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Life Of Pi Character Analysis

Decent Essays

In the Life of Pi, Piscine Molitor Patel is a teenage boy who goes through this dynamic journey to survival. But he doesn't do it alone. He is also stuck with a wild Bengal tiger, Richard Parker. He goes through this dynamic journey to survival. Pi explores issues of facing the reality of survival, being resourceful and even after all he’s been through he reflects on the struggles of what he faced in the wild. Pi had to face the reality of the situation. After he’s been shipwrecked he’s stuck with a tiger, hyena and an orangutan. The theme that strongly fits this scene in the book is “the survival of the fittest”, where only the strong can live. For example, the tiger appears when he kills the hyena because he knew it was a threat to him and his survival. “Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life. It is like an endgame in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn't be more simple, nor the stakes higher. Physically it is extremely arduous, and morally it is killing. You much make adjustments if you want to survive” (Martel 217). If anybody other than Pi was in his place, all the possibilities and emotions flow altogether and form into fear and anxiety, which quickly disappears when Richard Parker proves Pi wrong by not killing him. Pi’s resourcefulness during his journey led him to survival. When he had gotten shipwrecked, he uses life-jackets to build a raft to keep him afloat. He even managed to salvage Richard Parker, who helps relieve Pi of his anxiety. He concentrates his effort on training, feeding, providing for, and working with Richard Parker is the main reason what helps him to be focused, which is what eventually saves his life. He’s even able to adapt easily to his surroundings by making these pragmatic decisions. One decision that he had to make was to kill his first fish, even though killing animals goes against his morals of being a vegetarian. “You may be astonished that in a short period of time I could go from weeping over the muffled killing of a fish to gleefully bludgeoning to death a dorado. I could explain it by arguing that profiting from a pitiful flying fish’s navigational mistake made me shy and sorrowful, while the excitement of actively capturing a great dorado

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