The Theme Of Survival In Life Of Pi By Yann Martel

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.

He created an unknown bond with him and didn’t notice it until they departed. “Richard Parker escapes into the woods without even looking back”. This quote signifies Pi’s inner-emotions towards Richard Parker. When Pi is brought back to the modern world he notices he is not his same self. he is now a man. His mind is then fixed into a new mind-set of “survival” and “scarcity” making it an obsicle to re-adapt to civilization, limiting what he would usually do with his life as a kid to dispersing his new assets he didn’t know he ever

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

First, there is an essential need for "physical survival" as he must keep his body alive(Sparknotes). The most basic needs being food and water. He knows how to protect himself from imminent danger such as Richard Parker. As well as other threats that come when being stranded at sea such as dehydration,sharks, and drowning. Pi's creativity to build an adjoining raft to keep a safe distance from aggressive dangers such as sharks and the tiger enable him to sustain physical safety. Secondly, Pi's necessity for "spiritual survival"(Sparksnotes). Pi must keep his hopes up and not yield to hopelessness. He says that Richard Parker kept him sane in the presence of a companion. Pi's mental toughness for taming the tiger prevented him from thinking about his deserted future. from a shipwreck. Lastly Pi has Biological survival as he is the sole member of the Patel family. He would have a desire to live a long and healthy life, raise a family and pass his genes on to the next generation. He is able to survive for 227 days at sea. As he inherited powerful swimming ability from his Uncle Mamaji. At the end of the novel, the readers learn that Pi is a father,"So his story does have a happy ending"(Martel). Ultimately,Pi's willingness to survive shows his character as an

This setting is the cause of Pi’s development of primitive instincts because it is associated with chaos and a battle with the environment. The lifeboat is floating in a barren body of water that has a lonely atmosphere, which helps portray Pi’s need to be independent. To tame the survival instincts inside of him, Pi needs to rely on his own decisions and logic. Because Richard Parker’s territory is within the lifeboat, the lifeboat represents the origin of Pi’s savagery; therefore, it’s atmosphere is tense and overpowering. The action of the passage occurs in the lifeboat because Pi needs to tame his inner tiger in the same setting where it was born. Pi discusses that he spends more time in the lifeboat after his confrontation with his brute behaviour. The raft allowed Pi to hide from his developing instincts, but now that he has tamed his savagery, he can live along side it in the

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.

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

“Without Richard Parker, I wouldn’t be alive today to tell you my story.” The significance of this quote is that the presence of Richard saves him from the effects of loneliness. “The lower you are, the higher your mind will soar.” This quote is important because when Pi is at his lowest point, he reaches for his only remaining sources of salvation, which is his faith and imagination. “Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The element couldn’t be more simple, or the stake higher.” The quote significance is that the few that survive the ship are force to face each other in a strategic battle of wits to see who will

Pi’s life before the boat crashing was full of hope and wonder. His presence was ethereal, making a purpose out of everything around him. His family ran a zoo, which gave him a tight-knit relationship with animals. Pi loved to try new things. He met new people which led to his exploration

Bengali polymath, Rabindranath Tagore, once said “you can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.” In the novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel, the protagonist, Pi, faces many challenges at sea while being accompanied by a tiger by the name of Richard Parker. This tiger, though a nuisance, proves to be essential in the role of Pi’s survival. Throughout the story, Richard Parker symbolizes survival, a reflection of Pi, and a being of God.

1. The main characters in Life of Pi are Piscine Molitor Patel (Pi) and Richard Parker the Bengal tiger. Pi is the protagonist he is hopeful and believes that things get better. He is very optimistic which gets him through a lot of his troubles. In the beginning of the book Pi seemed to have things the rough way and continues that way but he was very hopeful. In the beginning of his lifeboat journey he was sure things would get better but as time went by he wasn't sure anymore but he had things to remind him to keep going. I also think he became more grownup and stronger by the end of the book. Richard Parker is the tiger on the lifeboat with Pi he is there every step of the way with Pi. He helps Pi get through things. Richard Parker is very

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.

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 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.

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