Life Of Pi Rhetorical Analysis

There are many ways that as humans we try to understand and make sense of the world around us. One of the ways we simplify our reality is using metaphors, they allow us to turn unfamiliar and complex concepts into explicit terms. In the Life of Pi the author, Yann Martel, uses metaphors to familiarize distant concepts with the reader. He allows the reader to understand and relate to incomprehensible events. After a cargo ship sinks in the middle of the Pacific ocean, a single lifeboat is all that remains. The lifeboat consists of a zebra, an orangutan, hyena, a royal bengal tiger, and a sixteen year old boy, Piscine Patel. The events that follow are unbelievable and physically, spiritually, and mentally challenge and change each survivor.

Throughout the book, Martel effectively uses Pi going blind, the algae island, and the incomprehensible nature of the number Pi, as metaphors to further demonstrate the changes and struggle went through on his journey.

The irrational number that is Pi, is one that the human brain fails to understand, we have to use a symbol to help comprehend its nature but still fail to grasp the concept, Pi using the number as a nickname was a metaphor for the way Pi needed to use the better story to understand and cope with the scarring events that took place in the other story. Both of Pi’s stories are unimaginable, as average people we can attempt to relate to his the scenarios he was put in at sea, but never fully grasp what happened. After going through it himself, Pi used, “the better story” to shelter himself mentally from what happened. Assuming the other story is the real story he used the figment of his imagination that was Richard Parker to keep himself alive, Pi stated that his survival, “Was thanks to Richard Parker. He kept me from thinking too much about my family and my tragic circumstances,” Pi found comfort and motivation in Richard Parker. Pi found the same comfort in the number pi that he found in the better story. This number that became his nickname saved him from taunting of other kids, “in that elusive, irrational number with which scientists try to understand the universe, I found refuge.” (Martel, 27) Both examples were ways that Pi ways able to cope with what life had given to him, and also an example of how Martel effectively used a metaphor to show how Pi mentally evolved on the boat.

All his life Pi had been a devoted vegetarian however, on the boat he was forced to become a carnivorous savage,to reiterate this idea Martel used the peaceful by day and carnivorous by night algae island as a metaphor.

At the beginning of the book Pi had the luxury of being in control of what he eats, this choice quickly dissolved when he was on the boat as he was forced to eat meat. Morally at the beginning Pi found killing a fish a nearly impossible deed, demonstrated when he stated, “A life time of peaceful vegetarianism stood between me and the willful beheading of a fish,” slowly after the beheading he sacrificed his beliefs and adapted to the situation he was in, resulting in him becoming a carnivour. Martel demonstrated Pi’s drastic dietary change by reflecting it onto the algae island. Vegetarianism and carnivorism can be considered polar opposites, day and night, black and white. When Pi had a choice of what he ate there was “light” in his life, but darkness came after the ship sank, shown when referring to his first night he stated, ”Darkness came. There was no moon. Clouds hid the stars.” and that choice evaporated, the same idea was echoed in the island, when there was light (day) the island was a peaceful safe but when darkness came it became a fiery hell. Martel appropriately used the island as a metaphor for the black and white contrast between Pi’s change in

diet.

Pi was a man with strong faith and morals, despite this, understandably as he was put through increasingly more problematic conditions he lost sight of his morals, his blindness and brutal murder of the cook were used to explicitly exhibit his disregard to his beliefs. In the other story Pi abandoned all of his beliefs and everything he stood for and believed in when he killed the cook. Pi represented peace and expressed a great amount of respect to every living thing,

n the better story when Pi first met the frenchman he assumed he was going crazy before he accepted he was talking to another person, established when Pi stated “I wasn't hearing voices. I hadn't gone mad. It was Richard Parker who was speaking to me,” this displayed Pi’s blindness to his life.