Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Pi, an irrational number, has never really been used to represent irrationality in a symbolistic manner in literature until it was cleverly paired with quite an irrational story in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi. The book, published in 2012, takes place in India, Mexico, Canada, and in the Pacific, and is an astounding work of metaphors, hardship, and philosophical ideas about life and its irrationality. Perhaps pulling from his background of extensive travel and Philosophy degree, Martel creates an intricate and multilayered story that pushes readers to keep reading through all 319 pages despite a tying plot. Although the book is technically a work of fiction, Martel, clearly influenced by the realism genre of writing,
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fabricates a story, which tricks the reader into believing the book is based on a true story. Yann Martel, strongly emphasizes this point and the importance of belief throughout the story. Multiple times Martel tries to stretch the reader’s sympathy for the main character, and their belief of the story. Martel creates a story of multiple levels, symbolism, survival, character development, tremendous highs and subterranean lows. Yann Martel begins his story with an author’s note, which appears to be one-hundred percent real, by incorporating elements of his own life, such as his travel to India, and begins to trick the reader into believing the reality of the story.
The author's note takes the reader into the story, which begins with the author meeting the main character in search of the story which the author heard about in India. Although very confusing at this point it is essential to read the beginning of the story in order to understand the remainder and the many layers of Allegorical the story. The author meets with the main character, whom is unknown at this point and describes the various elements of his house in Toronto, Canada, and the unknown character’s family and appearance. Martel than confuses the reader even more by beginning the story which will make up the majority of the chapters and plot. At this point, the main character is introduced. His name is Piscine Monitor Patel the son of an Indian zookeeper, named after a French swimming pool, and his is a young boy of Indian ethnicity, living in Pondicherry, India. He lives a life of a typical school boy, fighting with his brother, learning from his parents, and growing to understand the world and its challenges. Pi though, becomes deeply rooted in religion and faith and becomes a participant of Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism. Throughout the story, the reader learns how Piscine, later to get the nickname Pi, develops into a man …show more content…
and a person of great wisdom. Through a complex chain of events, Pi’s relatively normal life gets thrown into a maelstrom of events, which lead an angry Pi and family on a boat to Canada filled with all of the animals from the zoo in Pondicherry. After a few days at sea, the boat shipwrecks leaving his as its only survivor, on a life boat with four irrational kinds of company, a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and a 400-pound adult Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. The story then tells of Pi’s struggles, stresses, and growths through the hardships of survival on the open sea. Just a sixteen-year-old boy, Pi is tasked with getting food, learning how to cope with his losses, and the fear of death, not to mention his awkward company. The story highlights the conflicts between science and religion, man and animal, man and environment, freedom and confinement, and ultimately fact and fiction. Yann Martel constantly places Pi in situations that might cause the reader to question the possibility of his scenario, highlighting the battle between fact and fiction, all the way until an amazing ending which completely alters the reader’s whole view of the story. The last five or so pages drive the reader to insanity with the questions Yann Martel leaves the reader to answer. In Life of Pi, Yann Martel has created a masterpiece of a story which embodies the emotional equivalent of the undulating motion of a roller-coaster.
My strongest criticism of the work is the painfully slow and monumentally confusing beginning to the story. In my opinion, the layers of the story make the story simply too confusing following the “Author’s Note” and it took me a lot of willpower to make my way through the first fifteen or so chapters. However, I could not have been more satisfied to have worked through the introduction pages, as the remainder of the book is artfully crafted. The plot continues to climb to the top of the metaphorical roller-coaster with characters which are so alive and real that the reader cannot help but feel sympathetic and connected to them. The plot flows smoothly through the chapters post-author interruptions, and it guides the reader through Martel’s amazingly accurate descriptions of the Pacific, India, and Pi’s situation. Martel paints an extremely vivid image in the readers head using descriptions clearly drawn from his personal travel experience. Now at the top of the “roller-coaster,” Martel has the reader wait patiently throughout the majority of the book, giving the reader time to ponder what Pi has gone through and what really matters in life. Through this “waiting” the reader watches Pi grow as a character into a man and a survivor, which is typical of the literal journey motif. However, reading the story symbolically, the
reader can sense a battle of science and religion, fact and fiction, and life and death. Through irrational chance occurrences and in Pi he is able to cheat death, beat fact, and tame the animal. Martel, though is not done with Pi’s survival however, the ending of the story is the majority of the “roller-coaster” which rushes up steep hills and achieves astounding speed on the way back down throughout the last ten or so chapters, continuing until Martel’s roller-coaster flies off the rails into a black hole of deep thinking.
The demand to survive in an extreme environment encourages certain individuals to proceed to live their life despite the hardships they may face. In the novels, Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, and Life of Pi by Yann Martel, the individuals must discover what it takes to obtain the will to survive in these extreme environments they are presented with. Thus, resulting in comparisons between their mental states (internal challenges), and contrasts between their physical states (external challenges) by Louie Zamperini and Piscine Molitor Patel (Pi).
In 1729, Jonathan Swift published a pamphlet called “A Modest Proposal”. It is a satirical piece that described a radical and humorous proposal to a very serious problem. The problem Swift was attacking was the poverty and state of destitution that Ireland was in at the time. Swift wanted to bring attention to the seriousness of the problem and does so by satirically proposing to eat the babies of poor families in order to rid Ireland of poverty. Clearly, this proposal is not to be taken seriously, but merely to prompt others to work to better the state of the nation. Swift hoped to reach not only the people of Ireland who he was calling to action, but the British, who were oppressing the poor. He writes with contempt for those who are oppressing the Irish and also dissatisfaction with the people in Ireland themselves to be oppressed.
Throughout the novel, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, the notion of how the concepts of idealism and truth mold an individual’s life are vividly displayed. This is emblematized as Pi questions the idea of truth and the affects it has on different aspect of life, as well as his idealistic values being transformed due to the contrast between taking action and sheer belief. The messages generated will alter the way the reader thinks, as well as reshaping their overall perception of truth.
A rhetoric analysis can be defined as the breakdown of components used to make a persuasive argument or judgment on a particular subject or topic. The ability to make a conclusion or decision on a given thought or idea in a moment of seconds is a result of rhetorical analysis. “Because media rhetoric surrounds us, it is important to understand how rhetoric works. If we refuse to stop and think about how and why it persuades us, we can become mindless consumers who buy into arguments about what makes us value ourselves and what makes us happy”. In Carroll’s essay “Backpacks Vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis”, she discusses the nature of rhetorical analysis, how it affects our everyday lives and explains the role context plays.
A quick glance at Life of Pi and a reader may take away the idea that it is an easy read and a novel full of imagination, but take a Freudian view of the work and it transforms into a representation of the human psyche. Martel’s novel takes the reader on a journey with Pi as he struggles for his own survival. Pi experiences a breakdown of each component that makes up one's personality, according to Freud throughout the novel. One by one, ego and super ego both express a huge factor in Pi’s choices and emotions throughout his story. Readers are also introduced to an alternate ending to choose from.
Director Steven Spielberg and auther Markus Zusak, in their intriguing production, movie Saving Private Ryan and book The Book Thief, both taking place during World War II. However , in Saving Private Ryan Spielberg focus on a lot of complications that occur during war , but guilt was one difficulty that stood out to me. Zusak, on the other hand , showas that having courage during war can be a advantage and also an disadvantage depending on the situation. Both director and author grabed the audience attention with emotional and logical appeal.
On its surface, Martel’s Life of Pi proceeds as a far-fetched yet not completely unbelievable tale about a young Indian boy named Pi who survives after two hundred twenty-seven days on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. It is an uplifting and entertaining story, with a few themes about companionship and survival sprinkled throughout. The ending, however, reveals a second story – a more realistic and dark account replacing the animals from the beginning with crude human counterparts. Suddenly, Life of Pi becomes more than an inspiring tale and transforms into a point to be made about rationality, faith, and how storytelling correlates the two. The point of the book is not for the reader to decide which story he or she thinks is true, but rather what story he or she thinks is the better story. In real life, this applies in a very similar way to common belief systems and religion. Whether or not God is real or a religion is true is not exactly the point, but rather whether someone chooses to believe so because it adds meaning and fulfillment to his or her life. Life of Pi is relevant to life in its demonstration of storytelling as a means of experiencing life through “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.
As the reader examines the novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel, the reader recognizes the similarities between the story of the animals and the factual story. The main character Piscine Molitor Patel, known as Pi, goes through many struggles once he is stuck on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean which are shown between both of his stories. Throughout the novel, Martel describes to the readers the relationships the Pi has between the animals in the story of animals and the real people in the factual story. In Life of Pi, Pi meets many different animals on his journey on the lifeboat that influence him in many ways, including the zebra, which represents the Taiwanese sailor; the hyena, which represents the chef; Orange Juice, the orangutan, which represents Pi’s mother; and the Royal Bengal tiger, Richard Parker, which represents Pi himself.
The Life of Pi, written by Yann Martel, is the story of a young man, Piscine, or Pi for short, who experiences unbelievable and unrealistic events, which are so unrealistic ambiguity is aroused amongst the reader. Duality reoccurs over the course of the novel through every aspect of Pi’s world view and is particularly seen in the two contradictory stories, which displays the brutal nature of the world. Martel wonderfully crafts and image of duality and skepticism though each story incorporated in this novel.
The novel, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, talks about a sixteen-year old man named Pi Patel, who unbelievably survives a dreadful shipwreck after 227 days with the animals in a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean. Different ideas and themes in the book can be found in which the readers can gain an understanding about. The author communicated to the reader by using an ample amount of symbolisms to talk about the themes. The main themes of this novel are religion and faith. His religion and him being faithful have helped him throughout the journey, and this eventually led to an incredible precedent.
Yann Martel said, “If you stumble over mere believability, what are you living for? Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?” The main conflict of “Life of Pi” is how Piscine holds on to his intense belief in people and religion. Within the novel, Pi creates two accounts of the ordeal on the lifeboat. One of the largest decisions of the story is deciding which events actually transpired. I believe that the true story is the one with the humans because emotions affected Pi and his honest belief that people are good and that there is a lot of evil in the human world.
Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, is a fictional novel written in 2001 that explores the primacy of survival by employing symbolism, foreshadowing and motifs. This story follows the life of the protagonist, Piscine Molitor “Pi” Patel, as he embarks on his journey as a castaway. After boarding the Tsimtsum which carries Pi and his family along with a menagerie of animals, an abysmal storm capsizes the ship leaving Pi as the only survivor, though he is not alone. The great Bengal tiger, Richard Parker, also survives the shipwreck and during the 227 days that Pi and Richard Parker are stranded at sea together, the two must learn to coexist and trust one another for survival. Through Pi and Richard Parker’s struggles to remain alive, Martel explores the primal idea of survival by employing literary techniques.
First, the mathematical value of pi is an irrational number, similar to Pi’s journey because it was illogical. For example, the island that Pi arrived on was full of algae and deemed unusual. The island had a lot of fresh water ponds with dead, saltwater fish floating at night. However,
Bengali polymath, Rabindranath Tagore, once said “you can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.” In the novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel, the protagonist, Pi, faces many challenges at sea while being accompanied by a tiger by the name of Richard Parker. This tiger, though a nuisance, proves to be essential in the role of Pi’s survival. Throughout the story, Richard Parker symbolizes survival, a reflection of Pi, and a being of God.