Faith In Life Of Pi

Yann Martel`s Life of Pi follows A journey of a young man and a Bengal tiger as they travel across the ocean in a lifeboat.Director Ang lee made many consider the book to be beautiful,but virually unflimable.Being needed to told on screen Ang lee discerned very adeptly,about Life of Pi ‘’if there is will there is a way’’.

The belief in a higher power is one of the key components in the Life of Pi and in the lives of people all over the world. This belief in a higher power or God contributes to strife including conflict between different religions, religious extremists, and the relationship between government and religion.

The Life of Pi is a book filled with many fantasy adventures that will have an excellent impact on what you may or not believe in. This novel was published in 2001 by author Yann Martel. Yann Martel is a writer who is trying to make sense of life, just like any other human being trying to deal with everyday obstacles. In this book we see that the protagonist, Piscine Molitor also known as Pi takes us through an adventure that will question our faith in religion. Pi is not pleased by only following his ancestors’ beliefs; he believes that there is much more to religion. In The life of Pi we see that Pi argues amongst his family in what he wants to believe in. His father is not at all religious and Pi has taken up religion as a hobby. Now Pi is a Hindu, Muslim and a Christian and he undergoes a tragedy, a shipwreck with his family on voyage to Canada from India. As he goes through this process it puts his faith to the test. At the time of this voyage he is a teenager exploring different beliefs and he sees nothing wrong with believing in three different religions. We can argue that there is a war between religion and science. Pi on the other hand does not argue with those of other beliefs, he calls the atheists his brethrens as well. “It was my first clue that atheist are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry

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.

In Life of Pi, Pi is always searching for the “better story”. While Pi is describing agnostics, he proclaims that they “lack imagination and miss the better story” (Martel 64) in life. He later inquires of the men interviewing him, “‘Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?’” (Martel 317) after recounting two versions of his 227 days at sea. The “better story” is the story which opens up the mind, the story which provides you with a new way of observing the world. Being able to see the better story is an act of interpretation and creation. It is how we view the world and generate meaning from it. In this case, the better story becomes your reality because it is what is real to you.

Pi (and by extension, the author, Yann Martel) seems to think that what should compel one to believe a story is whether the story is a good one – whether it helps readers “see higher or further or differently”. Story and narrative automatically cause viewpoint, or perspective. Perspective as a literary device is a result of stories with framed narration. Is this narrator trustworthy, asks the reader in that ageless dilemma, can I believe what is written? As a form of narration, it both enriches and challenges perspectives on truth. Truth, it seems to say, can also be multi-faceted, appearing in many viewpoints.

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 “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings”, a mysterious old man with wings is found in a village. The family that has found him place him in a chicken coop, where crowds soon flock to so that they may pay a fee to see him. In the Life of Pi, Piscine recounts to a writer the story about his childhood experience of being stranded in the ocean. He claims to have been accompanied on a lifeboat by zoo animals, most notably a tiger named Richard Parker. In “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” and in Life of Pi religion takes the role of a fantasy invented to satisfy the desire for a more satisfying reality.

Pi then concludes and proves his faith that it’s “only because you’ve never seen them.” The Japanese men reply with “that’s right, we believe what we see” (326). This reply made by the interviewers is allegorical for comments that come with religions and God. People question the existence of God, due to the fact that he isn’t visible. The idea of a higher being is so fanciful and unimaginable just as Pi’s story, that people choose not to believe it. Pi completely changes his faithful values to tell the Japanese investigators a story they would believe; a story with people. Pi then describes a story with people; a horrific yet factual version of his ordeal, a story with gruesome deaths and little human morality. The following quotation made by Pi, “So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can’t prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?” (352), speaks great volumes as his faith is too powerful to let the investigators leave with such a simple story. Mr. Okamoto and Mr. Chiba both agree that “[the] story with animals is the better story”

In Yann Martel’s novel, Life of Pi, two narratives are presented to describe how Pi survived his journey on a life boat to Mexico. The difference between the truths of both stories is the difference between faith and reason. Both the author and Pi recognize the importance of trust and nature of truth in this novel has to do with a form of blind faith instead of doubt. “To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transport” (Yann Martel, 28). The early religious influences from Pi’s childhood contribute to the formation of his story involving Richard Parker.

I think that faith plays a significant role in shaping Pi´s personality of Hinduism, Christianity and Islam. Pi was born in Hindu and at the age of 14 Pi met Jesus Christ. When Pi met Jesus Christ he became a christian and began attending church. A year later Pi decided to change his religion and become a Muslim. He became a Muslim because he met a baker and the baker told him all about his religion and Pi decided he wanted to be a Muslim. Pi continues with his three religions Hinduism, Catholic and Muslim. He attends certain events when they have then for each religion. When everyone found out the Pi was in three different religions they didnt seem to like it but they couldnt stop him from believing.

Storytelling and religious beliefs go hand in hand because both are required to believe in something that may or may not be true. When Pi is stranded at sea all of Pi’s life obstacles like his family, school, etc., are all taken away and all that he has left is the sea. Once Pi is rescued he returns to the idea of faith

The story stretches reality in terms of the events that occur, the places he goes, and in the power of his belief. However, the tale does not show what a believer would do in such situations of life, but rather it gives a value to those who do chose to believe in something. It gives value by bringing light to the power of story. This power dominates religious beliefs because followers living in a descended time period can not witness things on their own but they still have faith in them because they have the stories of it. Without the stories telling a message the religious following would have nothing to base their beliefs on. The overview of a religion does not inspire the followers, but rather the stories draw them in and give them a reason to believe. The story of Pi serves not to show a religion but to show the power that a story can hold, and because the tale gives so much value to believing and the main character's mind clusters religions, the two typically get tied together when analyzing the novel. The power of story does not need facts and numbers to prove, but rather holds half of its validity in the listeners will to believe or deny it. Those who deny it typically like to hear of realism and of things that they already know by fact. Whereas the ones who accept and begin to interpret stories for deeper meaning and insight typically open their minds to the idea of believing in something without definite

1. Marvelous body of Richard Parker as both an image of God and a sign

In the book it talks about the difference between a person with faith and a person without. When Pi states that, "the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying, "Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain," and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story". Spoken by Pi, this quotation-[chapter 22] in its entirety emphasizes the important distinction between facts and imagination, the background of the entire novel. This was used to show the distinct division between people with faith and people without, linking faithless people as "dry yeastless factuality", and people with faith being able to see "the better story".