Orange Symbolism In Life Of Pi

Dillon R. Johnson

Professor Tyler Fish

EN 102

7 May 2017

Orange: A Symbol of Survival in Life of Pi The story Life of Pi is about the protagonist’s (Piscine Molitor Patel) struggle to survive against seemingly unsurmountable circumstances that he is faced with. Orange has traditionally been a color associated with safety and survival, that is often used to display a necessary contrast between an object and its environment to propagate enhanced safety. In Life of Pi Yann Martel uses the color orange to symbolize hope and survival in an environment that is very hard to maintain hope in or survive for the astonishing two hundred and twenty-seven days that Pi is stranded on the life boat. Martel utilizes the universal use of orange as a safety

In this scene described Pi’s own daughter Usha is depicted carrying a small orange cat that calls back to recognition, Richard Parker, the large orange cat that helped Pi survive for all the time that he did on the life boat. The small orange cat is the first time in the novel that the color orange is used as a symbol of hope, safety, and survival. It is a symbol of hope and survival because the fact that the scene depicts an adult Pi that has fathered children ensures the reader that Pi will survive his treacherous ordeal at sea against all odds and eventually make it to Canada. This positive foreshadowing revealed early in the book sets the tone for the theme of the book to be survival and perseverance, rather than one of death and

Pi says, “What was orange became whitish-orange” (Martel pg. 238). Then in his last journal he states, “It’s no use. Today I die. I will die today. I die” (Martel pg. 240). The fact that Martel chooses to harmonize the fading of the orange color with Pi’s fading hope and will to survive emphasizes Martel’s use of orange as a symbol for hope and survival. The dullness that the orange coloring on various objects throughout the lifeboat take on due to exposure to the elements, symbolizes the weakness of Pi’s will to persevere and survive at this point in the novel. At this point in the novel Pi’s will to survive is the most diminished and directly correlates with the intense fading of the fluorescent orange color that most of the lifeboats contents originally