Life Of Pi Passage Analysis

The novel Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, is a story of survival of a Indian boy named Pi, who survives a shipwreck in a lifeboat with a tiger. In the novel, the theme of primacy of survival is shown when Pi shows his survival instincts when he survives with a tiger in a lifeboat for 277 days in the middle of the Pacific ocean, finding clean water and food are his daily concerns. Moreover, Starvation and dehydration cause Pi’s blindness, dizziness, and faintness. Also, the theme of definition of freedom is also significant when Pi explains freedom in animals is defined as the freedom of the animal’s use of time, space, and relations. Further, the theme of the relativity of truth is shown when Pi tells his story in different versions which could

I will further confess that I ate some of his flesh...you must understand, my suffering was unremitting and he was already dead. I stopped as soon as I caught a fish."(Martel 284)
This passage shows the theme of primacy of survival that a deeply religious person can put his morality and beliefs aside, when survival is at stake. Indeed, the primal instinct to survive is very powerful.

Pi thinks the freedom of animal is one’s ability to practice freely in time, space, and in their relations. Therefore, Pi argues that a zoo does not restrict animals by providing them food, water, and shelter. In this way, animals do not feel threatened for territory and worried about survival needs. Pi claims:
"Animals in the wild lead lives of compulsion and necessity within an unforgiving social hierarchy in an environment where the supply of fear is high and the supply of food low and where territory must constantly be defended and parasites forever endured. What is the meaning of freedom in such a context? Animals in the wild are, in practice, free neither in space nor in time, nor in their personal relations." (Martel