Life of Pi by Yann Martel is a compelling, profound, and a well written book. The main character, Piscine Motor Patel is a particularly loving and caring boy, especially for animals. When Pi was younger, he “always shuddered when [he] snapped open a banana because it sounded to [him] as the breaking of an animal's neck.” (page 197). Throughout chapter 61 in Life of Pi, Pi demonstrates how humans act more as animals when put under the right circumstances.
Pi is transformed from an innocent boy to a wild, ruthless man. For instance, Pi alters the way he views himself when he decides he would “break [the fish’s] neck. [Pi] egged himself on until [he] heard a cracking sound and no longer felt any life fighting in [his] hands” (page …) . Killing
How would you feel being out at sea stuck on a lifeboat for 227 days with only zoo animals for company and then watching them all be killed and then spend the rest of your days at sea with a Royal Bengal tiger weighing 450 pounds and about nine feet long. Life of Pi by Yann Martel starts off in Pondicherry India with Pi Patel and his family, they then load some animals and themselves onto a cargo ship on its way to Canada. After they are on the ship there is a malfunction on the ship and it sinks. Pi becomes isolated on a lifeboat with only the company of a few zoo animals. After some time he is only left with Richard Parker the tiger and fighting to stay alive. On his journey through the sea he eventually finds an island to which he goes and
Pi’s resourcefulness during his journey led him to survival. When he had gotten shipwrecked, he uses life-jackets to build a raft to keep him afloat. He even managed to salvage Richard Parker, who helps relieve Pi of his anxiety. He concentrates his effort on training, feeding, providing for, and working with Richard Parker is the main reason what helps him to be focused, which is what eventually saves his life. He’s even able to adapt easily to his surroundings by making these pragmatic decisions. One decision that he had to make was to kill his first fish, even though killing animals goes against his morals of being a vegetarian. “You may be astonished that in a short period of time I could go from weeping over the muffled killing of a fish to gleefully bludgeoning to death a dorado. I could explain it by arguing that profiting from a pitiful flying fish’s navigational mistake made me shy and sorrowful, while the excitement of actively capturing a great dorado
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
“Life of Pi,” by Yann Martel, is a story told from the perspective of Pi Patel. Pi spent his childhood living at a zoo with his family. He also follows three separate religions and, therefore, has very strong opinions on the subject of spirituality. Within the novel, Pi counters the common misconception that freedom always has a positive effect or that it always results in happiness.
When faced with traumatic circumstances and events, each individual develops their own personal ways to cope. Life of Pi, written by Yann Martel, is a fictional adventure novel that follows the expeditions of a castaway and a Bengal tiger. In Life of Pi, Piscine (Pi) Patel subconsciously translates his story into one that aids him in coping with recent events. He begins to parallel human characters with the animals that personify them; each illusion stemming from his very own past experiences.
It is helpful when someone has an object, person or belief that provides them with a source of joy and comfort when times are tough. For some people, this may be a photograph, for others, a dog, and for many more, God. However, if someone relies on only this specific item for their happiness and hope, there can be consequences. What if they discover a disturbing fact about the item? What if the item gets lost? In Life of Pi by Yann Martel, a deeply religious sixteen year old named Pi becomes lost in the Pacific. His health dwindles as he struggles through the ordeal, until he miraculously stumbles upon a floating algae island. Unusual characteristics of the island, both lifesaving and dangerous, mirror Pi’s religious beliefs. In the novel,
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.
In this novel we are presented with two stories of Pi’s journey on the lifeboat. One is an unbelievable tale of how he survived with a Bengal tiger and for a time a hyena, an orangutan, and a dying zebra. The other is a traumatizing story with similar events, but instead of animals it is humans who kill and feast on one another's flesh, and fight to the death. Suddenly, you realize how changing
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.
From this, the reader is able to see how Pi’s psychological suffering caused him to create the story with animals to hide away his gruesome brutality from himself, making himself seem less horrifying and more human. Pi creates a story that is far from the realm of believable, opting for a more vivid and appealing adventure that would be more preferable than the harrowing tale of reality, as he opts for storytelling as a coping method for himself as he tries to re-integrate himself into the world he was separated from for so long. While Pi’s trial of will and survival was caused by government unrest and a faulty engine, his crisis had enormous effects on his life, as he loses his entire family and, psychologically, was beat up as if he were in a 15-round, heavyweight boxing fight, in which he was barely victorious, but suffered great injury, as Pi loses his innocence, becoming a savage who fought for survival, and becomes emotionally unstable, as he loses his family and is abandoned by Richard Parker, and unsure of who he is, as he creates a fictitious story with animals to try regaining
In the story Life of Pi by Yann Martel, a teenage boy named Pi who is forced to kill a fish, leads him to become a different person. Pi and his family owned a zoo in India, but they tried to sail across the ocean with all of their animals to Canada. Due to a storm, their boat sinks. As a result of the ship sinking, Pi was left on a life boat with Richard Parker, one of their tigers from the zoo. All that was left to do is survive. Pi was not left with much, which leads him to learn new skills, that otherwise would never have thought about doing. Based on the evidence, Pi did become a different person after he killed the flying fish. It stated in the story Life of PI, “a person can get used to anything even killing” (Martel 89). This proves
He describes how it was very painful for him when the tiger left him. Pi is sad and cried, cause of he attempts to do something impossible and failed: the use of human nature to understand the beast. For all the wickedness, humans do not want to see it. Therefore, humans make themselves find an explanation, incorporate them into the framework of the world that they can understand, accept them, and then live peacefully. The kind of things people do every day, such as “crime”, people always find a reasonable motive for committing a crime, either for money or love; if a criminal commits, a crime not for money or love, they would just simply do so to enjoy the pleasure of crime. People are afraid, they cannot understand them. Human nature cannot
Whether an individual chooses to believe in religion or not has a substantial influence on the way they ultimately live their life. Those who believe in a religion and God have a guideline to help them through life providing them with a code to live by. Whereas those who choose not to believe in religion may find themselves lost. Through his novel Life of Pi, Yann Martel presents this idea that religion acts as a guide for one’s life. One can easily see how religion brought meaning, direction and purpose to the main character, Piscine Molitor Patel’s or Pi’s life. Yann Martel also uses the zoo as a metaphor for religion which brings peace and tranquility to the lives of animals within the zoo. Following a tragic event, which acts as a means of transformation, Martel uses these same characters to show how those with faith must adapt to situations where their beliefs are not easily applicable. Pi’s religious morals and rituals become extremely difficult to apply during his trying situation, forcing him to become versatile in his practices. The zoo animals also become dependent on their own form of religion which causes them to act in very unnatural ways when it is absent. This tragic situation eventually leads to the transformation of their mindsets, causing Pi to analyse his life and assume ultimate responsibility for his actions, thus making his existentialist journey of one that provides a reformed meaning, purpose and direction in his life.
In Life of Pi, Martel is endeavoring to state in his author’s note that all fiction truly is the variation and deformation of physical existence, to evacuate its actual wildlife. Martel speaks about this story through a fictional version of himself. He wanted to write about Portugal- yet he was in India while composing this story. He chose to transform this Portugal story into a fiction, science fiction is an adjustment of reality, and he accepted there was no reason in really going to Portugal. Martel goes ahead with his trip including a failed novel about Portugal which he discards to go search for a new story to write, and an altercation with an old man named Francis Adirubasamy in a cafe in Pondicherry. Francis tells the creator that he
“All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways.” ‘Life of Pi’ written by Yann Martel, is a figurative novel that tells the story of struggling to survive through seemingly insurmountable circumstances. Within ‘Life of Pi’, there are many key elements of symbolism and motifs that are repeatedly explored throughout, that reflect the struggle of survival when it is threatened. These elements are explored as the protaganist, Pi Patel, faces the obstacle of loss, the significance in establishing territorial dominance, and the importance of storytelling through the epitomy of survival expressed through the character of Richard Parker. Consequently so, Martel is able to convey his ultimate message of the need for belief and faith in something in order to survive with the aid of these symbolic elements.