Question 8: Humans beings in our world reflect the animal behavior observed by Pi in many ways. Humans are similar to animals, humans are just a more complex and intelligent species. Martel uses personification with Richard Parker and the other animals in place of humans to show how humans and animals are similar. Sadly I believe humans are often aggressive and have a rough animal side. This question greatly associates with the themes, will to survive and man and the natural world.
For the will to survive, both animals and humans will do whatever they need to survive. The hyena killed the zebra to survive and have food, which I thought was gross and sad, and Pi killed fish and turtles to survive. In our world, people hunt to kill and eat
Animals are considered dangerous, but in our world not all of them are. Some are very nice, and some are dangerous when provoked. This is just like people; there are some very dangerous people in the world, and lots of people become angry and dangerous when provoked, while some are extremely nice and passive. This leads to the conclusion that there is a wide variety of people just like there is animals, and we should not make broad generalizations about either. Martel compares people to animals and shows that people can have an animal side too and be similar. Pi shows that the lines between animal and human sides can become blurred over time. Pi becomes more like an animal when he disregards all of his moral values. For instance he kills animals. I can relate to Pi, I do not want to kill any living creature either. Richard Parker also symbolizes Pi’s dual nature and represents the animal side of Pi, since he basically represents Pi. The two personalities within relate to “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, or someone who shows two very distinct personalities. Richard Parker can symbolize the dual nature of Pi, his human and animal side. Pi sees how animals can have two sides, and every animal is different which we see in our world
The zebra reflects a weaker, passive person who is picked on by a bully constantly. Orange Juice represents a person who is very feminine, caring and nurturing and someone who stands up for what they believe in. The hyena represents someone who panics with stress like being stuck on the lifeboat and acts as a bully by taking their anger out on others. What Pi saw regarding animal behaviors reflects that in our world everyone is very diverse and no one is the same.
Another animal behavior that Pi observed while on the lifeboat that reflects human beings in our world is dominance and the need for a social system. Pi had to let Richard Parker know that he was the dominant creature on the lifeboat. Humans also need to have a person with a dominant role over them. In the workplace, there are employees and then there is the boss. Workers need a boss to keep everything in check. Bosses have to make it known to their employees who is in-charge, just as Pi did to Richard Parker by using the
...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.
In Martel’s book, she labeled Richard Parker as the “alpha” of the food chain, due to its strength and capabilities to survive in nature. She described how tigers are beautiful creatures, yet are fearsome and dangerous they can be. Respect is one word she used to show how a person sees this animal. Comparing to the hyena, people dissed the savagery of the hyena and their gruesome attitude towards nature and how it lacks of many things due to its appearance. However, on the other hand all people see the tiger’s sophistication to hunt
An id and ego split is also shown between Pi and Richard Parker. Richard Parker is an imaginary tiger that is created by Pi in order to keep him alive and focused on staying alive. Pi eventually abandons his superego and partakes in eating meat, even though he was a strict vegetarian prior to being lost at sea. Over the duration of Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, the story relates to Freud’s theories in several ways that are made blatantly obvious; these relations are what makes this story come together to keep the reader involved and interested. Works Cited Martel, Yann.
...ction of Richard Parker kept Pi aware, by showing Pi the reality of the current situation, assisted him with making the right decisions, committing certain actions, and is his sub-consciousness, his id that fights for survival. In Martel’s Life of Pi, Pi’s coping mechanism has been proven more useful in his projection Richard Parker rather than his beliefs in his religions, which has done nothing for Pi and was useless at that time. Humans and animals are very alike in certain aspects. When it all comes down to survival, humans and animals are almost alike. The human mind brings back the inner id from the human consciousness while in drastic situations to help them cope with it in order to survive. The human psychology has a very interesting way of creating coping mechanisms.
He lives in a zoo, and is surrounded and influenced by animals daily. His knowledge of animals grows as he does, and he learns and sees new things year after year at the zoo. One peculiar, yet crucial thing that Pi learns while living in the zoo, is the concept of zoomorphism. Zoomorphism, “is where an animal takes a human being or another animal, to be one of its kind”(84). He explains that within the zoo that he spent his childhood, there were many cases of zoomorphism, from the strange friendly relationship between the goats and the rhinoceroses, to the even stranger friendly predator-prey relationship between a viper and a mouse. Pi then says that the only explanation for zoomorphism is that the “measure of madness moves life in strange but saving ways”(85). The rhinoceros and goats get along because the rhinoceros, “[is] in need of companionship”(85), and without the goats, the rhinoceros would become depressed and die. This explanation of zoomorphism is major foreshadowing and background on why Richard Parker and Pi can live together on the lifeboat. Like the rhinoceros, both Pi and Richard Parker would have died without the company of another being. The “madness” that is the relationship between Richard Parker and Pi, scares Pi and causes him stress. However, this stress and fear keeps Pi alive, and ultimately saves his life. Therefore, the story with the animals is true, because
Humans often see themselves as having split personalities to a degree, be it when they're angry or calm, happy or sad, or drunk and sober. They may have different views of which of these personalities are better, which may be 'evil,' but they exist in almost . In the novel The Life of Pi by Yann Martell we see Piscene Patell (Pi) has allowed for this other personality become personified as a tiger on his lifeboat, which he calls Richard Parker. This persona is one of necessity, and the main conflict of the story is Pi trying to tame this side of himself, while still surviving on the hostile environment.
Yann Martel uses language in Chapter 94 to explain Pi's thoughts, feelings, and reactions to finally being saved. The author uses diction, metaphors, similes, symbolism, and more to tell the story. This helps the reader understand Pi better as a character. On page 285, Pi reflects on his abrupt farewell to Richard Parker through detailed imagery. Pi explains how he thinks that someone one must have closure to fully let something or someone go. To me, this shows how sensitive and empathetic Pi is towards animals. The imagery helps me to feel how Pi is feeling. On page 286, Pi thanks Richard Parker for keeping him alive. Yann Martel uses parallelism and diction to help convey Pi's feelings. The use of language throughout this chapter, along
...creates the character of Richard Parker to justify his actions that he considers to be savage. He even separates parts of the boat to use as a boundary between his idea of humanity and savagery. “It was time to impose myself and carve out my territory” (Martel 202). This part of the text implies to me that Pi is making the boundary between his humanity and his actions that he sees as savage. Richard Parker’s territory in the story is the bottom of the boat and under the tarpaulin. I see Richard Parker’s territory metaphorically as Pi’s savage side. Pi’s territory in his story is on top of the tarpaulin and on the raft, which I see metaphorically as the humane side of his personality. By making this separation, Pi is addressing the issue of what is savage and what is not within himself.
The most significant level is psychological because it is very important to a person’s emotional and physical survival. In order for someone to survive, he or she must have a positive mind with faith and determination in every action they take, Despite the fact that having high hopes with slim chances of survival is not as easy as it seems. “In its general form such a requirement insists that important relations (survival, identity, psychological connectedness)”. (Brennan 225). Trying to survive, Pi has to struggle with himself mentally: he has to go against his ethics like rectitude and religion pledge. To do that easily Pi finds his animalistic part which he called in his story as Richard Parker. May be because of his religious grounds he would have never done things like killing people eating fish or cannibalizing humans as done with just imagining himself as a Bengal tiger and he admits that “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. He pushed me to go on living. I hated him for it, yet at the same time I was grateful.” (Martel, 219) This quote shows that he used this imagination to kill his loneliness boredom...
Pi Patel in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi is a young Indian boy who is put through a tremendous traumatic experience; he gets lost at sea! Not only does he lose all his family, but he is forced to survive 227 days at sea with very limited resources. This ordeal causes great psychological pressure on Pi and causes his mind to find ways to cope with all the stress. When asked to describe what happened, Pi tells two stories: one with him surviving with animals including an adult Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, and a parallel story with humans in which Pi is forced to bend morality. Pi’s story of his survival with Richard Parker is a fiction that he creates to cope with a reality that is too difficult to face.
... believe in god. "This readerly disbelief is more explicitly analogized in the initial skepticism of the two Japanese interviewers when faced with the story of Pi's survival for 227 days in a lifeboat with the tiger Richard Parker" (Cole 150). In the novel Pi addresses "Animalus Anthropomorphicus how an animal is seen through human’s eyes." it is not to be confused with human characteristics to animals.
The power of nature acts as a catalyst for Pi to rediscover his ability and his strengths. Represented by Ang Lee as a protected innocent boy growing up in Pondicherry, we see Pi struggling to survive at sea. Ang Lee uses symbols of animals to reflect the tragedy of Pi’s encounter at sea. The tiger Richard Parker can be interrupted ultimate as a symbol of Pi’s inner strength as only he and Richard Parker survive their
Having just experienced the sinking of his family’s ship, and being put onto a life boat with only a hyena, Pi felt completely lost and alone. When he sees Richard Parker, the Bengal tiger from his family’s zoo, it is a familiar face to him. His initial reaction is to save the life of his familiar friend so that he may have a companion, and a protector aboard the lifeboat. Suddenly Pi realizes just what he is doing. He is saving the life of Richard Parker, by welcoming him, a 450 pound Bengal tiger, onto the small lifeboat. He experiences a change of heart when helping the tiger onto the boat. Pi realizes that he is now posing a threat on his own life. With Richard Parker on the boat, Pi is faced with not only the fight to survive stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but the fight to survive living with a meat eating tiger. The change of heart that Pi experiences might possibly mean that he is an impulsive thinker. It may mean that he often does something on impulse without thinking it through, and then later regrets his actions.
If he didn’t feed Richard Parker, then the tiger would try to swim to the raft, and he would’ve be eaten by Richard Parker. Later on, he starts to see Richard Parker as his companion on his journey. These scenes contains images that lets the audience make a connection with Pi and other characters within the
Imagine being stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in a lifeboat, not alone but with some carnivorous animals, as company. The chances of survival do not seem so high, but when one has the will to survive, they can do anything to attain it. Pi Patel and his family are on their way to Canada from Pondicherry, India, when their cargo ship the Tsimtsum sinks. Pi is not the only survivor of the ship, along with him is a hyena, an injured zebra, an orangutan and a 450-pound orange Bengal tiger. Pi travels across the Pacific Ocean in only a lifeboat, with food dwindling quickly, he needs to find land and most of all survive the voyage. In Life of Pi; Yann Martel develops the idea that having the will to survive is a crucial key to survival; this is demonstrated through symbolism of the colour orange, having religion on the protagonist’s side and the thirst and hunger experienced by the protagonist.