The Importance of Survival

Survival is the on going, persistent fight for one’s life. As humans, it’s our natural-born instinct to survive no matter how hard or unusual the circumstance. Life of Pi teaches us that it is never easy to survive, along with some of the essentials that we need in our everyday life. Pi’s 227 days at sea is a prime example of how incredibly difficult and extensive a given situation could be. There are many themes in this novel that one could elaborate on, but I personally took Pi’s means of survival to be the most important lesson to fully grasp. The need for survival almost always outplays morality, even for a character like Pi, who is deeply principled and religious. When Pi tells the second version of his story to the Japanese men, this theme is highlighted even more clearly, because he matches his survival instincts in the second story to Richard Parker in the first one.

When Pi is out at sea, he struggles internally with his own psychological battles. First, the young boy is dealing with grief, loss, and loneliness after the traumatizing boat accident from the terrible storm. He lost his family and everything else. Then he is left conflicted because his father taught him throughout his childhood the danger of their tiger, but how could he leave his only companion left to die? Its clear that the boys mourning and conflicts don’t get in the way of his own survival because he still manages to keep himself alive.

Pi was torn between zoology and religion his entire life, mostly because the two contradicted each other. Between his love for growing up in the zoo, tending to his fathers animals, and the influence of Mr. Kumar, its safe to say that zoology was Pi’s passion. His father on the other hand wanted his son’s main foc...

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...d Richard Parker, and the other where his family members are the other animals and he is the tiger. We see the two’s resemblance in their inner strength and fight for survival.

Pi’s will to survive rescued him from complete and utter physical and mental deterioration at the mercy of the Ocean and a tiger named Richard Parker. A combination of the young boy’s psychological struggles and limited means of survival made for an intriguing tale about staying alive. Many themes and lessons can be taken from this novel, such as companionship, the importance of storytelling, the nature of religious beliefs, and hunger, but the will to live trumps all. The will to live can even trump one’s morality as we see in the Life of Pi. Despite the Japanese men doubting Pi’s harsh journey, he is still able to tell his amazing story of survival that can teach us all a thing or two.