In Martel’s novel, “Life of Pi” the castaway Pi witnessed the horrible death of a fellow castaway within the confines of a lifeboat adrift at sea. This death was brought about by another companion from a shipwreck, but this one was not the human type of castaway. This shipwreck survivor was a tiger that went by the name of Richard Parker. By comparison in O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried,” Kiowa, a soldier in Vietnam, sees Lavender, a man in his platoon, suddenly get shot and killed by a random sniper.
Despite the fact that they both witnessed a murder that happened with no warning, they each reacted to their run in with death very differently. While Kiowa the soldier didn’t feel much “except surprise” and pleasure in still being alive, Pi became a complete mess on the inside, to the point that a piece of him died with the ill-fated castaway (O’Brien 88). The reason that Kiowa wasn’t as upset as Pi was by the deaths they witnessed was because he wasn’t as emotionally exhausted as Pi was at the time, and his body could handle the sudden emotion better.
Pi, in Yann Martel’s story, had just resigned himself so completely to death that he had actually “resolved to die“(Martel 241). He had for months on the edge of starvation while he floated in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on a small lifeboat. The boy had come to this dreary place of mind because of his recently acquired blindness. His lack of vision resulted from the malnutrition that he was undergoing. Pi’s lack of nutrients during his stay in the lifeboat had already robbed the majority of the boy’s strength from his body. His blindness, combined with his steadily increasingly weakened state that was so bad that he “could no longer stand,” left him complet...
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... had Pi’s as a result. How Ted Lavender looked afterwards wasn’t very bad at all compared to the shape of the man Pi ran into in the Pacific either. Lavender had merely been shot in the head, and the only part of him that was really messed up were his teeth and cheekbone. He hadn’t been ripped apart by an animal, and the sight of his remains didn’t stir up a sickened horror inside of Kiowa as the stranger’s torn body had in Pi.
Many things affected how Kiowa and Pi reacted, including the shape the dead bodies were in, how callused they, the survivors were, and how stressful the events leading up to the deaths were. All of these elements contributed to the two young men’s emotions. those elements indirectly controlled how Pi and Kiowa reacted to the deaths of Lavender and the castaway, deaths that were “Boom-down’ fast and very unexpected (O’Brien 88).
...ust sees her dad’s strange actions. While someone that knows his story would see it as a final act of remembrance, putting Kiowa’s spirit and story to an end.
In Craig Lesley’s novel The Sky Fisherman, he illustrates the full desire of direction and the constant flow of life. A boy experiences a chain of life changing series of events that cause him to mature faster than a boy should. Death is an obstacle that can break down any man, a crucial role in the circle of life. It’s something that builds up your past and no direction for your future. No matter how hard life got, Culver fought through the pain and came out as a different person. Physical pain gives experience, emotional pain makes men.
The death of Kiowa is the point in this story, and arguably the entire novel, where the true nature of war becomes evident. His death in any situation would have been tragic, and camping in that “shit field” alone would have been an emotionally scarring experience; however, that these events had to coincide in time only multiplies the gravity of the situation. Interestingly, every soldier has his own way of grappling with such overwhelming feelings of grief for his highly-esteemed comrade. Yet what every man has in common is that in the end he concludes that he alone is the one ultimately responsible for Kiowa’s death.
“Kiowa was gone. He was under the mud and water, folded in with the war…” (O’Brien, 155). Many soldiers in war may lose an extremity or get bumps and bruises, but Kiowa did not make it out so lucky. Lieutenant Cross got commands to take the route he knew was much
Fear is one of human's emotions that sometimes prevent humans to be successful. The other acceptable definitions for fear is an unpleasant emotion caused by the nearness danger or expectation of pain. The main character in the novel that called Life of Pi written by Yann Martel is Pi who challenges with many issues in his journey from India to Canada. One of the issues is living alone on the lifeboat in the middle of ocean with a Bengal tiger for while. One can learn to deal with fear as Pi deals with the tiger that called Richard Parker. Pi faces his fears, takes practical steps, persevere, and acknowledge his fears.
During his deployment in Vietnam, Kiley experienced the dark elements of the war, indubitably changing his perspective of the war and him as a person-- from the deaths of his fellow soldiers to the unresolved issues, nightmares, and detachment from reality. What is left of Kiley is only a shell.
Kiowa is more sensible in realizing and understanding what Tim is experiencing. Tim: It’s a war. The guy wasn’t Heidi—he had a weapon, right? It’s a tough thing, for sure, but you got to cut out that staring” (126). He knows that what Tim is feeling is really hard for him to grasp because of the astonishment “Take it slow”.
In the story Life Of Pi by Yann Martel it talks about a boy who is lost at sea trying to go to Canada. In the other story The Snows Of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway talks about a man who is injured and need to get to the hospital. Even though both stories seem very similar they have some differences as well. In both of the stories the authors express the idea of death as coming in the form as an animal, they also use the animals to raise or lose hope of the protagonists, and finally the animals are used to bring pain and suffering to the protagonists as well.
Personally, I think O’brien’s emotions hit hard. You can’t just let go of something and someone like that. It’s something that will always be there in your mind. He said, “I’d wanted to take my daughter to the places I’d seen as a soldier. I wanted to show her the Vietnam that kept me awake at night.”He decided to show her his past, the important things in his life. If those things didn’t matter to him, would he still have took the time to show her? He not only showed her the field he fought on. He also showed her where his friend Kiowa had died. “Now, looking out at the field, I wondered if it was all a mistake. Everything was too ordinary. A quiet sunny day, and the field was not the I remembered”, he remembers it different. I picture he remembers it as a dark, dreary, noisy place. During their time at the field O’brien took his friends Kiowa’s moccasin’s and put them in some sort of “mush” where he passed away. He wanted to tell Kiowa that “he’d been a great friend, the very best”. “In a way, maybe I’d gone under with Kiowa, and now after two decades I’d finally worked my way
Death, it cannot be prevented from happening, no matter how many bullets you carry, or how high you get. Kiowa, an Indian, a soldier, a warrior, he is just there, in Vietnam, at war, carrying on a tradition, carrying the distrusting feelings of the white man and most important carrying the pride of his people.
Religion is and always has been a sensitive topic. Some choose to acknowledge that there is a God and some choose to deny this fact to the death. For those who deny the presence of a higher being, “Life of Pi” will most likely change your thought process concerning this issue. Yann Martel’s, “Life of Pi”, is a compelling story that shows the importance of obtaining religion and faith. Piscine (Pi) Patel is both the protagonist and the narrator of Martell’s religious eye-opener who undergoes a chain effect of unbelievable catastrophes. Each of these catastrophic events leaving him religiously stronger because he knows that in order to endure what he has endured, there has got to be a God somewhere.
At the start of novel, and when Pi is a child, he is extremely religious. He devotes his life to loving God, and even practices three religions to do so. He practices Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity. His explanation for practicing all three is that according to Bapu Gandhi, “‘All religions are true’”(69). Pi explains that he practices all three religions because, “[he] just wants to love God”(69). Pi’s major religious values and faith in God continue to shape his life daily, until the shipwreck leaves him stranded on the Pacific, with a tiger for 227 days. Although Pi still remains religious and continues to praise God most days, the shipwreck does change Pi’s religious morals. Richard Parker is the factor that begins this change in Pi, because Pi knows that in order to survive he will have to fish to provide for Richard Parker if he wants to avoid being eaten himself. Fishing, however goes against the religious practice of Hinduism, which requires vegetarianism. Also, killing animals goes against Pi’s whole religious morals to not hurt another living being. Pi says the idea of killing a fish, and of “beating a soft living head with a hammer [is] simply too much”(183). It goes against everything he believes in. So, he decides to instead cover to fish’s head and break its neck (183). He explains that, “he [gives] up a number of times.
This unimaginable tale, is the course of events upon Pi’s journey in the Pacific ocean after the ship that Pi and his family were aboard crashes, leaving him stranded with a tiger named Richard Parker, an orangutan, a zebra, and a hyena. Pi loses everything he has and starts to question why this is happening to him. This is parallel to the story of Job. Job is left with nothing and is experiencing great suffering and he begins to demand answers from God. Both Pi and Job receive no answers, only being left with their faith and trust. To deal with this great suffering Pi begins to describe odd things which begin to get even more unbelievable and ultimately become utterly unrealistic when he reaches the cannibalistic island. Richard Parker’s companionship serves to help Pi through these events. When the reader first is intoduced to Richard Parker he emerges from the water, making this symbolic of the subconscious. Richard Parker is created to embody Pi’s alter ego. Ironically, each of these other animals that Pi is stranded with comes to symbolize another person. The orangutan represents Pi’s mother, the zebra represents the injured sailor, and the hyena represents the cook. Pi fabricated the people into animals in his mind to cope with the disillusion and trails that came upon him while stranded at the erratic and uncontrollable sea,
...knowledge his shadow self. He was able to survive his plight on the lifeboat because of the characteristics of his shadow self, Richard Parker. Even at the loss of his shadow self, Pi remains connected and constantly misses this part of his persona. After his ordeal on the lifeboat, Pi becomes rational and humane; however his experiences has scarred him, and will forever remain with him. Readers can definitely learn from Pi’s experience with his shadow self. The more we refute our shadow, the more it weighs us down. However, if we are willing to come to terms with the reality of our shadow, learn how it works, “tame” it so that it does not control us, we would be more literate and enlightened.
The projection of Richard Parker helps Pi to be aware of this current situation, which was him being stranded in the ocean on a lifeboat in comparison to his beliefs in his religions. His fear towards Richard Parker was one of the reasons of his survival. Pi says, “Fear and reason fought over answer. Fear said yes. He was a fierce, 450-pound carnivore. Each of his claws was sharp as a knife” (Martel 108). Pi describes Richard Parker as an extremely dangerous, fearful, and vicious predator. This causes Pi keep aware because he is on a boat with a deadly carnivore. He tries to keep awake at night while being on the lifeboat with Richard Parker from the fear of being attacked and eaten by the Bengal tiger. However, since Richard Parker is Pi’s id, it was actually him keeping himself aware and alive. Pi states, “If I still had the will to live, it was thanks to Richard Parker. He kept me from thinking too much about my family and my tragic circumstances” (Martel 164). This shows how Richard Parker occupies Pi’s mind and influences his thoughts about the tragic incident that has happened. The will to live for Pi is no longer his family, but Richard Parker, his id. Richard Parker taught Pi how to survive based on his instincts an...