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

Humans generally face struggles in their lifetime. Such struggles could be within themselves or with someone or something else but commonly stem from some sort of opposition in lifestyle. In Yann Martel’s novel, Life of Pi, Pi’s passion for personal survival conflicts with his moral obligations to himself internally, morphing his external character.

He received his unusual name from their family friend’s favorite swimming pool, Piscine Molitar, in Paris. This name is significant to the story since it shows a correlation between the boy and the water from birth. Piscine was constantly teased in school so he shortened his name to Pi to better fit into Indian society. In Thomas Foster’s book, he says, “Actions can also be symbolic" (p 112). Through this symbolism, the reader comes to better understand Pi through his actions, shortening his name that connects him to the water to be better able to be accepted by others. His actions to survive in the Pacific, then, can be considered the symbolic fulfilment of his destiny received from his name. Another example of the strong symbolism used in the book can be seen when Pi is on a trip to Munnar in India. There, he sees three mountains and imagines them as representing the three different religions of India. He is not able to understand the fundamentals of each religion and, thus, these mountains portrayed his struggle to come to terms

When writing, authors focus on what they wish for their audience to gain from the story, what they want the readers to learn from the actions and thoughts of the narrator. In The Life of Pi Yann Martel uses Pi and his experiences whether the audience believes Pi’s grand story of his survival or not, to impart upon them the relativity of truth. In the beginning this is shown threw Pi’s explorations with different religions already guiding the reader to consider what truth means with his thoughts on the different religions. It is later explored in Pi’s telling of what occurred to him while shipwrecked to the officials and their reactions to his tale. Especially once it becomes clear that the few differences between the stories were the lack of animals in one. Pi asks the officials which story they prefer; the officials can choose to believe whichever story they prefer, and that version becomes the truth to them.

This tone is inaugurated through the contrast between Pi’s previous life in India and his new found life sailing the Pacific. Pi is a “strict vegetarian… [and] [he] descended in a level savagery [he] never imagined possible.” (Martel 218). Once at sea with minimalistic provisions, Pi decided to go against his vegetarian ways to persevere towards his goal of reaching land, eventually getting used to his new ways as “a person can get used to anything, even killing.” (Martel 205).

Without morals civilization would crumble, but take away everyone and losing your morals might just save your life. In the book Life of Pi, Yann Martel creates a storyline that follows a boy’s life and the events that occur before, during and after being stranded on a life raft with a tiger. The main character, Pi, undergoes horrendous events that challenge him to change his ways to survive. In times of difficulty, man can lose his morals and values in exchange for survival. Martel exhibits this theme through Pi’s hunger, the cook in the human story, and the slaughtering of Pi’s fellow shipwrecked acquaintances.

At the beginning of the novel Pi finds himself stranded on the Pacific Ocean after the ship he and his family were on sank with nothing but his beliefs, a lifeboat, a survivor’s manual, and a tiger he calls Richard Parker. Throughout the novel Pi is in a constant struggle with both his humanity and what he needs to do to survive. He learns of the cruel survival instincts within himself that he never thought possible. At the beginning of the novel Pi was nothing more than a boy who only saw the good in the world and in humanity. By the end of the novel, however, he becomes a man who has had to face things that no person should ever have to face alone even if one believes in

He has reached an island! Made entirely of algae, freshwater ponds, and all the meerkats Richard Parker could ever eat. No more killing helpless animals, settling for rainwater, and keeping Richard Parker fed. However, the island hides a dark secret. “The island was carnivorous.”(355). When Pi is introduced to the fact that the island is carnivorous all the happy thoughts of this perfect island are gone. He could not remain on this island any longer. Pi states, “By the time morning came, my grim decision was taken.” (357). His mind was made, he must leave the island to survive. If he stays, he will be eaten alive. Pi prepares for the departure,“I filled my stores with fresh water and I drank like a camel… I ate algae throughout the day until my stomach could take no more...I killed and skinned as many meerkats as would fit… I could not leave Richard Parker… When he was aboard, I pushed off.” (357). Pi gathered as much as he possibly could and set out to sea, unknowing of whether or not he would be rescued. All he knew was that he would not be eaten by that island. This in fact would prove his determination to survive, as he sacrifices the comfort he received from the island for his chances on his raft out at

Where he soon finds himself alone with a zebra, an orangutan, and a hyena, all seemingly in shock. His family is gone. The hyena kills the zebra and the orangutan, and then Richard Parker shows himself. Soon the tiger kills the hyena, and Pi and Richard Parker are alone together at sea. Pi lives on canned water and filtered seawater, emergency rations, and freshly caught fish. He also provides for the tiger, whom he masters and trains. When the blind man attacks Pi, intending to eat him, Richard Parker kills him. Not long after, the boat pulls up to a strange island of trees that grow directly out of vegetation, without any soil. Pi and Richard Parker stay here for a time, sleeping in their boat and exploring the island during the day. Pi discovers a huge colony of meerkats who sleep in the trees and freshwater ponds. One day, Pi finds human teeth in a tree’s fruit and comes to the conclusion that the island eats people. He and Richard Parker head back out to sea, finally washing ashore on a Mexican beach. Richard Parker runs off, and villagers take Pi to a hospital.

Through attention to detail and imagery, the reader can see what Pi has been through, and the struggle that has taken place. One can not forget this or the tragedy of the story. Pi lost everything he owned and his family. He had lost his innocence in a horrible abrupt way. Pi didn’t even get to enjoy his childhood, almost a year of his life was drastically altered which changed his life forever. He also witnessed many awful things like death and violence while stuck on the lifeboat.

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

Calamity can make an individual question the meaning of life and its continuity. Roles of prey and predator are interchangeable in dreadful circumstances; when survival instincts come through. During an accident, our priorities might shift from saving our loved ones to saving ourselves. We might be forced to surrender our values, philosophies and cultural ideologies in situations where the probability of mortality is high. In Life of Pi, Yann Martel portrays the protagonist, Piscine Molitor Patel, Pi as a person whose belief in god drives him to humanize the dark struggles he faces during his time on the boat.

Yann Martel’s Life of Pi is an account of a boy, a tiger, and the vast Pacific Ocean. After Pi’s family sold their zoo in India, they moved to Canada, they sailed there with a few remaining animals. Until tragedy strikes when a terrible storm sinking the ship, leaving Pi with 4 animals one of them being Royal bengal tiger. Pi was the only human that survived, stuck on a lifeboat together with the tiger. Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months, Pi and the tiger eventually learned to trust each other.

Pi tells the Japanese reporters that he killed the cook the next morning, but Pi is telling a lie. In the first story Pi comes upon a blind Frenchman who was supposedly in another lifeboat, at the time, Pi was also blind. The blind Frenchman tells Pi that he ate a man and a woman, in the second story, the cook ate the sailor and Pi’s mother. After a long conversation, the Frenchman strangles Pi and Pi says he heard Richard Parker get up and kill the Frenchman. Considering the second version, the blind Frenchman is the cook and he and Pi were on the lifeboat long enough to go blind and this is when Pi actually kills the cook. After the cook killed Pi’s mother, Pi knew he could not kill the cook because he admitted that the cook was resourceful. When Pi does kill the cook, he says that he landed upon an island with freshwater ponds, an abundance of meerkats and algae. On this island Pi regains his strength by eating a great amount of the islands algae. When night falls Pi says the island becomes carnivorous, when thousands of dead fish start floating to the surface and all the meerkats gather in the trees. Pi then finds a set of human teeth wrapped up in the trees and he decides that whoever landed upon the island before him must gotten digested by the tree and but their teeth did not get digested. In the second version, the

When Pi was still young in Pondicherry, his father thoroughly indicated the dangers of all animals, developing his negative approaches towards large, intimidating creatures. Mr. Patel has stated, “I want you to understand that you are never – under any circumstances – to touch a tiger, to put your hands through the bars of a cage, even to get close to a cage. Is that clear?” (Martel, 37). This quotation reveals Pi’s father’s serious exaggeration regarding his son’s safety towards animals and indicates a foul mood that equates to fear. It reinforces how Pi developed his individual force of trauma as a result of understanding concepts that are negatively seen to the world at a young age. This feeling of paranoia allowed Pi to be able to distinguish the intentions and actions of ferocious animals at which he uses to tame Richard Parker. Pi is capable of demanding and instructing Richard Parker to commit to different tasks while respecting his space on the boat. It was what greatly risked his life and what Pi feared the most that culminated an advantage to his