Yann Martel's Life Of Pi

Throughout his young life, Pi has been guided by a strong set of morals and values. A strict pacifist and vegetarian, Pi never dreamed of killing an animal, especially for food. Pi states, “…When I was a child I always shuddered when I snapped open a banana because it sounded to me like the breaking of an animal’s neck” (Martel 197). However, faced with starvation at sea, Pi must decide between adhering to his morals and satisfying his ravenous hunger when a school of flying fish descends upon the lifeboat. He chooses his own survival and decides he must butcher a fish to feed himself. Martel uses vivid details and language to convey Pi’s feelings about the necessity of violence and killing a living creature for survival. Martel conveys a sense of suspense to the reader as Pi raises his hatchet several times to

Most people don’t have to suffer trauma in a lifeboat all by themselves. Further, most people don’t have to retell their story years after with accuracy. That is exactly what Pi has to do in Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi. There are many challenges that Pi goes through that Pi goes through that could make him an unreliable narrator including a lack of written records, trauma, loneliness, and the effects dehydration and malnutrition has in a person. Furthermore, by considering Pi’s unreliability the reader comes to understand that the truth of his story remains irrefutable and therefore the truth is more important than the facts. Pi could be assumed by the reader to be an unreliable narrator through a lack of written record of his experiences from the past, his trauma and loneliness at sea, and the mental effects of dehydration, malnutrition and hallucinations.

Pi is an eager, outgoing, and excitable child, dependent on his family for comfort and support. In school, his few main concerns were to prevent his schoolmates from mispronouncing his name and learning as much and as fast as he can about religion and zoology. But when the ship went down Pi is torn from his family and left alone on a lifeboat with wild animals which would make anyone believe that they weren’t going to even make it through the night. The disaster gives him a reality check which makes him realize that he has to become self-sufficient. He mourns the loss of his family and fears for his life, which any normal sane person would do but he realizes that he has to take this challenge and make the best of what he can. He finds a survival guide and emergency provisions. He had to force himself to question his on values and decides that his vegetarianism is a luxury, and he wouldn’t make it a week without teaching himself how to fish. He manages to protect himself from Richard Parker the bangle tiger that has managed to get stuck on this boat with him and take on a parental relationship with the tiger, providing him with food and keeping him in line, to protect himself as well as keeping Richard Parker alive. The devastating shipwreck turns Pi into an adult, able to fend for himself out in the world alone. Which gives him good morals, and

Richard Parker is a manifestation of the qualities that Pi needs; however, an abundance of these qualities will contribute to Pi’s downfall. This concept is also represented later in the book when the blind French cook tries to trick Pi. The cook’s primitive side overpowered him, causing him to die in the jaws of Richard Parker. If Pi did not tame his savagery, he would have been consumed by it, which would be represented by a fatal attack from Richard Parker. While contemplating the confrontation of his survival instincts, Pi says, “to know that and to apply it are two very different things” (Martel 246). This quotation describes the concept of survival in a lifeboat and in the real world. In both settings, it is difficult to deny yourself access to something that is lurking inside of you and pushing with so much force. Whether this quality is easily spotted or difficult to uncover, it is important to study it and decide if it is changing your character. Fortunately, Pi discovered early in his journey that the primitive qualities he was developing for survival were threatening to dominate him. After taming his savagery, Pi is pleased with his decisions and says “Isn't that what all survivors say?” (Martel 247). This quotation depicts the satisfaction in taming your inner self, while still allowing your fierce qualities to live in small

Once Pi has finished telling both of his stories, he asks which one the men prefer to believe, since neither of them make a difference (317). They both reply that the story with the animals makes for a much more interesting story (317) and then reference that story in their official report (319). Each person decides what they believe and that decides what becomes truth to them. To every individual what is true can be completely different based on their thoughts and

Pi’s life before the boat crashing was full of hope and wonder. His presence was ethereal, making a purpose out of everything around him. His family ran a zoo, which gave him a tight-knit relationship with animals. Pi loved to try new things. He met new people which led to his exploration

The tiger that Pi refers to throughout his ordeal is could be perceived as the alter-ego of himself, “The tiger killed the hyena- and the blind Frenchman- just as he killed the cook” (311). While Pi was able to use his imagination to portray a tiger as himself, Richard Parker was never more than an extension of Pi’s imagination. Richard Parker simply symbolized Pi in the real world and could never

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

Once rescued, Pi’s credibility is questioned as he embellishes the accounts of his journey to the Japanese inspectors who find his story unlikely. Pi’s reasoning and rationale are based on illusions and mirages he envisioned while stranded on the lifeboat. His story demonstrates his desire to create a different story in order to avoid the harsh facts of life. Delving into deep and often complex truths, as Gladwell did in Outliers, enforces the reader to face the realities of life as they are and not live under any false illusions. Pi Patel, in Martel’s Life of Pi, differs from Gladwell in that he desires to live in a world of comforting lies. As he narrates his journey to others, Pi fabricates many aspects of the story in order to deceive himself and others surrounding

In the Life of Pi, Piscine Molitor Patel is a teenage boy who goes through this dynamic journey to survival. But he doesn't do it alone. He is also stuck with a wild Bengal tiger, Richard Parker. He goes through this dynamic journey to survival. Pi explores issues of facing the reality of survival, being resourceful and even after all he’s been through he reflects on the struggles of what he faced in the wild.

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

At the beginning of the novel Pi finds himself stranded on the Pacific Ocean after the ship he and his family were on sank with nothing but his beliefs, a lifeboat, a survivor’s manual, and a tiger he calls Richard Parker. Throughout the novel Pi is in a constant struggle with both his humanity and what he needs to do to survive. He learns of the cruel survival instincts within himself that he never thought possible. At the beginning of the novel Pi was nothing more than a boy who only saw the good in the world and in humanity. By the end of the novel, however, he becomes a man who has had to face things that no person should ever have to face alone even if one believes in

Pi, a young boy, endures numerous hardships and eventually drifts to the Mexican coast, where people rescue him. Through the character of Richard Parker the tiger, Pi’s beliefs and motivation, and the absence of measurable time on the lifeboat, Martel portrays the necessity of illusion in order to survive horrific and perilous times.

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

There are certain events in our lives that can change a person. When an Individual goes through traumatic events, their subconscious has a method to trick them into believing events that have not occurred. In Life of Pi, Yann Martel creates two stories of what happens to the main character Pi. One about the animals and other about Pi being a murderer and turning cannibalistic. The two stories that are told are so identical, it seems that all Pi did was replace animals with humans. This gives us a deeper insight into Pi's subconscious and his method of dealing with the trauma and struggle caused by his journey.