Life Of Pi Savagery Essay

Crack! The baseball struck the bat, echoing throughout the hot air of the barren wasteland. Every afternoon the young boys gather between the barrack blocks to begin their daily, friendly match of baseball, while all of their parents are hard at work throughout the center. A Japanese American boy stands nearby with his hand in his pocket, and the sun beaming on his neck. Watching the two teams of the camp put on their hats, one of the younger little boys stands anxiously, waiting for his turn at bat. He steps up to the plate, and digs his feet into the scorching dirt, and lifts the bat over his shoulder. He gives a nod to the pitcher, crack! The boy squinted into the big blue sky, while the ball hit a sign that read, Manzanar Relocation Center.

Pi is alone with Richard Parker on the lifeboat and they both starve and suffer with dehydration. Pi starts catching fishes for both of them. He always gives the biggest share to Richard Parker as he is the strongest. One day, he decides to eat the largest part. He wants to calm his desire for hunger. He does not want to share anything with Richard Parker. Pi starts eating like an animal. Pi tells, “It came as an unmistakable indication to me of how I had sunk the day I noticed, with a pinching of the heart, that I ate like an animal” (Martel 183). The innocent boy is now as dangerous as an animal that can do anything for the food. His yearning for food makes him selfish. It is in pi’s hand not to sacrifices his integrity, but he chooses to sacrifice because he knows that at this critical situation it is right to do. Even though Pi loses his integrity, he gains the power of being the strongest one on the

While on the road to nowhere, Pi starts to acquire water from the rain and obtains food to stock up while he’s worrying about the 400 pound tiger that’s on the lifeboat while Pi is on a small raft. When Pi starts to tame Richard Parker he can finally call him a friend and now has a purpose. As a Hindu, Pi does not eat meat but that went out of the window when he catches a fish and eats it raw to stay alive. When it comes down to survival there is no preference in what to eat.

During baseline engagement in the target behavior occurred on one occasion which equated to a mean occurrence of .33 times per session. While competing behaviors occurred at a heightened rate of: drinking coffee 19.3 times per session; consuming candy 5.3 times per session; and going outside 13.3 times per session. When treatment was introduced there was an immediate reduction in both candy (1.2 times per session), and coffee consumption (2.7 times per session); while water consumption improved dramatically; increasing to a mean of 21.5 times per session. Going outside showed a variable change but the overall increase was not significant increasing to 17.2 times per session.

Characters- Piscine Molitor Patel (Pi)- In the pretext for the story, Pi is introduced as a shy, middle-aged man, recounting his story that changed his life. Throughout the story, Pi hints that the imagination is always better than the cold hard facts, which leads the reader to believe the story of his survival might be slightly embellished. Growing up, Pi devoted himself to studying several different religions, leading to his strong belief in god, and bonding with the animals in his father’s zoo. The novel tracks Pi journey from his childhood to how he ended up on a boat, trying to survive with a tiger as company. Used to living a very dependent life, Pi is forced to become self-sufficient when he ends up alone.

5. The cook’s grotesque acts are important to note. In chapter 43, Pi describes the hyena as a remorseless creature that feels no disgust after making a mistake, and will even feast on it’s own kind. His actions suggest that humans resort to our basic instincts and animalistic roots when deprived of all familiarity—that humans and animals aren’t so different at

Ultimately, Pi was a sensitive man who did not believe in killing animals, but when left in a life or death situation, Pi killed many fish along the days he was stranded in the ocean in order to live. Although this transformation is not easy, it is necessary for the hero ..... This transformation is displayed in the novel when Pi talks about remorse when killing an animal, " You may be astonished that in such a short period of time I could go from weeping over the muffled killing of a flying fish to gleefully bludgeoning to death a dorado." (Martel 205). In addition, Edward Bloom goes through a different transformation of his own.

As Pi has to fight through adversity when he is stranded in a the middle of the Pacific Ocean, he has to adjust his eating habits. When one is in a situation where there is not much to eat, any little thing must be consumed. As a very famous proverb says, “Beggars can’t be choosers.” This was Pi’s most difficult challenge when he was on the boat. As a child, Pi grew up to be a vegetarian. The idea of killing and then consuming an animal really freaked out Pi. He remembered from his childhood, “To think that when I was a child I always shuddered when I snapped open a banana because it sounded to me like the breaking of an animal's neck” (197). Even when Pi was eating something like a banana that is not related at all to an animal, he

Though Pi’s conflict is internal, it affects his actions externally and eventually morphs him into savagery but also hopelessness. His conflict helps him realize how his beliefs limit his means of survival so consequently, he goes to extremes to abandon such beliefs. He even admits to himself that though it is “brutal…a person can get used to…killing” if done often enough (Martel 185). This realization Pi experiences causes him to focus on his methods of killing which leads to an overall comfort in the action. By abandoning his guilt, Pi finds himself able to “[grow] bolder and more agile” and “[descend] to a level of savagery [he] never imagines possible” (Martel 195-7). Not only does he kill more often, he also kills less carefully. Pi shifts from a gentle killer in regards to the victims to “an animal… [with a] noisy, frantic, unchewing wolfing-down” barbaric manner of murder (Martel 225). His evident change from a once caring and unaggressive hunter to a savage killing machine reveals how Pi reacts from his

Though Richard Parker proves vital for survival, he also reflects Pi’s character and helps further develop it throughout the novel. When first introduced, Pi was a teenaged boy curious in many different belief systems and also vegetarian. However, his experience with this tiger aboard a lifeboat after a shipwreck leads to necessary changes in Pi’s lifestyle and these dramatic changes in way of life are characterized through the tiger itself. For example, Richard Parker instinctively tears at animals and eats them in a barbaric manner in means of survival. Though Pi is disgusted by his animal-like behavior, he later resorts to the same methods of eating, “noisy, frantic, unchewing wolfing-down…exactly the way Richard Parker ate” for his own survival (Martel 225). As a previous vegetarian, Pi is not comfortable with the idea of killing animals to eat them but realizes “it is simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything, even to killing” (Martel 185). He even, later, uses human flesh from a passenger that Richard Parker killed for means of survival and food. He also kills birds by “[breaking] its neck [and] leveraging [their] heads backwards”, a harsh and violent murder (Martel 231). Pi’s ability to adapt to a more vicious yet necessary way of life reveals his inner animal

Throughout his young life, Pi has been guided by a strong set of morals and values. A strict pacifist and vegetarian, Pi never dreamed of killing an animal, especially for food. Pi states, “…When I was a child I always shuddered when I snapped open a banana because it sounded to me like the breaking of an animal’s neck” (Martel 197). However, faced with starvation at sea, Pi must decide between adhering to his morals and satisfying his ravenous hunger when a school of flying fish descends upon the lifeboat. He chooses his own survival and decides he must butcher a fish to feed himself. Martel uses vivid details and language to convey Pi’s feelings about the necessity of violence and killing a living creature for survival. Martel conveys a sense of suspense to the reader as Pi raises his hatchet several times to

Man can only cover up inner savagery so long, before it breaks out, given the right situation. This states that with or without rules man will become savage when given the right situation. Every single man in this world is filled with inner savagery. But in this society, they tend to restrict the savagery from escaping. Given the right situation, their true nature, savagery, will be released. For example in the Simpsons, Ned Flanders, is the most civilized person. But yet on one particular episode he becomes savage when he is presented with the perfect circumstance. Golding quotes beautifully, “Then dog-like, uncomfortably on all fours yet unheeding his discomfort, he stole forward five yards and stopped. There was a loop of creeper with a tendril pendant from a node. The tendril was polished on the under side; pig, passing through the loop, brushed it with their bristly hide.”- Lord of the Flies (pg. 48) Jack is the leader of the church choir, but yet he shows no qualities of a church choir leader once he starts hunting for boars. It is not necessary that we need an island to break out into savagery, because even in our society, when man is given the right situation, his savagery will break

Life of Pi shows that humans and animals should do anything necessary to survive whatever challenges they face to live instead of just accepting death. Whatever ways that help one to survive are necessary, even if they compromise personal values, are vicious, or are wicked. Pi, a human; a hyena, and a blind man all fight to survive in a variety of ways that are examples of this thesis.

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

The saying “desperate times call for desperate measures” holds truth to an extent. In the award winning novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel, drastic measures are taken by characters in order to survive while stranded on a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean. Through his journey, main character, Pi Patel, endures many hardships and witnesses several deaths. Significantly, the death of the zebra accompanying Pi and the other animals establishes a generalization of human nature being sophisticated yet inherently vicious according to methods of survival.