Themes Of Survival In Yann Martel's Life Of Pi

In Life of Pi, his long journey and ardent will to stay alive can alone discribe pi’s transformation from a confused and sheltered boy, into a young man who is now mentally broke but somehow uses his psychological experience to strengthen himself. Pi’s spirituality and religion pushes the reader to shift its perspective.

People who take life for granted don't truly accept life and not reshape their identity, until they've tasted adversity and all the vast misfortunes and catastrophe. Yann Martel’s book “Life Of Pi”, shows how adverse situations can help shape a person’s individual identity and play a noteworthy role in one’s life by establishing one’s ability, shaping one’s values and beliefs.

What do you need to survive? There could be thousands of different answers to this question, but not everybody would answer this the same way. I believe that to survive, you need not to have an insane survival skill set taught to you by some secretive agency; You do however need to posses a few major things. In the story Life of Pi by Yann Martel, a young man has what it takes to get to safety, but would you?

Life of Pi is a thrilling novel by Yann Martel, telling the story of a two hundred and twenty-seven day journey on a lifeboat between a religious boy and an adult bengal tiger. After losing his family in a shipwreck, Pi Patel is stuck on a lifeboat with a 450 pound Richard Parker. Together, they sail aimlessly, using the boat’s limited resources to survive. Throughout the novel Pi uses God as a way to cope with the multiple tragedies and obstacles he faces. In times of great difficulty, humans can lose their morals and values in exchange for survival.

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

Yann Martel manipulates the narrative style and structural devices within this passage to support the will to survive theme that is present in Life of Pi. Before the shipwreck, Pi was a spiritual individual with a strong appreciation for the joy and peace in life. Pi commonly experienced cruelty and doubt from his family and friends; however, he remained calm by following the guidance from his three religions. After the shipwreck, the spirituality within Pi’s life was tampered with because the chaotic and brute actions of the animals threatened to separate Pi from his peaceful demeanour. At first, Pi maintained his interaction with God, but as the days passed and the conditions worsened, Pi’s animal instincts began to develop.

Irony- Irony was spread throughout the novel of Life of Pi but the greatest example of irony that ties into the theme of this book is that even though Pi was stuck on a boat for seven months with a deadly tiger, the tiger was the reason why he survived. Pi states that Richard Parker was what kept him alive when he lands in Mexico by saying “Then Richard Parker, companion of my torment, awful, fierce thing that kept me alive, moved forward and disappeared forever from my life,” (Martel 285). This example of irony is important to the theme of the story because it seems to have ties with another theme which is religion. For example, during tough times God keeps you alive and when your hardships are over God seems to almost disappear but he still stays in the back of your mind.

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 Life of Pi he must learn to rediscover himself because of the tragic accident that has happen to his family. Pi must learn to be able to get over the loss of his loved ones and quickly reconnect with himself in order to help him survive. Pi must turn himself around and remember to focus on the things that matter most, trying to survive. Pi rediscovers himself in Richard Parker because he uses the companion of the tiger to help keep himself calm. Pi has left his comfort zone of being under the care of his parents and must now discover his own values and beliefs in order to navigate and survive his life in the sea.

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.

Pi connects with the readers throughout the story and allows the reader to experience the emotions and hard decision making that Pi has to go through. One of the main themes in “Life of Pi” is that Pi has to put his will to survive above everything else. Martel writes “I was either fixed on practical details of immediate survival or transfixed by pain, weeping silently, my mouth open and my hands at my head” (63) portraying that Pi knows his options of survival or death, forcing him to choose. Pi is forced to put his beliefs and wants behind his need to survive. Pi, being a

When faced with traumatic circumstances and events, each individual develops their own personal ways to cope. Life of Pi, written by Yann Martel, is a fictional adventure novel that follows the expeditions of a castaway and a Bengal tiger. In Life of Pi, Piscine (Pi) Patel subconsciously translates his story into one that aids him in coping with recent events. He begins to parallel human characters with the animals that personify them; each illusion stemming from his very own past experiences.

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.

Life without meaning brings no hope. Life without hope brings no faith. If you have both it will lead you into the future. (statusmind.com) Pi had hope that allowed him to survive the journey but not all the time, he has lost it a few times when he thought he was going to be eaten by the tiger but it was his morals and his faith that keeps him going. Hope plays a big role in everyone's life. Hope is the belief of what could possibly be and Pi is not sure that he is going to make it out of the sea alive but it gets him to keep pushing when he feels like he is dying or that death is near.