Throughout the ages authors have dedicated themselves to trying to find a literary formula that will transport readers to another dimension and get them fully absorbed in the world they have created. Inside this world, through trials and triumph, sorrow and success, adversity and achievement, a story takes place. Symbols and images are carefully woven into the text to enrich the themes the author believes will enlighten his or her audience. Yann Martel makes a memorable contribution to this pool of authors in his novel Life of Pi. Martel uses highly descriptive images such as scenes on the lifeboat, cannibalistic island, and in Pi’s home paired with exceptional symbolism through the animals portrayed in the novel, the color orange, and even Pi’s own name to support themes of fear, anthropomorphism, suffering, survival, hope, and vulnerability.
Yann Martel uses a hyena as a symbol of evil and violence to support themes of fear and survival. The hyena is described by Pi as “Ugly beyond redemption” (145), and has a personality that parallels its looks. A hyena is just as likely to eat its own kind as it is another animal when hunger sets in: “Hyenas attack in packs whatever animal can be run down” (145). With this knowledge about hyenas, Pi’s fear for his own survival grows (147). Martel describes hyenas to be brutal, unthinking, and purely animalistic, not lending it any human qualities that he shows on behalf of other animals in the text, effectively showing that this is an animal to be afraid of. While both Pi and the zebra are fearing for their lives, the hyena does whatever it needs to for survival, bringing forth these two essential themes in Life of Pi.
Reversely, Yann Martel uses a zebra to illustrate beauty, vulner...
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...ful in using a plethora of symbols and images to support main themes in his novel Life of Pi. By using animals, places, colour and name choice to not only act as symbols in the novel, but also to make colourful pictures of the themes, Martel is able to effectively convey the themes of fear, anthropomorphism, suffering, survival, hope and vulnerability. Martel is able to weave symbols together to create powerful images such as the scene on the lifeboat with the hyena eating the zebra, the symbols that the colour orange evoke, the scene on the cannibalistic island, and Pi’s own name. Yann Martel proves to be an astounding author and story-teller.
Works Cited
Martel, Yann. Life of Pi. Canada: Random House of Canada,
2001
Dickinson, Emily. “After Great Pain A Formal Feeling Comes.” Unknown. 1890
Hopkins, Gerard. “God’s Grandeur.” Unknown. 1877
Pi Patel in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi is a young Indian boy who is put through a tremendous traumatic experience; he gets lost at sea! Not only does he lose all his family, but he is forced to survive 227 days at sea with very limited resources. This ordeal causes great psychological pressure on Pi and causes his mind to find ways to cope with all the stress. When asked to describe what happened, Pi tells two stories: one with him surviving with animals including an adult Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, and a parallel story with humans in which Pi is forced to bend morality. Pi’s story of his survival with Richard Parker is a fiction that he creates to cope with a reality that is too difficult to face.
Martel introduces multiple implicit symbols throughout his novel that, though are able to be interpreted in multiple ways depending on one’s perspective, highlight the importance of religion. When confronted with the ferocity of tiger aboard his lifeboat, Pi must flee to his raft handcrafted with remnants of life jackets and oars gathered from the boat. This raft may be symbolically interpreted as a representation of his faith throughout his journey. After a dauntless attempt at training Richard Parker in order to “carve out” his territory, Pi is knocked off the lifeboat into shark infested waters with a great blow: “I swam for the raft in frantic strokes... I reached the raft, let out all the rope and sat with my arms wrapped around my knees and my head down, trying to put out the fire of fear that was blazing within me. I stayed on the raft for the rest of the day and the whole night” (Martel 228). Like the raft, Pi’s faith, constructed of portions of three separate religions, trails diligently behind his survival needs and instincts –symbolized by Richard Parker and the...
Yann Martel’s “Life of Pi” shows all three of the main elements of a hero’s journey: the departure, initiation and the return, helping the story to greatly resemble Joseph Campbell’s structure of a hero’s journey. Through the trials Pi has to face, he proves himself to be a true hero. He proves himself, not just while trapped on the lifeboat with Richard Parker, but also before the sinking of the Tsimtsum. His achievement to fulfill the heroic characteristics of Campbell’s model are evident as he goes though the three stages.
The novel Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, and the short story “Miss Brill”, by Katherine Mansfield, appear to contain the same internal ideas. The strongest similarity between the stories are the characters. But that is also the strongest difference. PI and Miss Brill suffer from loneliness, misunderstood simple mindedness, and having to deal with others putting them down.
With the lifeboat symbolising faith and Richard Parker as Pi’s primal instinct, Martel depicts Pi’s prolonged fight for survival as assuming the behaviour of a tiger allows him to endure the voyage. By foreshadowing Pi’s tense relationship with a tiger and the tragic sinking of the ship, the audience speculates that Pi will persevere, despite his unfortunate circumstances. Lastly, the recurring motif of food, water and territory requires both castaways to respect and depend on each other for their survival. Through the literary techniques of symbolism, foreshadowing and motifs, Martel enables the audience to explore the central theme of survival as they too experience being a castaway in the Pacific Ocean through Pi’s life
“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.
middle of paper ... ... The orangutan is seen looking out over the water for her two sons who had obviously drowned can be seen as a Thanatos when Pi begins to get depressed about losing hope for his own survival. Thanatos is also displayed when the orangutan becomes aggressive while the hyena is 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.
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.”
“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions” (Carl Jung). The archetype of the shadow self is the darker, animalistic self that a person represses and is forced into the unconscious by the ego. In Life of Pi by Yann Martel, the protagonist, Piscine Molitor is stranded in the middle of the Pacific with a Bengal tiger. It is on this journey that Pi encounters his shadow self. Unfortunately, in an effort to survive, Pi goes against most of his beliefs; and resorts a level of savagery by giving in to his shadow self, Richard Parker. Thence, Pi’s plight is quite challenging for his fruitarian, gentle, kind hearted persona; therefore, Pi would not have survived if he repudiated his shadow self, projected as Richard Parker.
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.
Thesis 2: Imagination allowed Pi to survive by keeping him sane, protecting him and lastly to acquire the traits of telling a beautiful story.
Yann Martel uses language in Chapter 94 to explain Pi's thoughts, feelings, and reactions to finally being saved. The author uses diction, metaphors, similes, symbolism, and more to tell the story. This helps the reader understand Pi better as a character. On page 285, Pi reflects on his abrupt farewell to Richard Parker through detailed imagery. Pi explains how he thinks that someone one must have closure to fully let something or someone go. To me, this shows how sensitive and empathetic Pi is towards animals. The imagery helps me to feel how Pi is feeling. On page 286, Pi thanks Richard Parker for keeping him alive. Yann Martel uses parallelism and diction to help convey Pi's feelings. The use of language throughout this chapter, along
In drastic situations, human psychology uses coping mechanisms to help them through it. In the novel, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Pi’s coping mechanism is his religions and his projection of Richard Parker. Martel’s Life of Pi shows how the projection of Richard Parker played a greater role in keeping Pi alive in comparison to his beliefs in his religions. During the period in which Pi was stranded on the lifeboat, Richard Parker kept Pi aware, helped Pi make the right decisions, and was Pi’s sub-consciousness.
Imagine being stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in a lifeboat, not alone but with some carnivorous animals, as company. The chances of survival do not seem so high, but when one has the will to survive, they can do anything to attain it. Pi Patel and his family are on their way to Canada from Pondicherry, India, when their cargo ship the Tsimtsum sinks. Pi is not the only survivor of the ship, along with him is a hyena, an injured zebra, an orangutan and a 450-pound orange Bengal tiger. Pi travels across the Pacific Ocean in only a lifeboat, with food dwindling quickly, he needs to find land and most of all survive the voyage. In Life of Pi; Yann Martel develops the idea that having the will to survive is a crucial key to survival; this is demonstrated through symbolism of the colour orange, having religion on the protagonist’s side and the thirst and hunger experienced by the protagonist.
People don't truly accept life for what it is until they've actually tasted adversity and went through those misfortunes and suffering. We are put through many hardships in life, and we learn to understand and deal with those issues along the way. We find that life isn't just about finding one's self, but about creating and learning from our experiences and background. Adversity shapes what we are and who we become as individuals. Yann Martel's Life of Pi shows us that adverse situations help shape a person's identity and play a significant role in one's lief by determining one's capabilities and potential, shaping one's beliefs and values, and defining the importance and meaning of one's self.