Life Of Pi Dialectical Journal Essay

Part One is narrated in the first person by Pi. Pi narrates from an advanced age, looking back at his earlier life as a high school and college student in Toronto, then even further back to his boyhood in Pondicherry. He explains

Later in the story, Pi reveals a second interpretation of the seven month journey. He replaces the animals with humans like his mother and the cook. In this side, Pi portrays himself as the ferocious tiger, Richard Parker, essentially becoming his doppelganger. While Pi was on the inescapable lifeboat, he was trapped with Richard Parker. In accordance to Foster’s idea that no literature is original, this version could be extremely comparable to The Picture of Dorian Gray and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian is forced to deal with an evil side of him after he trades his life for youth. In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jekyll accidentally creates a concoction that gives him another personality called Mr. Hyde who commits crimes and can easily be named evil. In all three cases, the protagonist is faced with an uncontrollable alternate personality.

In chapter 63, Pi discusses a daily schedule that he has created for his life on the ship that is considered to be “one key to my survival.” (page 190) On his schedule, it shows that he prays at least five times every day. The abundance of prayer helps anchor his schedule, as well as keep him busy throughout the day. It also helps to normalize his life on the life raft.

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

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.

When pressed on the issue of the lack of credibility of the animal story, Pi is forced to give a second, human story because it is the only story that would be reasonably believable, full of “dry yeastless factuality”.

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

This thread develops during the novel because while he is on the lifeboat Pi starts questioning who truly he is and wants to be. The young boy who was once dedicated to vegetarianism, which was rooted in his religion, must make a life changing decision.

They did not want to believe his encounters with animals so they decided to rather stretch the truth. The image of a cook cannibalizing his mother and the other sailor and then Pi eating them sounded incredibly horrifying. The animal story seems to be unacceptable as a “true” account. Instead of Pi standing his ground about what was truly happens, he gives the men the choice as to which story they wanted to believe or recount as the “true” story. Of course, they choose the one with the animals, as it is in some ways easier to “believe” than the one that is perhaps more

Region faces the same problem” (21). The second story is one of brutality, death, and evil: the cook murders the crew member instead of saving him, kills Pi’s mother, and then dies by the hands of Pi himself. This is a version that relies upon reason, however, the story Pi tells is one that calls for the listener to have faith that it has happened. Therefore, the nature of truth is the connection between the reason that represent the characters and the faith that represent the animals in Pi’s

In the second part of the novel, Pi expresses his tedious story on how he was stranded at sea on a lifeboat with four other animals: a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra, and a tiger. The hyena ends up violently killing the zebra and orangutan, and is then killed by the tiger. Following these maniacal events, Pi must inhabit the lifeboat and train the tiger, also known as Richard Parker, until he eventually washes about the shores of Mexico. When two men interview Pi about the flotsam, they don’t believe this animalistic story. Pi proceeds to tell them the same story, but only substituting all of the animals with actual people aboard the ship.

His retelling of the story was was heavily doubted to say the least. Pi responded with “"Don't you bully me with your politeness! Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?"”. Upon further interrogation Pi told a more believable, replacing the animals with humans, meagerly satisfying the investigators. Pi posed a question “ 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?”. Both agreed with The story with the animals. To which pi responded “Thank you. And so it goes with God.”. This dialogue not only defines the importance of storytelling within the story but also represents the debate between science and religion. Science being the more believable story, religion being the original story and like the origin of man none of the stories have a definite proof. They share many similarities yet differ so much to different people.

Wow, this book was a great read. It has been one of the most thought-provoking books I have read in a long time. Days after reading it, I still thought about it, analyzing the content in this book. That’s when you know you have read a good book. I believe that Pi gave two accounts of his ordeal because the first account was his survival mechanism. He had to believe it himself for so long to survive that he had convinced himself they were animals. Animals killing animals is a common instinct that allowed his emotions and mental understanding remain intact. Human killing humans, cannibalism, and murder is a whole different perception which can devour someone, causing them to lose there emotional, spiritual, and mental stability. There are times

Karanvir Dhami Ms. Yu ENG3U March 7, 2011 Symbolism in Life of Pi In Life of Pi there are many literary devices used to present the different themes in the novel. The main literary device used in Life of Pi is symbolism. Symbolism is often used to represent an object to something else, either by association or by resemblance. Most of the names of animals, objects and even humans in this novel have a symbolic meaning. In Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, symbolism such as pi’s name, the colour orange and the algae island, are used throughout the novel to provide Pi with protection to help him either survive or overcome his emotional pain. The mathematical pi is undefined, infinite and unable to be understood, just like Piscine Patel.

There are certain events in our lives that can change a person. When an Individual goes through traumatic events, their subconscious has a method to trick them into believing events that have not occurred. In Life of Pi, Yann Martel creates two stories of what happens to the main character Pi. One about the animals and other about Pi being a murderer and turning cannibalistic. The two stories that are told are so identical, it seems that all Pi did was replace animals with humans. This gives us a deeper insight into Pi's subconscious and his method of dealing with the trauma and struggle caused by his journey.