Yann Martel's Life Of Pi

As Pi reaches the second level of the hierarchy of needs, he finds himself on the level of safety he needs to figure out how to stay safe while on the life boat. While Pi was on the boat he was so scared of Richard Parker that he had jumped off the boat to go in the water, but then realizes that there are predators just as scary as Richard parker or maybe even worse that he has to avoid to staying safe. “I noticed the presence of sharks around the life boat…The sharks were makos-swift, point-snouted predators with long murderous teeth that protruded noticeable from their mouths” (Martel 179). Once Pi tries to overcome his fears and tames Richard like a zookeeper would do and once he does, he ends up having a companion that helps Pi get through the struggle to survive. Pi finds an island where he is safe and is able to regain his strength but as he finds a tooth in the algae, Pi

Religious people often sacrifice their beloved items such as food, jewelers, and even animals in order to impress God, so they can fulfill their wishes and desires. In the novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel, the author tries to relate individual’s life’s goals and sacrifices through the characters of his story. In order to survive, the main character of the novel- Pi - sacrifices his beliefs and integrity. The young, bookish, and religious boy faces the harsh truth of reality. He stays with Richard Parker-a Bengali tiger-on the dangerous journey of his life. Throughout the novel, he learns about sacrifices and he himself gives sacrifice. One of the major themes is sacrifice; Martel argues that sacrifices are often essential in order to gain higher goals.

“...I ate some of his flesh… You must understand, my suffering was unremitting and he was already dead,”(Martel 256). Pi even admits he knows it was against his lifestyle, but he ate the man in order to survive. However, He enjoyed Richard Parker’s company but felt frustrated trying to keep Richard Parker and himself alive. Pi comes up with plans on what to do with Richard Parker and a lot of other plans that came up involved him killing him in some way. At a point, Pi feels like he has to kill Richard Parker because he believes that is the only way he is going to survive. The situation forced Pi to challenge his typical ideologies because he is determined to live and willing to do anything to make that possible. However, before Pi had to fight for his survival, he never would have imagined killing any animal. Hinduism is threaded either beliefs that we need to appreciate animals, not kill them. He finds himself drinking turtle blood, killing fish, skinny birds, and slurping eyes and brains. Pi strays from his religious beliefs. Throughout part two of the novel, Pi is going against his own beliefs by admitting to cannibalism and believes that’s the only way to be

Pi had only witnessed the animals living in their cages, and being fed by the zoo keepers. During his travels, he witnessed the slaughter of the zebra and orang-utan, by the hyena which were very morbid and repulsive. Pi had never witnessed the animals hunting for their own food, therefore seeing the hyena kill and eat the zebra and orang-utan was very traumatizing. Once Richard Parker killed the hyena, it made him realize that the only way to survive his journey was to feed the tiger by catching fish and turtles. As time went on Pi realized that his supplies were limited and he needed to eat the sea life in order to survive.

When Pi is in life/death situations he takes extreme measures to survive. After weeks at sea Pi is forced to hunt because he is starving for food and he wants to survive. “By the end of my journey I was eating everything a turtle had to offer.” (Martel, 213). Pi had to go against his believes because he was a vegetarian and now he had to eat animals. He also ate everything he could find because his stock of food was empty.Pi changed from vegetarian to eating animals and he had to kill to survive.

As Pi has to fight through adversity when he is stranded in a the middle of the Pacific Ocean, he has to adjust his eating habits. When one is in a situation where there is not much to eat, any little thing must be consumed. As a very famous proverb says, “Beggars can’t be choosers.” This was Pi’s most difficult challenge when he was on the boat. As a child, Pi grew up to be a vegetarian. The idea of killing and then consuming an animal really freaked out Pi. He remembered from his childhood, “To think that 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” (197). Even when Pi was eating something like a banana that is not related at all to an animal, he

Although Pi has taken part in many faiths he must break his beliefs in order to survive. A task that had gotten easier through repetition was fishing and killing many sea animals (fish, turtles) in order to eat. Although this was difficult the first time, when he saw “the thing was gasping for water”(Pg230) he could not kill it. Pi

The act of consuming the same species occurs more in animals since humans eating each other is inhumane. The man that Pi eats, the cook, accompanies Pi on the journey to land. Not only did Pi change, but he morphs into a creature who loses all types innocence and

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’s physical isolation causes him to judge his own moral beliefs by eating meat for the first time, even though he is a vegetarian. In this quote, “I fished with a variety of hooks at a variety of depths for a variety of fish,” (Martel 215), it explains him fishing. By being a vegetarian his whole life, his physical isolation made him to go against his own moral beliefs of not eating an animal. But eventually survival kicks-in and being physically isolated in the Pacific Ocean caused Pi to betray his own personal belief.

Pi spends an extended period of time at sea, and becomes quite difficult, especially with a 450-pound Bengal tiger on board with him. Pi break away from his vegetarian beliefs, “Lord, to think I’m a strict vegetarian. To think that 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. I descended to a level of savagery I never imagined possible”(Martel 249). Given the life and death situation, Pi loses a part of him in order to survive.

For a book claimed as “a story that will make you believe in God,” Yann Martel’s Life of Pi does not fall too far from that claim. Being the son of Indian zoo owners, Piscine Patel always grew up in close proximity with animals. However, this could not prepare him for being adrift in a lifeboat for 277 days, with a full grown 450 pound adult bengal tiger. All the while, Pi manages to juggle being faithful to three religions at the same time. While the plot of the story may seem to grind to a complete stop early on, Martel finds a way to speed it up just in time to provide a thrilling conclusion. Pi must fight many internal conflicts, like being faithful to his religion or doing what he must in order to survive, even if it conflicts his beliefs.

In our everyday lives, we have rarely been faced with situations where we had to fight to live. Whereas, in nature, the only law is survival of the fittest. When you apply “Horror” to Life of Pi, you will recall multiple events that demonstrated how wild animals use survival to live. Yann Martel uses the theme, of violence being a metaphor, to convey that in nature you have to fight to live.

Pi being able to normalize animal killing for his own survival eventually helps him come to fully understand and appreciate the sanctity of a living being. Having known what it is like to feel the life escaping another sentient being gave him a deeper perspective on the deeply seeded Hindu tradition that any form of sentient life is sacred and must be respected as such. The first time Pi felt this phenomenon was an extremely emotional time for him. Although he was doing what he needed to do purely for the sake of survival, Pi felt like a murderer as he snapped the fish in half. Through the present-day form that the story is told in, it is revealed that Pi “never forget[s] to include this fish in his prayers” (183). Pi’s deeply seeded vegetarianism, rooted in his faith, has only been strengthened during his voyage, and Pi notes that he reverted to vegetarianism after returning to regular life. Rather than accepting the diet that he had adapted to on the lifeboat, his religious quest further grew his respect for sentient life. Instead of making this choice solely by principle, he made it based on his experience on the lifeboat. The killing of animals during his voyage strengthened his belief in the blessedness of all sentient life, and further evolved his vegetarian

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’’.