Pi describes his childhood experiences about his father’s zoo in Part one of the novel. As a child, he viewed Pondicherry Zoo as a place of peace and comfort. Throughout his time on the Pondicherry Zoo, Pi received negative comments regarding the animal’s life on the zoo, such as; “I have heard nearly as much nonsense about zoos as I have about God and religion. Well-meaning but misinformed people think animals in the wild are “happy” because they are “free.”” (Martel 14). But Pi had a different view point regarding the state of the animal’s freedom at the zoo and the religious viewpoints of people. He believed that people view freedom and religion through a lens of illusions, that in reality, people were viewing freedom and religion from a wrong perspective. In the novel, people believe that animals in the zoo are not truly free. They view that animals should belong in the wild, because they are deprived of their freedom and live domesticated lives. Pi disagrees with the people’s viewpoints, he states that, “Animals in the wild lead lives of …show more content…
He uses an example of animal freedom to represent people’s religious disposition. Just as the people’s illusion of freedom, they don’t understand what it means to be free of a religious structure of belief. Pi believes that Atheists are not the arrogant one in life but agnostics are. “I’ll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. … But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.” (Martel 21). According to Pi, like an animal in the wild, an agnostic lives life like a roller-coaster, ups and downs, but a religious person doesn’t have to go through that because they have a sort of a protective enclosure of security and
Despite not agreeing with his biology teacher, Mr. Kumar’s beliefs, as he stated “There are no grounds for going beyond a scientific explanation of reality and no sound reason for believing anything but our sense experience.” (Life or Pi, p.34.), and “religion is darkness” (Life of Pi, pg.34.), Pi stated that Mr. Kumar went on to become his favorite teacher and the reason he studied zoology. Kumar was a critical person in his life that enabled Pi to see life through a different lense. He impacted Pi in a another, more abstract way. Mr. Kumar represents Pi’s logical aspect, which in the end impacts Pi in life saving way. Adding logic and reason to Pi’s spiritual wheel empowered him to solve problems that came his way on the lifeboat, and also taught him to develop a relationship with someone who thinks noticeably different than him. Pi’s view on truth and belief is consummated as Pi tells the story in the concluding portion of the novel. Each version contains a different genus of truth. As one story is supported by facts, and the other has an emotional truth that cannot be proven right nor wrong. This moment culminates Pi’s outlook on the concept of truth and the way he relates it to his spiritual aspect of his
...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.
Being overwhelmed by freedom like any animal kept in captivity it’s whole life it was a struggle to survive, being pushed to the brink changing it’s very nature, eating its own kind. When he returns he has this need to have order to apply some sort of meaning. He describes himself as “ another sort of recluse” (Birch, 337), because he shut himself off from human but he stayed in connection with birds, he “tamed a jackdaw” (Birch,336) , he surrounded the rest of his life around birds and building them cages. Birds that weren’t free, pretty birds in equally pretty cages, protecting them from the world: he wasn’t free either, “I don’t fit in the world of everyday things….. Sometimes I long for a monk’s cell” (Birch, 343). He surrounded himself in a pretty cage. In Life of Pi it isn’t the use of motifs that make an indirect metaphor comparing Pi to an animal, he tells the two stories and lets the human and animal’ characteristics overlap, Orange Juice being a mom lost her son, his mom who lost her son, the hyena a cruel, violent creature and
Martel’s novel is about the journey of a young man being forced to test his limits in order to survive the unthinkable predicament of being lost at sea alongside an adult Bengal tiger. Life of Pi starts out by introducing an anonymous author on a quest to find his next big story and goes to a man by the name of Piscine Molitor Patel who supposedly has a story worth hearing. Patel begins his story talking about his childhood and the main events that shaped him such as his family’s zoo, the constant curiosity in religion he sought as a young boy and also how he got his nickname Pi. Mr. Patel continues explaining how his father contracts a Japanese ship to transport his family, along with a number of their zoo animals, from India to Canada in order to avoid political upheaval. While traveling the ship began sinking and Pi was the only one to manage to make it onto the life boat and survive the wreck. The disaster left Pi along with a fe...
His love and understanding of zoology was the reason he survived on the life raft. Even though Pi went against his morals and ate meat, Pi saw it as necessary to survive. His will to survive and to eliminate all personal boundaries allowed him to do what ever deed needed to survive. And finally using his knowledge of animals as a means of maintaining a psychological level of sanity, which kept him motivated and sane throughout his time at sea. With the extreme circumstances that Pi lived through, and the means he used to cope with them, it is obvious that his choices were
To begin with, Pi’s success could not happen without believing in animals. Since he was grew up in a zoo, animals were a significant part in his childhood. He believed that all animals are spiritual in the beginning. However, one event changed Pi’s opinion a little bit. When Pi was only a child, his father stopped him from trying to feed Richard Parker and showed Pi tiger’s inhuman natural instinct by letting him see the entire process about the tiger killing a goat. At that moment, Pi said,“ I heard two things at that moment: Father saying “Never forget this lesson” as he looked on grimly; and the bleating of the goat.” (Matel 44). This experience certainly made Pi feel shocked and afraid. He started to question himself whether the animals were as pure as he thought. This change of attitude towards animals strongly affects the later
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.
Sharing with others such as the author will further strengthen his bond to his experience, reinforcing that this is his story to tell and continue to live out. Overcoming his past with the animal story enables Pi to restart and create his own ending. He rebuilds his life, creating a home “large and memorably crowded” as he now has a family and pets of his own, and continues to keep up with his faith. The author meets Pi’s entire family, including his son and daughter, and acknowledges that Pi has filled his life with people he is proud of and loves. After being asked about his son, he responds, “‘Yes.’
...h up their session, Pi asks them, “‘So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can’t prove the question either way, which story do you prefer?’” The factual or provable existence of God is not necessarily relevant to whether someone should believe in Him. This requirement of proof for belief is typical of the agnostic, whose sole belief is that he or she cannot believe either way because there is no proof either way. However, life is a story, and in real life, there must be a story to tell. When it comes to Life of Pi, there is hardly any difference between life and story, so how could the novel not mimic life, being the story of a life itself? A life perhaps embellished to become better, just as readers must embellish their own lives in favor of the better story.
“The presence of God is the finest of rewards.” (Yann Martel, Life of Pi 63) In Yann Martel’s riveting novel “Life of Pi” The basic plot of survival unfolds, however, this essay will show how the hidden yet the dominant theme of religion throughout the story is what helped the main character Piscine Molitor Patel (Pi) survive.
Pi, short for Piscine Molitor Patel, is a young Indian boy growing up in South India in the 1970's. His father owns a zoo and, with increasing political unrest in India, decides to sell up and emigrate to Canada. They accompany the wild animals on board the ship on their journey to the new zoos in North America.
Pi is a very religious person who had many beliefs, which causes some issues with his family. At one point, all of his religious teachers were in an argument over Pi’s beliefs, in which he replies “Bapu Gandhi said ‘all religions are true’ I just want to love God.” (Martel, 69). This furthered Pi’s bravery when he was able to stick up for himself in
Pi is a young man from India, who, like any other teenager growing up, is at something of a crossroads, trying to discover a grand purpose and meaning to life. Through his family and everyday life, Pi is exposed to four different religions during his childhood: Hinduism, Catholicism, Islam, and to an extent, Atheism. After being exposed to the three religions and his father urging him towards Atheism and rational though, Pi comes to the conclusion that he, “just wants to love God”, showing the audience that Pi derives his understanding of the world through God, and his idea of God through each religion. However, Pi’s complacent views of the world are challenged during his meeting with Richard Parker. In this scene, Pi seeks to discover Richard Parker’s soul, believing God will allow him to form a spiritual connection with the tiger. The connection begins to form, as close up shots of both Pi’s and the tiger’s eyes
In the first place, Pi spends more time telling the animal story, instead of the true account, which shows that he prefers a zebra, a tiger, a hyena, and an orangutan over the real people involved because with real people the tragic events must also be real. While telling his story to the two Japanese men investigating him once he
He chose to bond with the animals, not only to observe them. When Pi went to work with his dad, he didn’t see it as something drab and boring. He went to learn from all of the animals by observing their behavior toward each other. When people who are not around animals very often look at animals they don’t see the way they act as Pi would. In a way these animals are likes Pi’s friends, he talks to them and does not find this behavior strange. From this we learn, ‘Human beings use their linguistic resources to produce new expressions and sentences. They arrange and rearrange phonemes, morphemes, words, and phrases in a way that can express an infinite number of ideas. This is also called the open-endedness of language. Animal communication is a closed system. It cannot produce new signals to communicate novel events or experiences.’ (Owlcation p.7) In other words, although we may communicate in different ways we can still relate on the same intellectual level. For instance, if you go to the zoo and see someone speaking to the animals like they are humans, you can infer that they do not understand each other by the words, but the comprehension of body language, tonal inflection, mannerisms, etc. The person is not crazy for thinking that the animals might understand them. Their brain’s recognize this as communication, even though they do not understand the