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Yann Martel's Life Of Pi

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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

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Which he experienced directly and during which he lost his family and many friends. Life of Pi is the story of a man who survives a harrowing shipwreck and months in a lifeboat with a big tiger named Richard Parker. The beginning of the novel covers Pi's childhood and youth. The second half is him trying to fight to the end to and fend himself against the large tiger that he was stuck with on the boat. At the end of the story he was questions about if his story was

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Soon Pi’s father sees that his son is not wary towards wild animals. His father then  forces his children to watch a tiger kill

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Pi continues his journey by learning how to live in a small space with these animals and even training one of them. In the end Pi reveals another story with people replacing the animals that were on the lifeboat before. Pi had initially used animals which best represented the people who were really in the boat. This showed how throughout the story, since these people were put into a life threatening situation, they had revealed a more primal side. Life of Pi is accompanied with various symbols, with each

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It can be difficult to accept that a tiger and a boy could coexist on a lifeboat alone at peace, but somehow in the context of the novel, it seems possible. Piscine Patel is the protagonist as well as the narrator for the majority of the book. With him playing both roles, this narrative device distances the reader from the realistic standpoint. It’s difficult to predict the accuracy of Pi’s story, but it may have been Martell’s intention all along.

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When Pi’s life is put in serious danger, he has to adjust his wants and needs of many different aspects of his life. Pi was living what he called a perfect life. From spending most of his days with animals to practicing swimming, he learned to love everything about his life. However, things changed when a ship that his entire family on sank in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

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469 Words | 2 Pages

Martel utilizes the tiger to display discipline, courage, primitive instincts, and the vitality of companionship, all of which are traits that embody Pi, himself. A key factor in Piscine’s survival is the pure notion that Richard Parker’s company emits a ferocious and relentless ambiance. This eventually leads Pi to make decisions regarding his well-being, despite its rationality. Each day Pi is at sea, he becomes more cognizant and aware of his basic life necessities. Often Pi says things such as, “Alone or not, lost or not, I was thirsty and hungry” and “I was continuously hungry.

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When faced with hardships it is typically hard to continue thinking positively but Pi's determination and perseverance prove to be a great example of how even when going through hell you should keep going. In Life of Pi, as conditions on the boat worsen, and a lack of water and food exist, Pi is decided to survive, he reflects on his experience by expressing “Some of us give up on life with only a resigned sigh. Others fight a little, then lose hope. Still others - and I'm one of those - never give up. We fight and fight and fight.

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When Pi discovers Richard Parker on the lifeboat, the tiger decides to assert his

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“I started thinking seriously about how I was going to deal with Richard Parker.” None of his ideas were good and he gave up on himself and said he was going to die. Then, Pi realized that he should keep Richard Parker alive and try to force his dominance over the tiger. “It was time to impose myself and carve out my territory. ”The author uses the territorial struggle between Pi and Richard Parker to show that Pi is as strong as the tiger is mentally, and when Pi establishes mental dominance, he is able to use Richard Parker to his advantage to help him

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Stranded in the middle of the seemingly endless ocean without the necessities of life, Pi is delirious. Without food and company, blindness, fatigue, and malnutrition plagues Pi, correspondingly deteriorating his health. Pi’s tough mentality ensures he outlasts the preceding ocean journey but starvation and blindness allows insanity to warp his thinking. Pi’s delusional state and weakened mentality is further emphasized by his anthropomorphized conversation with Richard Parker where he resolves to discussing food to gratify his starvation. Eventually, the forlorn conditions devastate Pi, breaking his spirit to the point where death becomes his saviour.

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There is one moment in the story where all his developed instincts were challenged. He was met with a school of flying fish that would jump out of the water and into the lifeboat. He had wrapped one fish in a blanket and intended to kill it with a hatchet. He could not bring himself to kill this fish with a hatchet, but ultimately cannot go through with it. Pi ends

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The audience is first introduced to Richard Parker in a low angle shot of him killing the hyena to instil the tiger’s dominance and power. This symbolic characterisation allowed Pi to censor his reality, and adapt to the primitive necessities required for his survival. This is surprising to even Pi himself, and the taming scene exemplifies his will to supress the tiger and his metaphorical primal instincts. Lee again uses a high angle shot to depict Richard Parker’s supremacy over the weak, primordial Pi furthering the notion of Pi’s inability to tame the tiger. This incapability to tame Richard Parker epitomises his loss of conscious control due to extrinsic forces, which is scary and frightening for Pi.

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He also learns ranking in the zoo what animal is at the top and which animal is at the bottom his father tells him that the most dangerous animal in the humans who visit and Pi tells us this in the book he says “We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in the zoo is man”(Martel,31).He learns later in the book that this completely changes when they aren 't in cages. When Pi is on the boat he realizes that in the wild it is the exact opposite in that case humans are not the most dangerous animals it is the large carnivorous animals. In the book he has to fish to feed Richard parker so that he doesn 't eat Pi. PI

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He is unable to understand why the Lord isn’t listening to his prayers and why everything is detrimental to him. Keeping his religious beliefs at sea is very challenging for Pi, this leads him to experience feelings of disbelief towards God. Despite his doubts, Pi continues to pray and practice his religions. He eventually comes to the conclusion that once everything is taken away from him and he is in complete darkness, he will always have his faith. He admits that loving God is difficult, but it’s something he must do if he is to survive his journey across the ocean.

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This idea may be based off of the fact that he had to kill the fish in order to survive, and to keep Richard Parker (the tiger) alive as well. Following the time of killing the flying fish (which Pi uses as bait) he catches a dorado, and explains that the food he is catching is for Richard Parker. Pi states, “It was for Richard Parker and he would have dispatched it with expert ease” (Martel 89). Through a religious aspect, it can be seen that Pi did not necessarily change is values, but had to go against his morals because of the specific scenario of survival. This may be true; however, Pi directly mentions that he is changed from the time of killing the flying fish to taking the life away from a beautiful dorado.

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