised religious rituals that I adapted to the circumstances – solitary Masses without priests or consecrated Communion Hosts, darshans without murtis, and pujas with turtle meat for prasad, acts of devotion to Allah not knowing where Mecca was and getting my Arabic wrong. They brought me comfort, that is certain. But it was hard, oh, it was hard. Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love – but sometimes it was so hard to love. Sometimes my heart was sinking so fast with anger, desolation and weariness, I was afraid it would sink to the very bottom of the Pacific and I would not be able to lift it back up...The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shining light in my heart. I would go on loving” (208-209). Through this quote, Yann Martel is showing how Pi continues to worship God even though he was suffering and struggling with his faith. Pi still believes that God is the most important to him inspite of what his is going through emotionally

“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

“I have a story that will make you believe in God.” The novel, Life of Pi by author Yann Martel is a compelling story that follows a young sixteen year old boy, Piscine (Pi) Molitor Patel, after the cargo ship transporting them to Canada, the Tsimtsum, sinks without warning, leaving Pi stuck at sea with only an adult Bengal tiger for company. Martel develops the notion that behavior and being able to read the body language of others may be the difference between life and death through direct characterization and allegory. Pi’s responses to the behaviors of Richard Parker signify the

Throughout time, humans have written books based on various genres in an effort to tell a story, whether it is fact or fiction. Storytelling is one of the most beautiful ways to express ideas, and creative thoughts, involving characters, settings, to create a plot. Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, cleverly incorporates ambiguity from the omission of information, and lack of resolution. These aspects in turn, create the ambiguity, which leaves the reader to interpret the text in anyway. The ambiguity formed develops the significance of Pi’s storytelling, to the author and the readers. The post-modern aspects in Life of Pi, leave many things open to interpretation based on Pi’s storytelling ability.

In Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, a boy named Piscine Patel, known to many as Pi, finds himself trapped on a small lifeboat with animals after he evacuates a sinking ship. The ship was used for transporting himself, his family, and the animals from the family’s zoo to Canada. Yann Martel uses the literary devices characterization, setting and imagery to highlight the theme the will to live during Pi’s voyage in hope surviving. Piscine Patel is characterized as someone who takes good care of their body as he heads to diner.

Religion is a cultural system of behaviors and practices, worldviews, ethics, and social organisation that relate humanity to an order of existence. Religion gives people an outlook and a guide on how to deal with life. In the novel, “Life of Pi” Pi experiences many different struggles that test his faith and basic instincts. The author, Yann Martel, uses religion and zoology to explain Pi’s journey and survival throughout the novel. Martel’s novel is deeply religious and the protagonist Pi deals with his religious views and strong interest in zoology to survive.