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 …show more content…
Just as the sailor and zebra fail to contribute with broken legs in the story, Pi’s innocence has no place in this situation and has to be abandoned nearly immediately by Pi. Wasting away while slowly being eaten and being doomed to die from the moment it jumped on the boat, parallels the fact that this part of his personality could never have any use, and the humanity of Pi was the only thing keeping it in place. The orangutan, also represented as Pi’s mother, could literally represent his mother or just the sense of comfort of his family, his home, and his previous life gave him. After falling to the hyena, this motherly and comfortable feeling was replaced by a frantic need to survive. The hyena, the most disgusting of the animals, kills both animals and seems to represent sociopathic tendency to sacrifice everything to have the best chance of survival, regardless of the effects on others or on the self. Richard Parker’s defeat of the hyena, a pitiful affair, comes after the hyena realizes it has done too much wrong to bear and must be brought back under the control of Pi. Richard Parker, unlike the other animals, has no direct counterpart in the alternate story, but he
This section talks about the life of pi and other animals who shows floats up to the lifeboat. Orange Juice the orang utan, who's on a raft of bananas, and who looks like (to Pi) the Virgin Mary bathed in a halo of light. So Pi fails to grab any of the bananas. Pi imagines indicator boards blinking and urgent phone calls. "The tsimtsum has sunk!
Commentary: When the author notes a step by step way of training the tiger, the reader better understands how important zoos, animals, and animal training was in Pi’s childhood, being the son of a zoo keeper. Instead of reading a training manual (like in the movie) Pi comes up with his own theory on how to tame Richard Parker.
This passage is important to the story because this is when Pi adapts to his new life at sea. This passage was selected because it shows the standard of Pi’s circumstances. In the lifeboat, the tensions between Pi, Richard Parker, Orange Juice, The hyena, and the Grant’s zebra are all high. Life is like a game of chess, each member is waiting for the next person to make a move. The illustration Pi is painting is vivid emotions that allow the reader recount Pi’s life. Pi states in “a game with few pieces), he is talking about all the organisms on the boat. Pi knows that he’s decision to tame Richard Parker is the reason he survived, this is stated when he says “You must make adjustments if you want to survive”. Every move he makes needs to
Morrie considered himself a “religious mutt”. He borrowed freely from multiple religions, and because he did this, it gave him a better understanding of death. It mad e him more calm about the fact that he was going to die. This helped Morrie better cope with the topic of death.
Your close reading of Life of Pi was well done. I agree with the major theme of Life of Pi being the will to survive. This passage also stood out to me as a reader, the comparison of life being an endgame of chess. I think that this is a good comparison to what Pi experience on the life boat. The contradiction of the first sentence forces the reader to think deep about what Pi is going through. I personally could not imagine being on a life boat for 227 days and adapting as well as Pi did. Like I said in my close reading, Charles Darwin's origin of species explains that it is the not the strongest that survives but the species that can efficiently adapt to new circumstances. I agree that Yann Martel's use of diction gives more meaning to the
By sharing a lifeboat, Pi had a zoomorphic arrangement with Richard Parker, a 450-pound Bengal tiger. At first, Pi and Richard Parker did not coexist well, but then both had to adapt to living on a lifeboat with limited supplies and together they went through traumatizing experiences, such as the storm. By going through this experience with Richard Parker, Pi noticed a bond growing between them. Pi was first scared of Richard Parker, but then as time went on, he thought of him as a friend rather than an enemy. To some degree, Pi even loves Richard Parker and sees him as a human. Once the lifeboat reached Mexico, Richard Parker disappeared into the jungle unceremoniously, which troubled Pi. Humans often expect goodbyes when someone is leaving from their life and this shows how Pi had seen Richard Parker as almost human
In the Life of Pi, animals have the human-like emotions. They will be mad when others do something harmful to their friends. After the ship sank, there are some animals survived on “Pi’s Ark”: a zebra, a hyena, an ape and a tiger; however, the hyena is hurting the zebra. The ape: “But with her giant arms,
Furthermore, his vast knowledge of animals, having grown up at a zoo, helps him to tame Richard Parker. Pi knows tigers’ psychological thinking and exploits this by classically conditioning Richard Parker. Likewise, Pi’s experience of watching a tiger kill a goat in his early childhood taught him the fundamental lesson that ‘an animal is an animal’, enabling him to strategically and mentally survive his long and testing time at sea. In addition to that, during the early parts of Part 2, Pi comes across a survival manual, a crucial object for his continued existence. The book gives him critical information on the do’s and don’ts of survival at sea and it is hard to imagine that Pi could have survived without this book which also gave him the opportunity to write down his words which were “all he has left’’.
Lee uses low-key lighting during Appa’s lesson about Richard Parker. Pi, being the kind and innocent child that he is, automatically thinks the best of everyone and everything. He almost gets his arm bitten off trying to prove this by attempting to hand-feed the bengal tiger. When Appa catches him, he gets yelled at, and Pi tells his father “Animals have souls too. I have seen it in their eyes.” Appa is set on teaching him that an animal’s only thought is survival. The scene dims as a zoo worker ties a goat to Richard Parker’s cage.“Things changed after the day of Appa’s lesson; the world had lost some of its enchantment.” Low lighting is used again during the storm that takes the life of Pi’s family. Lee uses red flashes of light to emphasise the horror of the sinking ship. As Pi clings to the liferaft that falls into the ocean when a terrified zebra leaps to safety and breaks its leg. In this scene, Richard Parker then climbs on the raft. Out of instinct, Pi jumps off and into the choppy waters. While underwater, Pi sees the blue glow of the ship sinking to the bottom of the ocean, leaving the viewer with a sense of the heartache Pi must feel. Ang Lee uses low-key lighting and little contrast again when Pi must discuss the events of the shipwreck with the interviewers. The vivid colors and lighting effects fade away as he walks the interviewers through the identity of the zebra, the hyena,
Adult bullying is another types of bullying, but it is not less harm than the others. Weber wrote this article trying to explain that bullying is almost everywhere in work, school and even in streets.it isn’t only between children and teenager, but it’s also between adults and especially at work. As she provided four types of bullies and how they reacts, and some methods how to deal with them. It’s showed that if the bully was not able to put his victim in the right spot, they will just leave them alone as thinking that it isn’t fun harassing this person. Bullies behavior sometimes come as a way the person is trying to relieve something on them; it could be psychological thing or something happen with them before that give them to act this
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
The animals on board that Pi perceives as imperative are additionally orange. Orange Juice, the matronly orangutan, floated to the lifeboat on a raft of bananas.
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
Ralph Waldo Emerson, a famous poet once quoted the following, “For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.” Anger as we all know can be a very powerful emotion that can have many different effects, firstly on the person that is experiencing the emotion, secondly the person or persons who is around the said anger filled individual. However, the intention of this paper is not to focus on anger, but to focus on the persuasion that people can use when giving speeches or in this case, preaching. John Edwards, a preacher in the new world takes the time to diligently preach his congregation, this is now the writing we know as, Sinners in the hand of an Angry God. While exploring this piece of writing, it is important to note that John Edwards uses many ways to persuade his congregation to believe that God is angry. The keys to his persuasion are as following, the people are out of God’s grace, they are wicked, and everyone has committed a sin.
Her final outreach in an attempt to survive was when she “hit the beast on the head with her…arm” (Martel 131). This startling action the orangutan produces is evidence that she has abandoned her passive nature when she witnesses the hyena’s brutal capabilities. Additionally, Pi, a passive character also, has violent thoughts toward the hyena after the zebra’s death because of his feeling of terror and need to survive. The death of the zebra provokes “intense hatred for the hyena” as Pi “[thinks] of doing something to kill it… [but does] nothing” (Martel 120). Pi’s reaction to the zebra’s death forms into bitter feelings for the hyena because the hyena inherently shows its true colors of savagery. However, the desire to survive prevents Pi from doing anything against the hyena because his “sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival” (Martel 120). This selfishness that Pi experiences is against his own moral beliefs, however he finds it necessary to look past his own morals because of his intense desire to live. Pi’s desires to abandon his beliefs and resort to violence stem from the scene of the zebra’s mutilation. Therefore, the cruel death of the zebra ignites a stronger desire to live from the other members on the boat and causes a shift in their own behaviors.