Life Of Pi Religion

Being narrated by an older version of the main character, Life of Pi is a story about a man named Pi Patel. Most of the beginning of the novel includes all the history of his life; it introduces topics such as his major, the definition of his name, and his family. His majors are religion and Zoology, which comes back later in the book. It also gives the reader the interesting background of the meaning of his name, based off of a swimming pool. These larger topics and more were shared with the readers. A prominent part of all of this is the fact that it almost always comes back to animals.

The have told him they want to know what really happened. This quote brings the climax of the story. Pi will tell a second story, without animals, about his survival. He will then press the men into confessing which they thought was the better story. Pi attempts to gain acceptance by telling the two Japanese insurance men a story with animals on the lifeboat instead of humans.

Pi had only witnessed the animals living in their cages, and being fed by the zoo keepers. During his travels, he witnessed the slaughter of the zebra and orang-utan, by the hyena which were very morbid and repulsive. Pi had never witnessed the animals hunting for their own food, therefore seeing the hyena kill and eat the zebra and orang-utan was very traumatizing. Once Richard Parker killed the hyena, it made him realize that the only way to survive his journey was to feed the tiger by catching fish and turtles. As time went on Pi realized that his supplies were limited and he needed to eat the sea life in order to survive.

Yann Martel (born 1963) is an author best known for the Man Booker Prize winning novel Life Of Pi, a# 1 international bestseller published in more than 50 territories. It has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide and spent more than a year on the New York Times Bestseller list. It was adapted to the screen by Ang Lee.

Yann Martel's novel (2001) and Ang Lee's film adaption (2012) of Life of Pi harbour themes such as isolation and the extent one would go to in order to survive. The story is split into two parts, the first part focuses on Piscine "Pi" Patel's background and his religious journey. Part two focuses on Pi's predicaments while he is stranded out at sea for 227 days. The second section of the story is renown for Pi's situation with a tiger named Richard Parker. Not only does the protagonist have to focus on his own survival, Pi needed to be attentive of the Bengal tiger; all whilst dealing with his loneliness. Martel and Led convey the ideas of isolation and survivability through the use of several literary and stylistic features throughout the texts.

With the information given to us in the first 36 chapters in the book, we learn about his journey through the first three parts of the Hero’s Journey; Ordinary Life, The Call to adventure, and the Refusal of the Call. We start off in Pi’s ordinary life, where we learn that he was raised in a zoo in Pondicherry, India. This gives us through the rest of the book of the deep respect he has for all forms of

In the first chapter of part two, Pi describes the horrifying task of pulling Richard Parker into the lifeboat with a lifebuoy. Now, Pi is describing the cook hauling him in. Orange Juice floats to the lifeboat on a bed of bananas, as does Pi’s mother. The zebra and the sailor both have attained a broken leg from jumping into the lifeboat, and finally, the hyena and the cook are both described as maniacal, and both eat the mass of flies.

Life of Pi was a well written novel with an interesting story line. The authors syntax and use of metaphors make the book a great read. Of all the books that we have read this year, Life of Pi sparked the most conversation outside of school on what the book meant, and which story was true. The novel provides two stories. The story that the majority of the book follows has Pi stranded with Richard Parker, a hyena, an orangutan, and a zebra. At the end of the book, Pi provides an alternate story after the men interviewing him state their disbelief of his original story. This second version equates each animal to a human that had been aboard the Tsimtsum. The hyena was the cook aboard the ship, the orangutan was the mother,

After being rescued Pi’s tells his and Richard Parker’s amazing survival story, but no one believes it. Pi then begins to tell a different version of events without animals. While similar to the original story the survival of a young boy lost at sea the new story depicts

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

But it’s up to the reader to see what story they truly believe. When Pi tried to explain his story to the investigators about what really happened on the lifeboat and about the island only made of algae, or that a banana can flout the investigators demanded that Pi would say the truth. During this time Pi told the investigators how Richard Parker saved Pi’s life multiple times. One of them was one the hyena was

Life of Pi is about an Indian teenager named Piscine Molitor Patel. He was named after a French swimming pool, and he changes his name to Pi after everyone started to call him "Pissing". His father is a zoo owner, and his family lives in Pondicherry, a French colony on India's eastern coast. Pi's dad decides to leave India and move his entire zoo to Canada, crossing the Pacific ocean on a Japanese cargo ship named the Tsumtsum.

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

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’’.

As the story progresses, Pi watches helplessly as the hyena kills the zebra and then the orangutan get killed by Richard Parker. This leaves Pi, and the tiger, Richard Parker, as the only ones left on the lifeboat. Pi’s father told Pi previously how dangerous tigers are, which does not make this situation any better for Pi. When Pi realizes he is the only one left with Richard Parker he says, “Truly I was to be the next goat (page 99).” From this quote the reader can see how afraid Pi was to live alone with a tiger on a boat and how scared he was, because he thought he was surely going to get killed.