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Summary Of ' The ' By Yann Martel 's '

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Maxine Malekmehr
18 December 2014
Dr. Hansen
Section 1961
Faith as the Key to Survival Albert Einstein once said, “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” Some individuals live their lives with strict adherence to logic, while others benefit from the power of imagination. However, both, pragmatism and imagination, contain advantages as well as disadvantages. In Yann Martel’s novel, the story’s protagonist, Piscine Patel, is a religious follower of three religions, who strongly believes that religion is essential to having a sense of imagination and that lack of faith leads to mere rationalism. Pi is a young man who survives 227 days adrift in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger, through the help of his trust and adherence to religion. Without faith in religion and G-d, Pi would not have been able to survive the terrible circumstances such as continuous rainstorms, extreme hunger, thirst, loneliness and despair. Faith allows him to suppress thoughts of fear, gives him peace of mind, and helps him form an affinity with the Bengal tiger. The notion of faith is first introduced to readers when Pi is in the town of Pondicherry and an elderly man says to him: “I have a story that will make you believe in God.” (Martel 2). This quote foreshadows the role religious devotion plays in Pi’s life. As mentioned previously, Pi is not only the story’s protagonist, but also an achieved artist, storyteller, and believer in the notion that that all

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