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Life Of Pi Animals

Good Essays

Being stranded in the middle of the Pacific with only the company of a full grown Bengal tiger will take its toll on a person. In the book Life of Pi animals are a place of comfort and familiarity to Pi, the son of a zookeeper, who spends his whole life surrounded by them. While stranded in the middle of the ocean, he believes various animals from his family’s zoo are with him on the lifeboat, and the question of if that is true is to be interpreted by the reader. The animal story is not the truth, but it is Pi’s own bearable fiction, it presents the story in a way the reader can respond to and begs the question of which story they believe and which story they want to believe. His story of the animals is a different interpretation of reality, by turning his story into fiction, it becomes much easier to stomach the idea of what happened. While in the aftershock of the boat sinking, Pi asks, “what of my extended family-birds, beasts, and reptiles? They too have drowned. Every single thing I value in life has been destroyed” (Martel 98). This is the reality, no matter which story the reader chooses to believe, Pi lost everything he loves in his life when the boat sank. Fiction is his coping mechanism, turning his story into fiction distracts from the fact that he lost everything. Pi watches the death of Orange Juice in horror, “Dumb with pain and horror, I watched as Orange Juice thumped the hyena ineffectually and pulled at its hair while her throat was being squeezed by its

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