The Themes Of Life In Martel's Life Of Pii

All individuals must complete their journey from adolescence to adulthood. Life of Pi is an adventure novel written by Yann Martel. Life of Pi explores the development of Pi Mortel Patel from an eager and outgoing child who is dependent on his family for care in Pondicherry to a shy adult who has to be self-sufficient and rise to meet the challenges he faces. His journey through religious and human faith in God,willingness to survive and an attempt at acceptance.

The book starts with Pi recounting his youth and where he grew up along with the many things that shaped his character. He tells stories of his teachers, insults that made him change his name, and his faith in three religions. I made the assumption that Pi was living an upper-middle-class lifestyle in India because Pi attends a good school as he says, “After St. Joseph’s, I went to Petit Seminaire, the best private English-medium secondary school in Pondicherry.” (Martel 21) and the quality of

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

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.

He received his unusual name from their family friend’s favorite swimming pool, Piscine Molitar, in Paris. This name is significant to the story since it shows a correlation between the boy and the water from birth. Piscine was constantly teased in school so he shortened his name to Pi to better fit into Indian society. In Thomas Foster’s book, he says, “Actions can also be symbolic" (p 112). Through this symbolism, the reader comes to better understand Pi through his actions, shortening his name that connects him to the water to be better able to be accepted by others. His actions to survive in the Pacific, then, can be considered the symbolic fulfilment of his destiny received from his name. Another example of the strong symbolism used in the book can be seen when Pi is on a trip to Munnar in India. There, he sees three mountains and imagines them as representing the three different religions of India. He is not able to understand the fundamentals of each religion and, thus, these mountains portrayed his struggle to come to terms

As stated beforehand, the isolation truly hits Pi throughout the majority of the second part of his journey. On their way to Canada, the ship Pi and his family resided on got/became caught in a large storm. The ship flooded eventually, resulting in the ship and occupants submerged in the ocean. Pi watches this unfold from a small emergency/evacuation/escape boat. To expand on this, Pi is shown swimming against the waves in an attempt to avoid Richard Parker—thus noticing the ship descending underwater. During this scene, Lee films a medium shot of

In contrast to the background of Lord of the Flies, Pi, the main character in Life of Pi, has a relatively peaceful childhood. He grows up in the 1970s in Pondicherry, South India, during a time of peace and prosperity. Except for school bullies, he is largely ignorant of violence, bar the time his father exposed him and his brother to the dangerous tendencies of the zoo animals. Furthermore, Pi explores religion for himself, and while he does have values impressed upon him by his parents, such as not eating meat, he is largely responsible for creating his own unique set of values that revolve around three major religions.

When he makes the leap between the Tsimtsum and the lifeboat, he becomes an adult, and then his support system is gone, and he has to build a new system, and start his own journey. It is an almost endless journey compared to the simple pool, but a journey full of options and choice. After Pi is thrust into the lifeboat he starts his journey through adulthood and everyday he experiences doubts. Pi describes his normal day and says “There were sharks every day, mainly makos and blue sharks, but also oceanic whitetips, and once a tiger shark straight from the blackest of nightmares” (217). Sharks represent Pi’s doubt through his day.

The inability to differentiate the surrounding features are representative of Pi’s uncertainty of his ability to survive, both figuratively and literally, as he can no longer make out the dangerous predators he shares the boat with. The darkness and silence of the night parallels his newfound isolation. With the loss of his entire family, the comparison between his emotions and immense emptiness of his surroundings is quite apparent. This is not the only time where the ocean provides an insight to how Pi is feeling and the state of his mind. In chapter 54 Pi spends hours coming up with, and switching between plans, to eliminate Richard Parker.

The Life of Pi is a story set in the realm of magical realism, written by Yann Martel, and produced by Ang Lee. The story is about a boy of Indian descent named Pi Patel who is the son of a zookeeper and loses his family in a tragic shipping accident. Stranded alone on a lifeboat with various zoo creatures, Pi does the unthinkable to survive. The Life of Pie incorporates much of India’s culture including religion, music, and wildlife.

“All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways.” ‘Life of Pi’ written by Yann Martel, is a figurative novel that tells the story of struggling to survive through seemingly insurmountable circumstances. Within ‘Life of Pi’, there are many key elements of symbolism and motifs that are repeatedly explored throughout, that reflect the struggle of survival when it is threatened. These elements are explored as the protaganist, Pi Patel, faces the obstacle of loss, the significance in establishing territorial dominance, and the importance of storytelling through the epitomy of survival expressed through the character of Richard Parker. Consequently so, Martel is able to convey his ultimate message of the need for belief and faith in something in order to survive with the aid of these symbolic elements.

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

Pi is stranded at sea for 227 days: during this time, he learns that “to be a castaway is to be a point perpetually at the center of a circle” (215). In every direction he looks, Pi is surrounded by an empty ocean, this provides him with no hope for a savior. Pi spends most of his time watching this horizon, even though it does not contain any signs of external life. He observes that even though the environment may appear to change-- “the sea may shift from whisper to rage” (215) raising his level of fear or “the sky might go from fresh blue to blinding white to darkest black” (215) reminding

Pi has to battle against odds and constantly be put through the challenge of withstanding harsh environments along his journey. The most obvious harsh environment he had to go through is the ocean he was stranded in itself. Pi has to not only survive on a small lifeboat and a raft but he also has to endure the big waves, storms, and weather complications such as scorching heat and the rain. Another harsh environment presented to pi was the carnivorous island. Although pi finds nourishment on the carnivorous island, it eventually comes to pi’s realization that whatever the island gives guring the day it takes away at night.