Yann Martel's Life Of Pi

Religion is the starting point of the entire novel in Life of Pi. Religion is crucial to Pi. It not only has been incorporated into his life, but also have helped him to survive his ordeal. At the beginning of the novel, Pi stated that he believed in three religions at the same time. In Pi’s concept, all the religions were about one god. He hoped that believing in more religions would take him closer to God. From this, we can see that religion is so crucial to Pi's life, because most people only believe in one religion. “I have a story that will make you believe in God.” This is a sentence that appears repeatedly in the novel, showing that religion is important to Pi. Pi’s life

Firstly, Pi’s devotion for God was clear and he often seeks clarity from god. Throughout the novel, Pi’s love for God caused him to practice three major religion at the same time; breaking any barriers between Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam. Pi believes all three religions are equally true and interconnective as “[Islam and Christianity] both claim Abraham as theirs. Muslims say the God of the Hebrews and Christians is the same as the God of the Muslims. They recognize David, Moses, and Jesus as prophets” (80, Martel). Pi was morally ambiguous, he did not know if one religion would bring him closer to God than another causing him to follow all three. When Pi was stuck on the life boat, he often called out for help from god as he feared death. As he was giving up, a voice inside of him spoke from his heart and said “I will not die. I refuse it. I will make it through this nightmare. I will beat the odds, as great as they are. I have survived so far, miraculously. Now I will turn miracle into routine. The amazing will be seen every day. I will put in all the hard work necessary. Yes, so long as God is with me, I will not die. Amen” (164). Pi was uncertain whether or not he was going to survive however, he hoped through praying, he would as his faith in God brought him comfort.

Pi feels it is okay to practice all three religions because they all have one goal or purpose which is the belief in God. Since each story he has heard is different, it does not take away from the main moral. This ties in with the imagination aspect because no matter how a story is told, the end result is the same. An example of this is when he is confronted and surrounded by the Priest, Pandit, and Imam. His response as to why he was practicing Hindu, Christian and Muslim faiths was, “Bapu Gandhi said, ‘All religions are true.’ I just want to love God.”(Page 76) Believing in all three religions is something Pi feels is important to him because he is just trying to love and pray to God in as many ways as possible. Although the stories are interesting, it doesn’t really matter how you got to the ending if the purpose of the story is the equal. The important of Pi’s imagination is triggered by this and has later gone into great effect. The religions he practices represent hat behind every reason, everyone has their own way of saying it, whether it be fiction or non-fiction.

The way Pi acts throughout his journey suggests that having faith is one of the most important practises to learn as it can give an individual hope. Pi has a strong connection to all his practising faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. Society is set to have many unspoken rules that we must abide by to

Though Richard Parker proves vital for survival, he also reflects Pi’s character and helps further develop it throughout the novel. When first introduced, Pi was a teenaged boy curious in many different belief systems and also vegetarian. However, his experience with this tiger aboard a lifeboat after a shipwreck leads to necessary changes in Pi’s lifestyle and these dramatic changes in way of life are characterized through the tiger itself. For example, Richard Parker instinctively tears at animals and eats them in a barbaric manner in means of survival. Though Pi is disgusted by his animal-like behavior, he later resorts to the same methods of eating, “noisy, frantic, unchewing wolfing-down…exactly the way Richard Parker ate” for his own survival (Martel 225). As a previous vegetarian, Pi is not comfortable with the idea of killing animals to eat them but realizes “it is simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything, even to killing” (Martel 185). He even, later, uses human flesh from a passenger that Richard Parker killed for means of survival and food. He also kills birds by “[breaking] its neck [and] leveraging [their] heads backwards”, a harsh and violent murder (Martel 231). Pi’s ability to adapt to a more vicious yet necessary way of life reveals his inner animal

Pi’s dedication to all three religions: Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity, built a stronger bond between God and himself. It gave him character and strength as God was alongside him throughout the entire journey. The bond he shared with God also helped him keep his sanity and maintain his will to live.

At the beginning of the novel, Pi’s story is described as “a story that will make you believe in God.” Writer himself Yann Martel was going thru his writers crisis, traveling world looking for a good story to write something about. Martel found a man who told his story. His man named Piscine Molitor Patel who is a practicing follower of three religions: Hinduism, Christianity and Islam. For this reason, extremely mature boy must constantly fight the lack of tolerance and understanding in his surroundings. While in the case of adult people the lack of a specific decision on the faith can be perceived as humiliating, but Pi is fully justified because of his young age. His desire is to find the road to the creator will be seriously tested during

Yann Martel establishes in the beginning of Life of Pi in the author’s note that the claim to the heart of the novel in this story will “make you believe in God.” Since God is an identity that exists in a fiction or non-fiction realm, the audience is led to believe that the story to be told is true, opening the reader to the idea that belief in anything can be belief in God. Pi makes sense of his life through the expressions of Hinduism, Christianity and Muslim, “That which sustains the universe beyond thought and language, and that which is at the core of us and struggles for expression.” (Pg.68) This emphasizes Pi’s dedication and devotion to his religions and God. Martel is opening up to Pi’s story to convince the reader to find faith in Pi’s words.

Pi was born a Hindu, baptized a Christian, and he prays like a Muslim. It

As a young adult Pi learns that he did not find religion but instead religion was brought to him when he tells the narrator as that “Nobody knows God until somebody introduces us” (12). This sets up three different times of identity crises for

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

He describes how it was very painful for him when the tiger left him. Pi is sad and cried, cause of he attempts to do something impossible and failed: the use of human nature to understand the beast. For all the wickedness, humans do not want to see it. Therefore, humans make themselves find an explanation, incorporate them into the framework of the world that they can understand, accept them, and then live peacefully. The kind of things people do every day, such as “crime”, people always find a reasonable motive for committing a crime, either for money or love; if a criminal commits, a crime not for money or love, they would just simply do so to enjoy the pleasure of crime. People are afraid, they cannot understand them. Human nature cannot

It is difficult to talk about the Life of Pi text without making a reference to faith, and the same goes with explaining Pi’s survival. Pi’s belief in pluralism and acceptance of the three religions, Hinduism, Christianity and Islam aid his future and is a crucial part of his survival at sea. His faith in knowing “so long as god is with me, I will not die” gives him the mental strength and will power to survive his ordeal. Even in the middle of the ocean, Pi practices all his religious rituals such as ‘‘solitary masses without consecrated Communion Hosts’’

The evident motif of religion plays a major factor in Pi’s life; however the author chooses not to focus on one religion specifically but instead enforces a glorification of more religions. Martel creates a main character who is a curious young boy who decides to learn about Christianity, Hinduism and Islam all at once. Even though Pi is primarily

Life of Pi, a bestselling novel by Yann Martel was published back in 2003 by Random House of Canada. It is always good for the reader to learn about the authors background to see any connections made to the book. Yann Martel is a Canadian citizen born in Spain who lived most of his childhood years in several different countries. He lived in places like Mexico, France, Turkey, America etc. and discovered that writing in English rather than his original language (French) was a better way to express the exquisiteness of life. One connection between the main character Pi that we see in Martel’s real life is that they are both religious, but both have many doubts. Pi believes in three different faiths, Christian, Muslim, and Hindu, stating that all of them have some truth to them. Similarly, Martel stated in an interview that all religions have some truths to them, but on the other hand, they all have their faults.