Yann Martel's Life Of Pi

The Life of Pi, an award-winning novel by Yann Martel, tells the story of Pi Patel, a young boy stranded at sea with an adult Bengal tiger. Marooned on a tiny lifeboat adrift in the Pacific Ocean, Pi finds himself struggling to survive. Faced with imminent suffering and death brought on by hunger, thirst, and an unending battle with the elements, Pi must make a decision between upholding his and society’s strict set of morals and values, or letting his survival instincts take over. Through compelling language and imagery, Martel gives Pi’s conflict between morals, fear, and survival a sense of excitement, suspense, and climax.

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.

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.

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.

“Without Richard Parker, I wouldn’t be alive today to tell you my story.” The significance of this quote is that the presence of Richard saves him from the effects of loneliness. “The lower you are, the higher your mind will soar.” This quote is important because when Pi is at his lowest point, he reaches for his only remaining sources of salvation, which is his faith and imagination. “Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The element couldn’t be more simple, or the stake higher.” The quote significance is that the few that survive the ship are force to face each other in a strategic battle of wits to see who will

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

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.

This time he had gave him a new start, and it helped Pi to equally grow and to expand as a person. This is shown by the fact that Pi had left his vegetarianism, because if he wanted to survive, he had to kill and eat fish. That is not it though, as he also had to learn how to take care of himself and survive on his own since his parents were not on the lifeboat with him. Although in the moment this may have been hard for Pi to do, but in the end it only had a positive outcome on him.

Yann Martel's novel (2001) and Ang Lee's film adaption (2012) of Life of Pi harbour themes such as isolation and the extent one would go to in order to survive. The story is split into two parts, the first part focuses on Piscine "Pi" Patel's background and his religious journey. Part two focuses on Pi's predicaments while he is stranded out at sea for 227 days. The second section of the story is renown for Pi's situation with a tiger named Richard Parker. Not only does the protagonist have to focus on his own survival, Pi needed to be attentive of the Bengal tiger; all whilst dealing with his loneliness. Martel and Led convey the ideas of isolation and survivability through the use of several literary and stylistic features throughout the texts.

Life, as they say, is a journey, and that’s never so clear as when watching a life story unfold in the hands of a masterful film director. In Life of Pi, the voyage is both literal and symbolic, as the title character is forced to traverse the high seas under Grimms’ fairy tale-like circumstances that must be seen to be — well, if not believed, then at least experienced at a deep level. At the same time, the young, Indian lead character, a devoted spiritual seeker, undergoes an intense inner journey as well.

The Life of Pi: The Will To Survive When a story consistently rides the line between reality and fiction, it is safe to assume that a life at sea can be taxing on one’s physical and mental state; The Life of Pi is a story that does just that. In The Life of Pi, Piscine, who is the main character, uses religion, knowledge, animal bonds, and sheer willpower he has gained in life up until the point of being cast at sea to persevere through the mental and physical agony that he endures. Of all the variables the enable Pi to survive, religion is the main key that contributes to both Pi’s sanity and character development throughout the entire story. Regardless of Pi’s conflict with wanting to practice three religions he wants to practice, one thing

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

Imagine being hungry, tired, sunburnt and dehydrated, alone on the the sea in a cramped lifeboat; this is what the main character Pi feels for over 200 days alone at sea. After the cargo ship that was carrying him and his family sinks Pi is the sole survivor. In the book “Life Of Pi” Pi has to survive on his own he survives because he has the need for companionship with God and Richard Parker the tiger, also he has to adapt to survive.

The land was his safe ground, his safe haven. He then entered the ocean, the outside, his unknown. The waves had started calm and still, then turned rough and frigid. Two hundred twenty-seven days stranded in a vast ocean and only sixteen years old. In Yann Martel’s novel, Life of Pi, Piscine (Pi) Patel’s family decides to move to Canada and sell their zoo in India. Events take a turn for the worse when an enormous storm sinks the ship, leaving Pi as the sole human survivor. Pi is found on a lifeboat along with a hyena, an injured zebra, an orangutan, and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger, and his main goal is survival. In an attempt to survive, Pi uses his beliefs that he acquired in India, which include zoomorphism, having faith in God, and

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’’.