Yann Martel's Life Of Pi

The Life of Pi, an award-winning novel by Yann Martel, tells the story of Pi Patel, a young boy stranded at sea with an adult Bengal tiger. Marooned on a tiny lifeboat adrift in the Pacific Ocean, Pi finds himself struggling to survive. Faced with imminent suffering and death brought on by hunger, thirst, and an unending battle with the elements, Pi must make a decision between upholding his and society’s strict set of morals and values, or letting his survival instincts take over. Through compelling language and imagery, Martel gives Pi’s conflict between morals, fear, and survival a sense of excitement, suspense, and climax.

While on the road to nowhere, Pi starts to acquire water from the rain and obtains food to stock up while he’s worrying about the 400 pound tiger that’s on the lifeboat while Pi is on a small raft. When Pi starts to tame Richard Parker he can finally call him a friend and now has a purpose. As a Hindu, Pi does not eat meat but that went out of the window when he catches a fish and eats it raw to stay alive. When it comes down to survival there is no preference in what to eat.

Another way Pi was able to survive through his harsh times was by learning how to live with Richard Parker. At first Pi was terribly afraid that he might be the next goat. “I had a choice so long as he did not sense me. If he did, he would kill me right away. Could he burst through the tarpaulin, I wondered.”(Martel, 119) Since Pi was afraid of Richard Parker, he would try his best to avoid him. His fear towards Richard Parker distracted Pi from the sorrow left by the sinking of the Tsimtsum. Even if Richard Parker was a man-eating carnivore he had to learn how to live with him. “In my case, to protect myself from Richard Parker while I trained him, I made a shield with a turtle shell...” (Martel, 228) If Pi wasn’t able to tame Richard Parker

Religious people often sacrifice their beloved items such as food, jewelers, and even animals in order to impress God, so they can fulfill their wishes and desires. In the novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel, the author tries to relate individual’s life’s goals and sacrifices through the characters of his story. In order to survive, the main character of the novel- Pi - sacrifices his beliefs and integrity. The young, bookish, and religious boy faces the harsh truth of reality. He stays with Richard Parker-a Bengali tiger-on the dangerous journey of his life. Throughout the novel, he learns about sacrifices and he himself gives sacrifice. One of the major themes is sacrifice; Martel argues that sacrifices are often essential in order to gain higher goals.

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.

To simply be alive consists of the acts of breathing and having blood pump through the body, but to be a human being consists of much more complexity. The nature composed of a human being involves having self sovereignty on our own emotions, opinions, desires, faiths as well as having a moral subconscious. Yet, what occurs when a situation allows an individual to react in a behaviour that doesn’t follow these defining factors of human nature? In Yann Martel 's Life of Pi, he creates the conflict of a cargo ship sinking, and the only notable survivors on the life raft consists of a hyena, a zebra with a broken leg, an orangutan, and a 16-year-old Indian boy. The protagonist of the novel, Pi Patel, is faced with a personal survival conflict

         When my mom ran to my dad and pulled on his arm to get him away from Gavin, he pushed her against the wall and screamed what sounded to me like bad words. When I ran between them saying, "Mommy, daddy, don 't fight," dad picked me up and threw me onto Gavin, who 'd just gotten off the ground from his first strike. Dad kept yelling at us. I didn 't know why, and it scared all of us.

Bengali polymath, Rabindranath Tagore, once said “you can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.” In the novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel, the protagonist, Pi, faces many challenges at sea while being accompanied by a tiger by the name of Richard Parker. This tiger, though a nuisance, proves to be essential in the role of Pi’s survival. Throughout the story, Richard Parker symbolizes survival, a reflection of Pi, and a being of God.

As Pi has to fight through adversity when he is stranded in a the middle of the Pacific Ocean, he has to adjust his eating habits. When one is in a situation where there is not much to eat, any little thing must be consumed. As a very famous proverb says, “Beggars can’t be choosers.” This was Pi’s most difficult challenge when he was on the boat. As a child, Pi grew up to be a vegetarian. The idea of killing and then consuming an animal really freaked out Pi. He remembered from his childhood, “To think that 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” (197). Even when Pi was eating something like a banana that is not related at all to an animal, he

¬¬When Piscine reaches a point where he must face death, he had to do what was necessary in order to live. Pi was a vegetarian; he has been one since the day he was born. He had to give that up when his life was on the line to be able to survive. Piscine on the Pacific Ocean, had to hunt and kill fishes to satisfy his hunger. “Lord, to think that I’m a strict vegetarian. (…) I descended to a level of savagery I never imagined possible” (Martel 112) Pi exclaimed. Even though Piscine was quite religious, he had to be smart when making vital

At the beginning of Life of Pi, Pi Patel has to adapt to his new situation, and the constant fear of his newfound boatmate, a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. Pi, a vegetarian must learn to survive, which in his situation, involves the killing and eating of animals. To preserve his life, he must distance himself from his former life of vegetarianism. “I wept heartily over this poor little deceased soul. It was the first sentient being I had ever killed. I was now a killer. I was now as guilty as Cain. I was sixteen years old, a harmless boy, bookish and religious, and now I had blood on my hands. It’s a terrible burden to carry. All sentient life is sacred. I never forget to include this fish in my prayers.” (Martel, 183). Pi has

Pi kills a fish for the first time and that experience has changed him. At first, Pi was upset about his actions but sees that one must do what they must to survive. Pi desperately will do whatever is needed in order to survive even if that means doing things he never imagined himself doing.

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

Life of Pi shows that humans and animals should do anything necessary to survive whatever challenges they face to live instead of just accepting death. Whatever ways that help one to survive are necessary, even if they compromise personal values, are vicious, or are wicked. Pi, a human; a hyena, and a blind man all fight to survive in a variety of ways that are examples of this thesis.

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