Yann Martel's Life Of Pi

Thinking about fear and its power, Pi acknowledges, "He pushed me to go on living. I hated him for it, yet at the same time I was grateful. I am grateful. It's the plain truth: without Richard Parker, I wouldn't be alive today to tell you my story" (Martel 164). Not ironically, Pi is pondering fear before he makes this statement; fear itself is what brings about his human instinct to survive. This animalistic instinct, as expressed through Richard Parker, is what keeps Pi alive. When Richard Parker kills the hyena, Pi points out, "It seemed the presence of a tiger saved me from a hyena..." (Martel 136). Once again, the importance of Pi's animalistic side is prevalent; however, it leads Pi to killing the chef. Pi uses Richard Parker as a way of ascribing his guilt away from himself onto Richard Parker. To further disassociate himself from his savage side and remind himself of his humanity, Pi includes himself in the story. When the sea is calm and Richard Parker appears, Pi notes, "The weird contrast between the bright, striped, living orange of his coat and the inert white of the boat's hull was incredibly compelling. My overwrought senses screeched to a halt" (Martel 160). In this moment, Pi is able to escape all senses of survival and take in the beauty. Conclusively, moments like these remind him of his humanity. Pi's use of both himself and

In Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi, he wants the reader to decipher whether his first story or his second story is real. The first story consists of the protagonist, Piscine Patel, being trapped on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger, Richard Parker, and many other animals from his father’s zoo after they were lost together at sea. In the second story, Piscine re-tells a different story with a chef, his mother, and a sailor, this was to give the Japanese investigators “a story that wont surprise them (you)” (Martel 302). Martel clearly wishes the reader to understand why “Pi” might

Life of Pi was a well written novel with an interesting story line. The authors syntax and use of metaphors make the book a great read. Of all the books that we have read this year, Life of Pi sparked the most conversation outside of school on what the book meant, and which story was true. The novel provides two stories. The story that the majority of the book follows has Pi stranded with Richard Parker, a hyena, an orangutan, and a zebra. At the end of the book, Pi provides an alternate story after the men interviewing him state their disbelief of his original story. This second version equates each animal to a human that had been aboard the Tsimtsum. The hyena was the cook aboard the ship, the orangutan was the mother,

On his journey to North America, Pi experienced many unfortunate events that no one, especially a sixteen year old should ever have to face. The environment that surrounded Pi was unfamiliar and came with many obstacles. Accompanied by a sailor, taiwanese cook, and his mother, Pi had to face the gruesome truth; his acquaintances were all willing to go to any extent in order to survive. Since food is a necessity of life, these innocent humans were all forced to kill and eat their own kind to stop their hunger. To make this story tolerable, Pi retells it with animals instead of people by replacing: the cook for a hyena, the taiwanese man for a zebra, his mother for Orange Juice and himself for Richard Parker. By altering reality, Pi was able

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

A person needs many things to survive; like food, water and shelter. People also need to be mentally stable to make good decisions when necessary. In the novel, The Life of Pi, the author, Yann Martel, puts the main character, Pi Patel, in a survival situation where he needed to acquire all these things to survive. Pi Patel’s mental needs are the most important part to his survival because once his mental needs are met he makes smart decisions and then can proceed to fulfill his other needs. Pi’s mental needs are more important than his physical needs when he invites Richard Parker onto his lifeboat.

The book I read was the Life of Pi by Yann Matel. Pi Patel was the main character. He was a fourteen-year-old Indian boy from Pondicherry, India. He was deeply religious and practiced three religions; Hindu, Catholicism, and Islam. He was a vegetarian who did not eat meat. Pi lived at the Pondicherry Zoo with his mother, father, and brother Ravi. He was a slim young man with dark hair and dark eyes. His family gave up the zoo (not the animals) and planned to move to Canada on a cargo ship to set up a zoo there. Pi Patel faced his greatest battle to survive on the open sea.

Subject The Life of Pi by Yann Martel is full of conflict. Pi has to survive on a lifeboat in the middle of the pacific ocean accompanied by a full grown tiger. Pi must also keep himself poised while on the boat. He also must keep his beliefs that he followers which are Christianity, Muslum,and Hinduism.

In the story , Life of pi by Yann Martel, the main character Pi is told it's can be dangerous to anthropomorphize animals. the definition of anthropomorphize is to talk about a thing or an animal as though it was human, blurring the line between animal and human. Pi tells two stories where human and animal actions are indistinguishable. In these stories the mothers counterpart is the orangutan O.J., the sailors is the zebra the cook’s is the hyena and Richard Parker is Pi. When Pi tells these stories the reader doesn't know who is symbolising who.

Often the mind easily and distinctly separates the contrasting ideas, events, and moments displayed to them in life. Those people that make such a separation then proceed to choose a side and stick to it. Stubbornly, these people will continue to back their decisions through and through, rarely again truly looking at their previous verdict. But against this reality in the novel, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Piscine (Pi) Molitor Patel creates his own harmonious unity between life’s own contrasts in his mind, sculpting a story true to himself. Constantly throughout his journey, Pi is faced with his own opposing views in which others in his life find that he must choose between. Nonetheless, Pi holds true to his own decisions and fights for his own views as he decides to dissolve the separation between conflicting ideas in order to keep his sanity and life on the ocean. Along Pi’s adventure, Martel displays both Pi’s physical and spiritual journeys, ultimately displaying the absolute necessity of both science and religion in the two stories to ensure one’s survival.

When a person goes through a traumatic or arduous experience, it often leaves a person despondent. Following the experience, if given some time to heal, a person can see the world as a brighter place, something they wish to enrich and protect. Whether it be a dangerous beast, or a monster in your own head, as long as someone is resilient and strong, they can make it out the other side a better person. The novel by Yann Martel, Life of Pi, shows this in a beautiful, surreal way, and is truly a story about perseverance, resilience, and strength of character. Through a terrible shipwreck, Piscine Patel is left an orphan on the pacific ocean, the only other survivors being animals, two of which are predators. However, it is revealed at the end of the book, that the animals may have been humans, and due to the horrific nature of the acts committed on the lifeboat. This is due to his brain trying to

This book, the Life of Pi was mainly about how a middle age boy has to discover what life is going to throw at him. In the start of the book piscine and his family decide to sell the farm and move to Canada in hopes for a better and wealthier life away from India, and on the way to Canada the boat they are aboard, called the Tsimtsum began to sink so he was thrown onto a lifeboat with non other than a hyena, a zebra with a broken leg, a orangutan, and a bengal tiger. Later on the hyena ends up killing and eating both the zebra and the orangutan which causes the result of the tiger fixing the problem. While stranded at sea, Pi faces two main problems. One, is his physical health, cleary he has to fight to keep alive with water and

In the novel Life of Pi, written by Yann Martel, Piscine Molitor Patel is faced with a life changing tragedy. Piscine, who is also known as Pi, had to survive 227 days on the Pacific Ocean while sharing a lifeboat with an adult Bengal tiger, when the cargo ship named the Tsimtsum sank with his family on it. There are two stories explaining what happened while he is on the lifeboat. The version that Pi narrates first favors the journey with Pi, an orangutan, a tiger, a zebra, a hyena, and a carnivorous island. The second story is more realistic and definitely more horrid; this version replaces the beasts with Pi’s mother, the cook,

Martel's fiction novel, Life of Pi, tells the story of a boy raised in a zoo, whose name is Piscine (pi). Pi's father decides to move the family to live in Canada and sell the animals to the great zoos of America. The ship taking them across the Pacific sinks and Pi finds himself the sole human survivor on a lifeboat with a hyena, an orangutan (orange juice), a zebra with a broken leg and a Bengal tiger called Richard Parker. Pi had lots of experiences, bonding and adventures on the pacific with a Bengal tiger. The book contains the themes survival, religion, zoology, fear, and sheer tenacity. Pi and Richard survived in the life boat for 227 days.

The book “The Life of Pi” was an exquisite story where a young boy, Piscine Patel, experiences hardships like no other. Although it begins with a slow start, it takes a drastic turn, and everything but Pi’s faith in God and religion changes. His faith in God remains unwavered, although he does get angry and doubts God at some points. He tells a story to obtain a false sense of reality, but reveals the truth to what actually happened at the end of the book. The story he told about the animals was an attempt to block out the memories of his mother being stabbed to death by the cook. Nobody who experiences those feelings wants to, and being on a lifeboat with a man who killed your mother, you would need a distraction. The distraction Pi had was creating the fake story about the animals and carnivorous island. Due to the extreme detail he put into creating the story with Richard Parker, it is hard to say it was all a lie, but what he told the Japanese investigators was just impossible. There is simply no such thing as a carnivorous island, and the odds of coming across another blind Frenchman in a lifeboat in the pacific are nearly impossible.