Animals are designed to simply exist, while humans are designed to do much more: to thrive. However, we as human beings compare ourselves to animals due to our cognitive abilities and our understanding of what we do not have but what we want. It is a natural component for the human persona to desire what we do not have, like the superior physical capabilities that animals have. Nonetheless, Pi was able to easily replace the animals with humans as the animals represented the physical attributes that he desired to have. Humans have the desire to want to be like animals due to their infatuation with their physical capabilities and mannerisms but also we are infatuated with their emotions and how they are similar to human beings.
* The Hyena: represents the cook of the ship that sank. The Hyena kills both the zebra and orangutan in the animal story. In the second verison of Pi’s story the Cook amputates the sailor’s leg for fishing bait. The Hyena represents the evil in the world. Pi is religious and maintains faith even when there was little hope in surviving. The Hyena is replaced as the cook in Pi’s second story. In the second story, Pi makes it clear that the cook amputates the sailor’s leg to use it as fishing bait. We are exposed to the evilness of the cook and the hyena
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The Zebra’s leg is brutally torn apart by the Hyena and is then eaten alive. Perhaps the author uses the zebra to remind us that savagery has a devastating effect on others. It sounds quite simple but the sailor and the zebra suffer so much that we can’t help but to see them both as images of
The first and most obvious symbol in the story is the lion, or more specifically, the secret lion. It is not a literal lion. The lion of the story represents things that are big and the secret of it is that it is unexplained, or even ignored. It suggests change, and it is a change that is big and confusing. The secret lion is a symbol of coming of age and understanding that with change there is loss, and to hold onto something, it must be secret. The narrator
Imagery Very descriptive of what jack is doing to the pig which shows how savage Jack has become and losing all moral values. Jack and the hunters come back from a hunt with a hog and they brutally murder it.. They cut the head off and put it on a spear as a sacrifice to the beast. The fear of the beast is the cause of savagery. Savagery is the cause of corruption.
Pi is alone with Richard Parker on the lifeboat and they both starve and suffer with dehydration. Pi starts catching fishes for both of them. He always gives the biggest share to Richard Parker as he is the strongest. One day, he decides to eat the largest part. He wants to calm his desire for hunger. He does not want to share anything with Richard Parker. Pi starts eating like an animal. Pi tells, “It came as an unmistakable indication to me of how I had sunk the day I noticed, with a pinching of the heart, that I ate like an animal” (Martel 183). The innocent boy is now as dangerous as an animal that can do anything for the food. His yearning for food makes him selfish. It is in pi’s hand not to sacrifices his integrity, but he chooses to sacrifice because he knows that at this critical situation it is right to do. Even though Pi loses his integrity, he gains the power of being the strongest one on the
Although there are normal ones, as an example-grief-the reader observes Pi and Richard Parker be the same, human or animal, they are the same. The story to believe is the version with humans, but looking at that story of Life of Pi the realization of Pi and Richard Parker become clear. During the beginning, there was a monkey named Orange Juice, he was on the lifeboat with Pi and he felt that the grieving that Orange Juice felt was the same as Pi’s, she was mourning “She noticed me and expressed nothing about it. I was just another animal that had lost everything and was vowed to death.” (136) Orange Juice showed her being in some sense a human, showing it so well that Pi related to her as
These animals, among others, represent human conscience. To wrap up all that has been stated, “Chicago” and “Wilderness” are two poems from the writer Carl Sandburg about his life from a place he lived to his emotions. This gives us a good look into the life of the poet Carl Sandburg. The book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the theme of the American dream used many times with Jay and his ideal future with Daisy. Gatsby wanted to remake the past of this woman he was in love with before the war, though she was already married, he had a plan “Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay” (Fitzgerald 85 P).
Life of Pi was a well written novel with an interesting story line. The authors syntax and use of metaphors make the book a great read. Of all the books that we have read this year, Life of Pi sparked the most conversation outside of school on what the book meant, and which story was true. The novel provides two stories. The story that the majority of the book follows has Pi stranded with Richard Parker, a hyena, an orangutan, and a zebra. At the end of the book, Pi provides an alternate story after the men interviewing him state their disbelief of his original story. This second version equates each animal to a human that had been aboard the Tsimtsum. The hyena was the cook aboard the ship, the orangutan was the mother,
In human and animal nature, many similarities are portrayed in Life of Pi as well as a strong relation between the two. In contrast, humans and animals share the same sort of lifestyle, just living a different life according to Pi’s thoughts. In a tragic situation that one is in, such as Pi they must find a way to pass time and keep themselves busy by using their circumstances,
Yann Martel offers two accounts of Pi’s survival story so that Pi is able to personify animals and also give animalistic qualities to humans. This exchange is only seen after both accounts are read. The reader is able to determine which he or she accepts as reality, but since the facts of the story go unchanged and both tales are primarily the same, the sole purpose is to highlight the traits humans and animals posses. Yann Martel exemplifies human traits in animals and animal traits in people through his claim in passage A by telling the two stories of Pi’s survival.
The hyena attacks Orange Juice and out of self-defence and the will to survive, a modest and peaceful animal is turned into a ferocious being. Orange Juice delivers a hard blow to the hyena's head but ends up dying from the hyena. Another example where the theme is shown is when the Zebra lands in the lifeboat and breaks his leg. The Zebra first tries to survive through the broken leg but even when the hyena attacks the Zebra with the broken leg the Zebra tries to retaliate because of the zebra’s will to survive. The zebra does not die and give up until the day.
Whether is be the individualism of a zebra, the hope of an orangutan, the hatred of a hyena, or the determination of a tiger symbolism can be determined for any character. Pi’s journey obtains symbolism for each animal and a story of faith for himself through the sea and the rigors that he and the animals
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
In the Life of Pi, animals have the human-like emotions. They will be mad when others do something harmful to their friends. After the ship sank, there are some animals survived on “Pi’s Ark”: a zebra, a hyena, an ape and a tiger; however, the hyena is hurting the zebra. The ape: “But with her giant arms,
The main one is that the worst representatives of humanity threaten to destroy humane values since they live by the law of the jungle. I also found a close association between the animal images and the pervasive suggestion of bodily pain, horror and suffering in the play. As well as savage wolves and other predators, the imagery feature stinging adders, gnawing rats, whipped, whining, mad and biting dogs.
He starts out with a zebra, hyena, an orangutan, and a tiger, but the animals slowly diminish leaving only Pi and Richard Parker. Pi works to tame and care for Richard Parker, and the two survive for two hundred twenty-seven days. Pi encounters a fellow French castaway who is eaten by Richard Parker (Martel 311-320). Pi also comes across a man-eating island (Martel 322-358). The events that take place are fairly far-fetched, and the probability of all of them occurring to the same person in the period of time given is even less believable. The second story, on the other hand, is a perhaps more believable retelling of the original story. Pi relates the second tale upon the request of his interviewers for “‘a story without animals’” (Martel 381). In this story the animals are replaced with human representatives including an injured Chinese sailor, a French cook, Pi’s mother, and Pi himself. The second story, like the first, begins with many passengers on the boat, but in the end it leaves only Pi to survive by himself after brutally murdering and eating the cook who killed both the sailor and Pi’s own mother (Martel 381-391). Unlike Pi’s first story, this account is dark, desperate, and harshly realistic, without any sense of hope to counter it all. After relating both of these stories to his interviewers, Pi asks them which story they think is better (Martel 398). Although the
As the least threatening of the animals, the zebra has a connection to all of the organisms on the boat so its death causes mixed reactions. When the hyena kills the zebra, it does so in a