Everyone loves a story containing a person or thing that has a happy ending or survives something you thought would be impossible. Miracles are inspiring, even if they’re fiction and didn’t happen in real life. My independent reading book is The Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. If I were to come up with a symbol to represent this book and the characters in it, I would choose a tiger. A Tiger functions in the work of this book by revealing what events take place. Literally speaking, there is a tiger that accompanies Pi on his journey stranded in the Pacific named Richard Parker. This causes lots of conflict and Pi really has to problem solve his way to survival, because of Richard Parker. A tiger to me represents fear, courage, bravery, power, …show more content…
Like I said in the last paragraph, tigers represent courage, wisdom, and bravery. These characteristics sum up Pi’s personality and actions throughout the story. For example: he is considered courageous and brave because, not only did he make the most out of being stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, he shared his lifeboat with a large Bengal Tiger for 277 days. And of course he may have been in fear that he would get eaten or attacked by Richard Parker, but that didn’t stop him from overcoming this obstacle and compromising. And instead of hiding in a corner of the boat shaking in fear he wanted to make sure Richard Parker knew he was the “alpha” and it was his boat. Because of this him and Pi became companions in a way, and shared the boat peacefully. Not only is Pi brave and shows extreme courage, he also carries a lot of wisdom, “The reason death sticks so closely to life is biological necessity-it’s envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can.” (page 6-7) without all the wisdom he had, and all the bravery and courage, he most likely wouldn’t have lived through what he was put through. It was his positive outlook and who he is as a character (all his personality traits and lessons learned throughout his life) that kept him safe and saved his