Life Of Pi, Let Faith Be Greater Than Fear

Life of Pi is a thrilling novel by Yann Martel, telling the story of a two hundred and twenty-seven day journey on a lifeboat between a religious boy and an adult bengal tiger. After losing his family in a shipwreck, Pi Patel is stuck on a lifeboat with a 450 pound Richard Parker. Together, they sail aimlessly, using the boat’s limited resources to survive. Throughout the novel Pi uses God as a way to cope with the multiple tragedies and obstacles he faces. In times of great difficulty, humans can lose their morals and values in exchange for survival.

In the book Life of Pi the author Yann Martel wrote about a young boy named Pi Patel surviving on a lifeboat by himself. Throughout the entire book Pi was very close to religion and in the end his religions were the main reason he had survived. At the start of the book Yann Martel introduces three religions, Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism. There are three main points that aided in Pi’s survival. One being that Pi was open to religions and started to follow the Islamic faith. The second reason is that Islam believed that one should pray five times a day, and Pi did exactly this. The last reason is that the religion

The way Pi acts throughout his journey suggests that having faith is one of the most important practises to learn as it can give an individual hope. Pi has a strong connection to all his practising faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. Society is set to have many unspoken rules that we must abide by to

“I have a story to make you believe in God” (Martel ix). However, the interpretation of “God” is very fluid. There are hundreds of religions throughout the world, each of which has thousands of followers. The four main ones however, are Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism. All but one, Buddhism, focus on one or more God(s). In Yann Martel’s book, Life of Pi, Pi breaks the social norm and follows all four religions as opposed to one. Throughout the novel, Pi follows Christianity, Hinduism and Islam, while subconsciously practicing Buddhism.

In the book Life of Pi by Yann Martel, we see Pi’s character develop both emotionally and spiritually through the process described in Joseph Campbell’s the Hero’s Journey. Throughout the journey, we see Pi find his faith in his Ordinary Life, lose it during his Ordeal, and rediscover it when he has his Return with the Elixir.

Pi’s belief system was an anchor for his thoughts and experiences and his faith in God prepared him for the Initiation stage of the Hero’s Journey.

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.

At the beginning of the novel, Pi’s story is described as “a story that will make you believe in God.” Writer himself Yann Martel was going thru his writers crisis, traveling world looking for a good story to write something about. Martel found a man who told his story. His man named Piscine Molitor Patel who is a practicing follower of three religions: Hinduism, Christianity and Islam. For this reason, extremely mature boy must constantly fight the lack of tolerance and understanding in his surroundings. While in the case of adult people the lack of a specific decision on the faith can be perceived as humiliating, but Pi is fully justified because of his young age. His desire is to find the road to the creator will be seriously tested during

Yann Martel establishes in the beginning of Life of Pi in the author’s note that the claim to the heart of the novel in this story will “make you believe in God.” Since God is an identity that exists in a fiction or non-fiction realm, the audience is led to believe that the story to be told is true, opening the reader to the idea that belief in anything can be belief in God. Pi makes sense of his life through the expressions of Hinduism, Christianity and Muslim, “That which sustains the universe beyond thought and language, and that which is at the core of us and struggles for expression.” (Pg.68) This emphasizes Pi’s dedication and devotion to his religions and God. Martel is opening up to Pi’s story to convince the reader to find faith in Pi’s words.

Throughout Yann Martel’s Life of Pi many elements of the novel blur the lines of reality and fantasy. This leaves multiple facets of perspectives in his readers. Patel is thrust to the forefront of a catastrophic ordeal resulting in the loss of everything he knows and loves. As this occurs, we begin to see the total brutality of survival in both stories. Martel’s phenomenal use of symbolism, dualism, and religious allegory eloquently convey this imaginative world of brutality, savagery, and thirst for survival.

Throughout his life, the protagonist in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi had the privilege to explore and practice multiple religions. Pi was first introduced to religion as a baby, when his Auntie Rohini brought him to visit a Hindu temple, an act he described as a Hindu rite of passage. Entranced by the colours and scents the temple had to offer, Pi describes the experience as “A germ of religious exaltation, no bigger than a mustard seed, was sown in me and left germinate. It has never stopped growing since that day” (52). Through this statement, Pi reflects his growing love and interest in Hinduism claiming that the universe makes sense to him through Hindu eyes, “…I have been a Hindu all my life. With its notions in mind I see my place in the universe” (54). Pi’s religious interest does not stop at Hinduism as he continues to explore

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

“You might think I lost hope at that point. I did. And as a result I perked up and felt much better.” At several points in my life, I have reached a point at which I lost all hope. I lost my energy and determination, but from that negative energy came a light to guide me in the right direction. When we realize we are in a dark place, it motivates us to try to escape it. This dark place can lead to the best creation and some of the greatest levels of accomplishment in life. When I lost the first art contest I entered, I thought I was a failure, unable to create anything worth looking at. However, some of my best work came after that instance. In friendship the same applies. My best friend had been using me all my life,

It is difficult to talk about the Life of Pi text without making a reference to faith, and the same goes with explaining Pi’s survival. Pi’s belief in pluralism and acceptance of the three religions, Hinduism, Christianity and Islam aid his future and is a crucial part of his survival at sea. His faith in knowing “so long as god is with me, I will not die” gives him the mental strength and will power to survive his ordeal. Even in the middle of the ocean, Pi practices all his religious rituals such as ‘‘solitary masses without consecrated Communion Hosts’’

The evident motif of religion plays a major factor in Pi’s life; however the author chooses not to focus on one religion specifically but instead enforces a glorification of more religions. Martel creates a main character who is a curious young boy who decides to learn about Christianity, Hinduism and Islam all at once. Even though Pi is primarily