Toni Martel 's Life Of Pi

Stranded and lost, deep in the Pacific ocean, with no direction or path to follow, with only a crazed hyena, a wounded zebra, a worried orangutan, and a fierce tiger for company. This is the situation that Pi finds himself in during the novel, Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. The protagonist, Piscine Molitor Patel (Pi), goes through many struggles and challenges throughout his journey in the lifeboat. There are some major beliefs that he learned during his childhood in India that helps him persevere through these struggles and survive to tell the tale. Three beliefs Pi learns in India that enabled him to survive on the lifeboat are that all animals are dangerous, that humans are the most dangerous animal, and to have faith in God.

Pi’s resourcefulness during his journey led him to survival. When he had gotten shipwrecked, he uses life-jackets to build a raft to keep him afloat. He even managed to salvage Richard Parker, who helps relieve Pi of his anxiety. He concentrates his effort on training, feeding, providing for, and working with Richard Parker is the main reason what helps him to be focused, which is what eventually saves his life. He’s even able to adapt easily to his surroundings by making these pragmatic decisions. One decision that he had to make was to kill his first fish, even though killing animals goes against his morals of being a vegetarian. “You may be astonished that in a short period of time I could go from weeping over the muffled killing of a fish to gleefully bludgeoning to death a dorado. I could explain it by arguing that profiting from a pitiful flying fish’s navigational mistake made me shy and sorrowful, while the excitement of actively capturing a great dorado

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

Pi, we know is spiritually preached in everything he does due to religious influences. And from a certain degree so is Richard parker. However, what creates a juxtaposing theme between the ironical pair is the ever so prominent contrast between humane acts verses savage and wild acts portrayed by the territorial predator in the life boat. Lee sets a scene of Pi’s realisation that if he is to survive he must first train Richard parker and create a barrier of dominance between the two. Lee enforces elements of climatic themes in this scene to create an overwhelming presence of discovery made between the two characters. Through trial and error of Pi’s training with on the use of a small stick at the mouth of hungry predator, the climax prevails to show an ending of clarity between the two and Pi’s self-discovery surrounding his inner bravery to establish dominance over Richard parker beastly presence. Pi comments on his discovery as he establishes that “Without Richard Parker I would have died by now. My fear of him keeps me alert. Tending to his needs gives my life

The Life of Pi is a story that tells of a young boy who is full of life and faith, a boy who is Christian, Hindu and Muslim. But after a shipwreck, he is abandoned on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger, an orangutan, a zebra and a hyena. As the journey unfolds, Pi is faced with many threats and challenges. Pi ends up drifting alone with no direction through the Pacific Ocean with the Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. In Life of Pi, Pi's constant challenges change him from a naive boy to a troubled teenager and then slowly into a survivor.

Over time there have been several books in which a character is forced to mature at a young age. These characters usually encounter difficult or trying situations that challenge their limits and understanding of life. Due to these rough times, a motif is expressed to the reader for interpretation. Life of Pi, a novel by Yann Martel, describes the journey of Pi Patel when he is faced with an unexpected problem. Pi, through his experiences and mental struggles while alone on the raft, transforms into a young man and learns to decipher the world in which he exists.

The importance of this passage presents a thorough connection between each significant theme in the novel Life of Pi, written by author Yann Martel. Such as: truth, religion and faith, boundaries, and storytelling, the passage is crucial to the story. Relating the reader back to the concept that almost the entire context was described by the main character Pi, in a false retell of the actual story. By expanding the topics of truth, against reality in order to posse God and all life. This brings forth the idea that without any genuine proof to the existence of God, is it meant to be true or false. All in all, from the accurate story to the one Pi thinks to be the better story in relation to a God existing. The association among the central themes

Often the mind easily and distinctly separates the contrasting ideas, events, and moments displayed to them in life. Those people that make such a separation then proceed to choose a side and stick to it. Stubbornly, these people will continue to back their decisions through and through, rarely again truly looking at their previous verdict. But against this reality in the novel, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Piscine (Pi) Molitor Patel creates his own harmonious unity between life’s own contrasts in his mind, sculpting a story true to himself. Constantly throughout his journey, Pi is faced with his own opposing views in which others in his life find that he must choose between. Nonetheless, Pi holds true to his own decisions and fights for his own views as he decides to dissolve the separation between conflicting ideas in order to keep his sanity and life on the ocean. Along Pi’s adventure, Martel displays both Pi’s physical and spiritual journeys, ultimately displaying the absolute necessity of both science and religion in the two stories to ensure one’s survival.

In Yann Martel’s novel, Life of Pi, Martel displays how Pi’s dedication to religion repetitively inspires him to continue fighting for survival during his oceanic plight. Throughout Pi’s early life in India he gains familiarity with three different religions; Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam, which, to Pi’s family and friends, seems completely absurd. Although Pi is frequently criticized due to his dedication to three different religions, his extreme devotion to religion and God ultimately gives him the faith to never give up even when all hope seems lost.

For Pi, he has to contend with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, a fierce and dangerous predator, while on a small lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. This leads him to feel isolated, hopeless, and willing to surrender to the forces above. Each of these things are feelings I have experienced myself, through my battle with severe, clinical depression. In the ninth grade, I was in the midst of major depressive disorder. It left me feeling alone with a ferocious beast must stronger than myself, and willing to to surrender, to give up the fight. Both Pi and I dealt with something that was much more powerful than either of us, whether it be the ocean, tigers, or mental disorders. Thus, our outlooks were bleak, colourless, and miserable. We interpreted the world as a frightening, despicable place that Pi and I had no hope for. Dealing with demons more tenacious than ourselves, our perspective changed to one that felt inferior and weak, leaving us with a cynical interpretation of the

This book, the Life of Pi was mainly about how a middle age boy has to discover what life is going to throw at him. In the start of the book piscine and his family decide to sell the farm and move to Canada in hopes for a better and wealthier life away from India, and on the way to Canada the boat they are aboard, called the Tsimtsum began to sink so he was thrown onto a lifeboat with non other than a hyena, a zebra with a broken leg, a orangutan, and a bengal tiger. Later on the hyena ends up killing and eating both the zebra and the orangutan which causes the result of the tiger fixing the problem. While stranded at sea, Pi faces two main problems. One, is his physical health, cleary he has to fight to keep alive with water and

In Life of Pi, Martel is endeavoring to state in his author’s note that all fiction truly is the variation and deformation of physical existence, to evacuate its actual wildlife. Martel speaks about this story through a fictional version of himself. He wanted to write about Portugal- yet he was in India while composing this story. He chose to transform this Portugal story into a fiction, science fiction is an adjustment of reality, and he accepted there was no reason in really going to Portugal. Martel goes ahead with his trip including a failed novel about Portugal which he discards to go search for a new story to write, and an altercation with an old man named Francis Adirubasamy in a cafe in Pondicherry. Francis tells the creator that he

Pi must eat meat to survive out in the sea, even though he is a vegetarian. He also has to kill out at sea. He eats and kills fish.

Yann Martel, the author of Life of Pi, tells a miraculous survival story that everyone will want to believe. He tells readers about the life a boy, who later in the story gets stuck on a lifeboat with fierce companions for 227 days. Piscine Molitor Patel, otherwise known as “Pi”, accompanies his family in moving to Canada from India, though the ship sinks and he then tells his journey twice. Pi told his journey in two versions, an animal version, and a human version. In both versions Pi is accompanied with a zebra/sailor, a hyena/cook, his own mother/orangutan, and himself/tiger (Martel 311). Though the characters in the novel, like Pi, the Chinese officials, and the writer, preferred the animal version, the preferred version would be the human version.

Furthermore, his vast knowledge of animals, having grown up at a zoo, helps him to tame Richard Parker. Pi knows tigers’ psychological thinking and exploits this by classically conditioning Richard Parker. Likewise, Pi’s experience of watching a tiger kill a goat in his early childhood taught him the fundamental lesson that ‘an animal is an animal’, enabling him to strategically and mentally survive his long and testing time at sea. In addition to that, during the early parts of Part 2, Pi comes across a survival manual, a crucial object for his continued existence. The book gives him critical information on the do’s and don’ts of survival at sea and it is hard to imagine that Pi could have survived without this book which also gave him the opportunity to write down his words which were “all he has left’’.