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

People who take life for granted don't truly accept life and not reshape their identity, until they've tasted adversity and all the vast misfortunes and catastrophe. Yann Martel’s book “Life Of Pi”, shows how adverse situations can help shape a person’s individual identity and play a noteworthy role in one’s life by establishing one’s ability, shaping one’s values and beliefs.

Though Pi’s conflict is internal, it affects his actions externally and eventually morphs him into savagery but also hopelessness. His conflict helps him realize how his beliefs limit his means of survival so consequently, he goes to extremes to abandon such beliefs. He even admits to himself that though it is “brutal…a person can get used to…killing” if done often enough (Martel 185). This realization Pi experiences causes him to focus on his methods of killing which leads to an overall comfort in the action. By abandoning his guilt, Pi finds himself able to “[grow] bolder and more agile” and “[descend] to a level of savagery [he] never imagines possible” (Martel 195-7). Not only does he kill more often, he also kills less carefully. Pi shifts from a gentle killer in regards to the victims to “an animal… [with a] noisy, frantic, unchewing wolfing-down” barbaric manner of murder (Martel 225). His evident change from a once caring and unaggressive hunter to a savage killing machine reveals how Pi reacts from his

To simply be alive consists of the acts of breathing and having blood pump through the body, but to be a human being consists of much more complexity. The nature composed of a human being involves having self sovereignty on our own emotions, opinions, desires, faiths as well as having a moral subconscious. Yet, what occurs when a situation allows an individual to react in a behaviour that doesn’t follow these defining factors of human nature? In Yann Martel 's Life of Pi, he creates the conflict of a cargo ship sinking, and the only notable survivors on the life raft consists of a hyena, a zebra with a broken leg, an orangutan, and a 16-year-old Indian boy. The protagonist of the novel, Pi Patel, is faced with a personal survival conflict

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

In addition, Pi decides to feed a “450-pound” (Martel 61) bengal tiger named Richard Parker for his own self preservation. He acknowledges, “I had to tame him. It was at that moment that I realized this necessity…More likely the worst would happen: the simple passage of time, in which his animal toughness would easily outlast my human frailty” (Martel 164). This means that Pi fears that the fierce animal strength and power of Richard Parker would eventually kill and eat him for food.

Isolation acts as a good method to collect thoughts and sort out complex situations. However, Yann Martel, the author of Life of Pi, writes about isolation from a different perspective. Piscine Molitor Patel, a sixteen year old boy, experiences hardships which shows how easily change occurs. The book takes place on a stranded lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Pi must live with no human contact besides an adult Bengal Tiger.

On its surface, Martel’s Life of Pi proceeds as a far-fetched yet not completely unbelievable tale about a young Indian boy named Pi who survives after two hundred twenty-seven days on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. It is an uplifting and entertaining story, with a few themes about companionship and survival sprinkled throughout. The ending, however, reveals a second story – a more realistic and dark account replacing the animals from the beginning with crude human counterparts. Suddenly, Life of Pi becomes more than an inspiring tale and transforms into a point to be made about rationality, faith, and how storytelling correlates the two. The point of the book is not for the reader to decide which

When writing, authors need to think of their audience and involve an element of surprise. Authors use plot twists in their writing to help them accomplish surprising the audience, allowing them to keep their audience’s interest. Not only do plot twists help keep the audience’s attention, they also make the audience question their beliefs about what they think of the story. Authors can use this tool to advance their themes. Yann Martel uses a crazy plot twist in his book, the Life of Pi, to suggest to readers that truth is relative.

In Life Of Pi by Yann Martel, Richard Parker, and Pi go on a very tough journey all over the ocean with only a lifeboat, and a limited supply of food, and water. They started out with multiple animals on the boat they but only one survived. Richard Parker was the highest on the food chain on the boat. Richard quickly ate the Hyena, Zebra, and the Orangutan. Bengal Tigers have a very large appetite. So, he soon ran out of food after he ate all of the other animals. Therefore, to save his own life Pi started to catch fish for both of them to eat. When this story took place Bengal Tigers were very endangered. Pi was starved, if he killed Richard Parker should he get in trouble? Even though tigers were endangered, and

The author of Life of Pi, Yann Martel, uses signposts to show important themes and ideas throughout the story. There is a point in the story when Yann Martel used an example of words of the wiser to foreshadow future events. Pi’s father took him and his brother Ravi, to the different exhibits throughout their zoo, teaching them about the dangers of animals. Pi’s father brought them to the tiger, Richard Parker. Ravi and Pi see how dangerous Richard Parker is, by how he tears into the goat. On the lifeboat, Pi now knows what Richard is capable of. Pi’s father mentions that the most dangerous animal in the zoo, is not in fact an animal, but is a man. Pi remembers that he’s the most dangerous animal of all. He shows this through adapting to his

HE must stay far from the tiger. With the tiger being on the boat, at first, it is impossible for Pi to be on the same boat. Pi, finds many helpful items in the boat. He find water and food which he transports to his raft away from the malicious tiger. As time passes, the tiger is getting hungrier and Pi's fear that the tiger would devour him are near. One night, a huge whale slams into Pi's boat causing him to lose all his food and fresh water. Being stranded in the middle of the sea knowing death was around the corner makes Pi want to fight and

“I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent” (Martel 161). These wise words come from a young man named Pi, the main character of the novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel. It is the fear-filled story of Pi, who becomes trapped on a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific ocean and must survive the elements for a harrowing 227 days. In the story, Pi claims to have not been alone on the boat; he says he lived in the company of a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. However, one can suspect that Richard Parker is only a figment of Pi’s deteriorating mind and that he was created so that Pi could distance himself from the animalistic behavior and actions he was forced to resort to in order to survive. In Life of Pi, Yann Martel uses literary

"You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it." In the fiction novel, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Survival is a major topic. Personally, I feel this is one of the biggest themes of the book. It is easily identifiable based on the various settings, characters and events.

Life is the fight over control of resources and energy that is won by the animal that is most fit into its environment. In The Life of Pi by Yann Martel, tries to show to the readers of an co-existence between man and animal, despite a life-threatening environment. The relationship between the animals broke down from the beginning since the animals needed food. In order for the hyena to live, it had to have eaten the other zoo animals, or it would have died. Existence costs prevented the animals to cooperate because they all put their own interests first. All relationships require that a sacrifice be made on both sides to work. Pi realized that he had no choice but to tame and feed the tiger or they would both die. The chain of existence costs