Survival in Yann Martel's Life of Pi Essay

The Life of Pi, an award-winning novel by Yann Martel, tells the story of Pi Patel, a young boy stranded at sea with an adult Bengal tiger. Marooned on a tiny lifeboat adrift in the Pacific Ocean, Pi finds himself struggling to survive. Faced with imminent suffering and death brought on by hunger, thirst, and an unending battle with the elements, Pi must make a decision between upholding his and society’s strict set of morals and values, or letting his survival instincts take over. Through compelling language and imagery, Martel gives Pi’s conflict between morals, fear, and survival a sense of excitement, suspense, and climax.

The need for civilization, innocence and loss of power is shown through the impaled pig's head. In order for the group to survive, animals must be killed in order for the boys to eat. Jack takes on the role of hunter because he enjoys killing living things, as seen when he states, “Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!” (104) Ralph is a more calm person and does not enjoy killing as much as Jack, although he takes a small part in killing the pig. However, in the end, Jack gains all the power because everyone looks up to him as leader because he attempts to hunt the pig throughout the novel and is successful in the end. “We’ll take the meat along the beach.” “Pick up the pig,” Jack said. (150) Meanwhile, Ralph doubts Jack's abilities to kill the pig, and constantly mocks him about being successful. “He tried to convey the compulsion to track down and kill that was swallowing him up.”(51) Jack proves Ralph wrong and kills the pig. “Jack begins to dance and his laughter became a bloodthirsty snarling."(58) He celebrates

The violent outbreak of Richard Parker, along with his silent departure at the end of the novel, portrays how futile it is to try to change a wild animal into a civilized being. Richard Parker seems, at first, to have experienced a spiritual breakthrough and transformation after Pi’s attempt to training. Even in the end, Pi’s ability to survive such a journey with a beastly killer seems evidence enough that Pi trained the tiger. Pi’s main goal, along with survival, is to establish a level of equality between himself

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.

In the novel, Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, the theme of truth is seen most prominently in the last part of the book when main character, Piscine Patel is being interviewed by two Japanese men. Pi defines truth as being relative and an invention of man, when the believability of his story is questioned. He argues that even stories, such as his, can still be true to some no matter how difficult to believe they are.

To simply be alive consists of the acts of breathing and having blood pump through the body, but to be a human being consists of much more complexity. The nature composed of a human being involves having self sovereignty on our own emotions, opinions, desires, faiths as well as having a moral subconscious. Yet, what occurs when a situation allows an individual to react in a behaviour that doesn’t follow these defining factors of human nature? In Yann Martel 's Life of Pi, he creates the conflict of a cargo ship sinking, and the only notable survivors on the life raft consists of a hyena, a zebra with a broken leg, an orangutan, and a 16-year-old Indian boy. The protagonist of the novel, Pi Patel, is faced with a personal survival conflict

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,

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

While having managed to complete the first two levels, Pi begins to think about the loved ones he has lost and others he cannot see anymore. The end of the book helps describe the animals in the boat as representations of human emotions that Pi has detached from himself. This

In addition, Pi decides to feed a “450-pound” (Martel 61) bengal tiger named Richard Parker for his own self preservation. He acknowledges, “I had to tame him. It was at that moment that I realized this necessity…More likely the worst would happen: the simple passage of time, in which his animal toughness would easily outlast my human frailty” (Martel 164). This means that Pi fears that the fierce animal strength and power of Richard Parker would eventually kill and eat him for food.

The author uses pathos to get people to feel sympathy for the family in the village who lost their son when he got mauled by a lion. This quote greatly supports the author's purpose for writing this article. Finally he supports this claim asserting people are too ignorant to make a feasible claim about the situation. He uses diction and parallel structure to appeal to pathos when stating, “Don’t tell us what to do with our animals when you allow your own mountain lions to be hunted to near extinction in the eastern United States. Don’t bemoan the clear-cutting of our forest when you turn yours into concrete jungles.” The author uses parallel structure when repeating, “Don’t “ to emphasise his overall point. He also uses diction to assert his claim when he uses the words, “extinction, bemoan, and concrete jungles”. He specifically used these words to get us to feel the injustice about how the Americans are acting about Cecil’s death. Overall, Nzou combines his condemnatory and critical tone with these appeals to effectively point out to the people who are “crying” about Cecil’s death that lions are harmful to people and killing lions happens all the time in the area. This article would be informative to the public who are outraged about Cecil’s death and

Geoffrey, a giraffe, was a confused soul that had yet to begin his journey. He was very looked down on as well as stumbling upon as a freak of nature. He had only his father and his friends with whom he had a mutual relationship with. His father and his mother were his greatest supporter, but due to the fact that he often got in trouble he wasn’t favored by many other giraffes. Some of this behavior is caused by the way he looks, short with no tail and dark brown fur, with tan specks, appearing to look like an abnormally, tall very ugly zebra. He was not bright nor did his herd think highly of him, but soon would come an event that would change his entire way of life.

On the island, there is an animal which have very similar descrpiction to the island, which is the pigs. Pigs are normally pink and the author is described the island to be pink in the book, “Ralph said nothing. Here was a coral island. Protected from the sun, ignoring Piggy's ill-omened talk, he dreamed pleasantly” (Golding, ). However, later on in the book, they are described to be black or at least the qualities that are related to the color black.”The pig's head hung down with gaping neck and seemed to search for something on the ground.”(Golding ) “The fire reached the coconut palms by the beach and swallowed them noisily. A flame, seemingly detached, swung like an acrobat and licked up the palm heads on the platform. The sky was black.” (Golding, ). Since both the pigs and the island ‘dies’ at the end of the book and death is connected to the color black. In addition, Jack was the main cause of the death of both the pig and the island. On the contrary to Jack killing, he was also apart of killing Simon, who was about to tell the truth about the beast on the island. Simon knows that the real beast is themselves. The beast appeared when the ‘littleuns’ were roaming around the island. When the ‘littleuns’ told the group, Jack didn’t believe in the little, but he swore to the ‘littleuns’ that he will kill the beast if he see it,

Although the elephant had gone into a fit called a “must”, he had also killed a man the author called a “coolie” which is slang for a bad man, and rampaged through a fruit stand. Not only did the natives believe he was going to shoot the elephant, but he himself began to believe that taking the animal's life was his primary goal. The the author

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