Life Of Pi Hero's Journey Essay

According to Campbell, the “Hero’s Journey” is the stereotypical Fable of a hero. It is the basic guideline to a hero's journey you hear in tales, we are popularized with the hero and after something sparks their adventure we are taken through trials and tribulations till we are finally taken to the hero’s climax. The film Life of Pi is a great heroic story of a man telling the story of his life through his eyes, he tells us the backstory of his life from when we was a young boy in grade school and leads us into his adventure of a lifetime.

The hero’s journey begins with there “Ordinary World” which is an insight to a hero's life before there adventure unfolds. This enables the audience to connect or relate with the character while building a model of the hero in there mind. In the film “Life of Pi”, Pi’s ordinary world is when he’s asked to recount his childhood by a novelist who visits him. He accounts his experiences living in the zoo, his social life at school and his adoptions of religion. The reader can connect with Pi’s innocents as a child and with that finds common ground with the hero. Having this leading into the journey ensures we know where we started.

On the path of a hero's journey they usually come across a triggering disaster or event that has them leave their comfort zone and embark on their hero’s story.

In the film “Life of Pi” Pi’s dad comes to the conclusion to move to sell the zoo for financial issues and move to canada, the family loads a freighter with their animals to be sold in america but disaster strikes when one night a hellish storm takes the ship out, leaving Pi stranded in the vast ocean.The audience could consider Pi’s “Call to Adventure” as being the ship’s disaster leaving him stranded with nothing except soul companions in a life raft. Pi is pressured to be in a position he is not adequate with and is challenged to strive

through.
Sometimes when the hero is faced with the distress they will decline the call to action for not wanting to leave their safe zone. Whether or not the challenge seems too overwhelming to overcome or the anxiety of leaving all they know is too much, the hero has a “Refusal of the Call”. In the Film, after being stranded at sea and realizing he wasn't the only one on the lifeboat Pi resorts to making a life raft to live in neutrality with Richard Parker, living off the water and biscuit rations. He is in fear of living in the lifeboat with the bengal tiger and resorts to staying on his tiny life raft. Instead of coming to a solution for the problem, he avoids it.
There is a point in a hero's journey where they are faced with a crossroad to refuse the call to adventure or make the final step to initiate them on their journey. They get to a point where they feel mentally prepared to cross the threshold. In the film “Life of Pi” After a whale breaches at night destroying Pi’s raft and all his rations he begins to face starvation and in need of satisfying Richard’s hunger aswell, Pi goes against his morals of being a vegetarian and eats raw fish in order to survive, a milestone that almost sets him into his journey for the long haul.