Personification In Pi

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

In human and animal nature, many similarities are portrayed in Life of Pi as well as a strong relation between the two. In contrast, humans and animals share the same sort of lifestyle, just living a different life according to Pi’s thoughts. In a tragic situation that one is in, such as Pi they must find a way to pass time and keep themselves busy by using their circumstances,

Humans generally face struggles in their lifetime. Such struggles could be within themselves or with someone or something else but commonly stem from some sort of opposition in lifestyle. In Yann Martel’s novel, Life of Pi, Pi’s passion for personal survival conflicts with his moral obligations to himself internally, morphing his external character.

When pressed on the issue of the lack of credibility of the animal story, Pi is forced to give a second, human story because it is the only story that would be reasonably believable, full of “dry yeastless factuality”.

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

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.

To begin with, storytelling is used to enhance both tell tales and make them more palatable to the audience. It is used as a coping mechanism for the characters in the novels, which gives them perspective of their struggles. In Life of Pi, the animals are replaced by human beings in the form of an orangutan, zebra, and hyena; each individually representing Pi Patel’s

“The difference between the brain of the human and the higher animal obviously lies in the degree, not the difference on the essence” (Charles Darwin). The purpose of the quote is to express the feeling that the animal and human is similar, they have the human-like qualities. In Life of Pi written by Yann Martel, Pi uses animal imagery to show that animals that can be mad, suffer, and sad which are all human qualities.

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.

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

Whether is be the individualism of a zebra, the hope of an orangutan, the hatred of a hyena, or the determination of a tiger symbolism can be determined for any character. Pi’s journey obtains symbolism for each animal and a story of faith for himself through the sea and the rigors that he and the animals

One of the biggest parts of the symbolism is the tiger, Richard Parker. He could be compared with many things, but I like to compare Richard Parker to Pi himself, with Richard Parker being a direct link to Pi’s sanity and wellbeing. Hindu belief includes the transferring of the soul to new bodies, and I think that perhaps Richard Parker is Pi’s soul, reincarnated into the form of a tiger. What better to symbolize Pi than a tiger? Tigers live in harsh environments that hold no remorse for them, as does Pi, living in the harsh waters of the Pacific Ocean for two hundred and twenty seven days. As it is not real reincarnation being depicted in the novel, as they both exist at the same time, it can still be used as a representation of reincarnation. The other animals the beginning may also symbolize other objects. I think that the other animals may symbolize the conflicting emotions inside of Pi. The hyena, the part of Pi that wanted to eat the other animals for food. The zebra, symbolizing the hurt part of Pi, wanting to give up. The orangutan, the part of him that wanted to defend himself and the other animals from 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.

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’’.

The novel “Life of Pi” illustrates the life of a character named Pi during his 227 days lost at sea. There is a strong connection between the author Yann Martel and the characters and setting in the story “Life of Pi.” Martel’s time spent in India was the major influence for this book as many of the characters and story are influenced by his experiences in India. The animals in the book, which play a major part in the story, are influenced primarily from Martel’s visit to the Trivandrum Zoo, which contains all the animals in the story except the orangutan. Religion also plays a major role in the story, which is influenced from Martel’s visit to India as he learned about the religious culture of India. Although Martel did not directly experience the events that occurred in “Life of Pi,” his time spent in India helped to influence his work.