Comparing Yann Martel’s Life of Pi and The Snows Of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway

560 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The theme of death in literature

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. In both of the writings the authors use the idea of death coming to the protagonists in a form of an animal. In the story Life Of Pi the author brings the sense of fear in a tiger form and that is what Pi is scared off. As in the other story Harry is scared of the vultures and hyena. When Pi first finds the tiger he is happy that he found a survivor, but then he realizes that he can get killed really easily. “He was fierce, 450-pound carnivore. Each of his claws was as sharp as a knife.” (Pg. 108) The first time Harry feel...

Show More
Related

  • Use of Literary Devices in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi

    556 Words  | 2 Pages

    Stranded for 227 days at sea in a lifeboat, with no one else except an adult Bengal tiger. This is exactly what the main character Pi, in "The Life of Pi" went through. "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel is a story about a boy named Piscine Molitor Patel, an Indian boy who survives more than seven months floating on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean, with no one else but a 450-pound tiger (Cooper). Yann Martel was born on June 25, 1963, in Salamanca, Spain. His parents, Emile Martel and Nicole Perron, were both born in Canada. He spent his childhood in several different countries, including France, Mexico, the United States, Canada, and Costa Rica. As an adult, he lived in many other places but one of them was India, which may be where he got inspiration for writing “Life of Pi”. Yann Martel uses the literary elements similes and foreshadowing, to express the theme that believing in religion can give you the faith to want to survive.

    Read More

  • Comparative Essay of The Kite Runner & Of Mice And Men

    1120 Words  | 3 Pages

    The influential British writer, Hugh Kingsmill, once stated, “Society is based on the assumption that everyone is alike and no one is alive” In his novel, The Kite Runner, Hosseini depicts a unique friendship between two boys in a quickly disappearing Afghanistan. Hosseini creates Amir, an ambitious yet selfish character in order to elaborate on the negative effects society has on an individual. After he betrays his friend Hassan, Amir is conflicted and spends the rest of his life attempting to gain redemption by saving Hassan’s son. Similarly, in Of Mice And Men, Steinbeck uses two lowly ranch workers, George and Lennie, to depict a life impacted by the other men and their surroundings. Their valuable friendship is eventually thrown away due to the pressure of society when George is forced to take Lennie’s life. Although in both The Kite Runner and Of Mice And Men, Khaled Hosseini and John Steinbeck demonstrate society’s overbearing power over the individual, Hosseini and Steinbeck use different motifs and settings to convey their ideas regarding society.

    Read More

  • The Journeys of Survival in Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist and Yann Martel's Life of Pi

    1468 Words  | 3 Pages

    In his first voyage in 1492, when Christopher Columbus set out to search for India, he ended up landing in America on a small island in the Caribbean Sea instead of Asia. He then made several other voyages to the New World in search for riches, thinking that he was exploring an already explored land. He had discovered America, which was the greatest riches of them all. This shows that when one sets out on a mission, they face different challenges on the journey but in the end, they can accomplish more than their aim. The novel The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, and the novel Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, both describe two journeys where the characters learn about life, survival, and patience. First, they understand themselves better, followed by learning to communicate with nature. Then they learn to face their fears, and lastly, understand religion better. The former is about a young shepherd named Santiago, who has a recurring dream of a treasure in Egypt, for which he makes a journey to achieve his personal legend with the help of a man who claims to be a king. The latter is about a boy named Pi, who is on a ship to Canada from India, which sinks and he has to learn to survive on a lifeboat with a tiger. Santiago and Pi both discover new ways to understand the meaning of life on their journey: they realize their strengths and weaknesses, they communicate with other living things, they tackle their agitation with logic, and their faith in God strengthens.

    Read More

  • Coping With Adversity In Yann Martel's 'Life Of Pi'

    1145 Words  | 3 Pages

    Hello everyone! I am Muhes Ariyaratnam and this is speech on coping with adversity. Everyone faces adversities big or small. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and Steve Jobs was kicked out of his own company. They went on to have very successful careers in their respective fields. Two of the greatest humans faced adversity. Similarly the book Life of Pi by Yann Martel and the play King Lear by William Shakespeare contain the same theme of coping with adversity. In both texts characters cope with loss of loved ones, poor mentality, and nature.

    Read More

  • The Snows of Kilimanjaro and The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber

    2427 Words  | 5 Pages

    Ernest Hemingway was an intricate and dedicated writer who devoted a significant portion of his life to writing multiple genres of stories. Throughout his stories, the similarities in his style and technique are easily noted and identified. Two of the short stories he wrote contain themes and motifs that specifically explain the plotline. The first story, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” sets its scene in the depths of a desolate area in Africa, where the main characters, Harry and his wife, decide to make their home. After living there for a few years, Harry ventures out and falls into a thorn bush, thus infecting his leg with gangrene. A few weeks later, he finds himself on the brink between life and death, unable to treat such a severe infection. Throughout the whole story, his life is flashing before his eyes as he recalls all of the major events that occurred in his past. By nightfall, Harry is acting unusual, and he begins to feel as if life is not worth living anymore. After he drifts off to sleep that evening, his wife goes to check on him and discovers that her husband has passed away (Hemingway 52-77). The second great work of Hemingway, “The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” is also set in a deserted section of Africa. Francis and his wife, Margot, are on a safari adventure along with their tour guide named Wilson. The way these three characters interact with each other creates tension and provides an adequate plot for the story. The trip begins with the couple intending on hunting big game. At first they track down a lion that continuously roars throughout the night, and later decide to chase after buffalos. To add to the complications of the trip, Margot has an intimate relationship with their tour guide. The story c...

    Read More

  • A Freudian Examination of Yann Martel’s Life of Pi

    1764 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...eating the zebra alive in Chapter 45. Another example of Thanatos is shown when the hyena bites a hole into the zebra and Pi feels a sense of hatred towards the hyena for hurting the zebra and he even considers attacking it. An id and ego split is also shown between Pi and Richard Parker by showing Richard Parker to be 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.

    Read More

  • Choices In Yann Martel's The Life Of Pi

    1704 Words  | 4 Pages

    Choices play a prominent role in ensuring comfort and happiness in life. People make choices, which ultimately shape their lives. In Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi, the main character, Pi Patel is forced to make choices, which go against his morals, but ultimately keep him alive. This becomes clear when Pi chooses to change his person by eating meat. Pi then chooses to eliminate all personal boundaries, due to his incredible will to survive. Finally, he chooses to view all of the people on the life boat as animals in order to cope with the psychological distress of being lost at sea. When faced with choices, Pi puts all morals behind him to survive.

    Read More

  • Yann Martel’s Life of Pi

    852 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Belief And Perseverance In Yann Martel's Life Of Pi

    787 Words  | 2 Pages

    With four wild zoo animals, a teenage boy, and a lifeboat drifting on the Pacific Ocean, what could possibly go wrong? Yann Martel’s fictitious book, “Life of Pi,” tells the story of a boy named Pi escaping a sinking cargo ship by climbing into a lifeboat. Unfortunately, Pi was not the only passenger aboard. For the several months he has to learn how to live among animals and survive while floating aimlessly across the ocean. Pi’s struggles throughout the book highlight the importance of belief and perseverance.

    Read More

  • An Analysis of The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway

    1684 Words  | 4 Pages

    "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is a proof of Hemingway's artistic talent in which the author, by portraying the story of a writer's life self-examination, reveals his own struggles in life, and makes the reading well perceived by the use of symbolism. The reader learns about Harry's attitudes toward death, war, artistic creation, and women, which are concepts of what Hemingway writes about.

    Read More

  • The Snows Of Kilimanjaro Short Story Analysis

    1045 Words  | 3 Pages

    “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”, is a well-known short story written by the famous Ernest Hemingway himself. This short story was first published in Esquire magazine in 1936 and it was republished in The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories in 1938. Hemingway includes many elements of literature that are very important throughout his short story. Flashback, foreshadowing, symbolism, and imagery are all elements that are used throughout “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”. All of these elements support a very important part of the story, which is the theme. In “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”, the theme includes regret, conflict, and death.

    Read More

  • Yann Martel's Life Of Pi

    532 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Life of Pi by Yann Martel, the main character, Pi Patel, demonstrates a variety of his traits throughout his journey across the Pacific Ocean in a lifeboat with a tiger. Pi shows his courage against the situation that he is facing and changes his relationship with the Richard Parker. This is symbolized by an image of a fist punching through a wall, tied with a tiger. In chapter 37, the ship sinks; Pi sees Richard Parker drowning, instead being concern about his safety, he tries to safe it. After the realization of what he is doing, he keeps distances between him and the tiger. Days pass, he decides to train RP with his whistle, “I had an effect on Richard Parker. At the very first blow of the whistle he cringed and snarled” (208). Pi breaks

    Read More

  • Life of Pi

    359 Words  | 1 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Adversity in Yann Martel's Life of Pi

    1107 Words  | 3 Pages

    People don't truly accept life for what it is until they've actually tasted adversity and went through those misfortunes and suffering. We are put through many hardships in life, and we learn to understand and deal with those issues along the way. We find that life isn't just about finding one's self, but about creating and learning from our experiences and background. Adversity shapes what we are and who we become as individuals. Yann Martel's Life of Pi shows us that adverse situations help shape a person's identity and play a significant role in one's lief by determining one's capabilities and potential, shaping one's beliefs and values, and defining the importance and meaning of one's self.

    Read More

  • Symbolism and Survival in Life of Pi, Yann Martel

    940 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

More about Comparing Yann Martel’s Life of Pi and The Snows Of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway

Open Document