Skepticism of fiction and acceptance of fact, the two most common responses to Pi’s story, are important in determining if fiction can be applied to a factual world to convey its truth. After Pi’s 227-day journey, he is interviewed by Japanese officials about his survival. The malnourished teenager tells two survival stories to the questioning men. The first is the bulk of the novel’s text, and it is about Pi’s Pacific journey with Richard Parker and the other animals. The fantastical, magical nature and unlikely coincidences that occur in this version of Pi’s story make it difficult for the Japanese men interviewing Pi to believe his story. From their perspective, the story with the animals does not align with reason which cannot be truthful and present …show more content…
Patel, we don’t believe your story” (292). Understandingly, Pi tells the men a second, reasonable story, allegorically substituting the animals for people: a cook (the hyena), his mom (the orangutan), and a sailor (the zebra). The second story is cold and brutal, and it involves many deaths (including Pi’s mother) and the cannibalism of a French cook. The catastrophe of the second story is that it is not difficult to believe, but the brutality of the second story encourages the Japanese men to conclude that the story with the animals is “the better story” (Martel 317). Pi’s survival at sea with a Bengal tiger, encounter with a random blind cannibal in the vast ocean, and finding of a carnivorous island make it safe to assume that Pi’s animal story is in fact false. Pi’s reason for telling such a far-fetched story is to convey his truth. In both stories, Pi survives on the sea, eats human flesh, and suffers. The fictional story does not lack any details when compared to the factual one. The one thing that the factual story lacks is the animals. The animals are a personification of the survivors of the shipwreck, and in a broad perspective it is the truth of Pi’s story of
Storytelling is a way of expressing one’s imagination through fanciful adventures and serve a variety of purposes. One important reason is to capture a special moment and endure it but mostly because it unites us and of course entertains us. In Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, and Tim Burton’s The Big Fish, storytelling is seen as more important than the truth. Throughout the novel Life of Pi, and the film The Big Fish, it can be argued that the truth is intertwined with the lies in each story to form a new kind of truth. An example of this would be when Pi retells his story to the two Japanese men in a way in which he makes the animals human and introduces a different version of the truth. Both the film and movie also share a unique way of story telling because what they both share is a common moral “quest” which involves the main character, who is usually the hero, must overcome challenges in order to achieve a goal or reward at the end.
In the book, “Life of Pi”, the main character, Piscine, also known as Pi, goes through a harsh trial filled with impatience, fear, and only a speck of hope. He goes through the hero’s journey in which he learns how to live on the edge and makes up for everything that overwhelms his experience with the lifeboat. In his happenings of the surviving with the tiger, all of the horrible occurrences in the ocean and the island, and last of all the evil way his lifeboat partners died or were killed, Pi followed through with the hero’s journey. The hero’s journey is a pattern of narrative identified by the American scholar Joseph Campbell that appears in drama, storytelling, myth, religious ritual, and psychological development. This helps us readers to analytically understand the book
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.
Pi starts a story without animals in which a French Cook, a sailor with a broken leg and his mother are with him on the lifeboat. The cook cuts off the sailor’s leg and eats him, scaring Pi. Later Pi’s mother and the cook have an argument which leads the cook to kills Pi’s mother, throwing her head to Pi. After, Pi kills the cook. Mr. Okamoto notices the similarities in the stories the two men don’t know what to believe. They continue to question for details about the actual sinking of the ship. Pi requests that they choose which story they like best. The two men enjoy the first story, to which causes Pi to begin to cry.
Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, an award winning novel offers not only one but two stories within its pages. Yann Martel emphasize the truth and reality is often far more complex than we perceive. Readers cannot deny the similarities of both stories, and perhaps understanding Pi’s experience lie somewhere between the two versions.
The son of a zookeeper, Pi Patel has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior and a fervent love of stories. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes. The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with Richard Parker for 227 days while lost at sea. When they finally reach the coast of Mexico, Richard Parker flees to the jungle, never to be seen again. The Japanese authorities that interrogate Pi refuse to believe his story and press him to tell them "the truth." After hours of coercion, Pi tells a second story, a story much less fantastical, much more conventional — but is it more true?
...h up their session, Pi asks them, “‘So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can’t prove the question either way, which story do you prefer?’” The factual or provable existence of God is not necessarily relevant to whether someone should believe in Him. This requirement of proof for belief is typical of the agnostic, whose sole belief is that he or she cannot believe either way because there is no proof either way. However, life is a story, and in real life, there must be a story to tell. When it comes to Life of Pi, there is hardly any difference between life and story, so how could the novel not mimic life, being the story of a life itself? A life perhaps embellished to become better, just as readers must embellish their own lives in favor of the better story.
At the start of novel, and when Pi is a child, he is extremely religious. He devotes his life to loving God, and even practices three religions to do so. He practices Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity. His explanation for practicing all three is that according to Bapu Gandhi, “‘All religions are true’”(69). Pi explains that he practices all three religions because, “[he] just wants to love God”(69). Pi’s major religious values and faith in God continue to shape his life daily, until the shipwreck leaves him stranded on the Pacific, with a tiger for 227 days. Although Pi still remains religious and continues to praise God most days, the shipwreck does change Pi’s religious morals. Richard Parker is the factor that begins this change in Pi, because Pi knows that in order to survive he will have to fish to provide for Richard Parker if he wants to avoid being eaten himself. Fishing, however goes against the religious practice of Hinduism, which requires vegetarianism. Also, killing animals goes against Pi’s whole religious morals to not hurt another living being. Pi says the idea of killing a fish, and of “beating a soft living head with a hammer [is] simply too much”(183). It goes against everything he believes in. So, he decides to instead cover to fish’s head and break its neck (183). He explains that, “he [gives] up a number of times.
This unimaginable tale, is the course of events upon Pi’s journey in the Pacific ocean after the ship that Pi and his family were aboard crashes, leaving him stranded with a tiger named Richard Parker, an orangutan, a zebra, and a hyena. Pi loses everything he has and starts to question why this is happening to him. This is parallel to the story of Job. Job is left with nothing and is experiencing great suffering and he begins to demand answers from God. Both Pi and Job receive no answers, only being left with their faith and trust. To deal with this great suffering Pi begins to describe odd things which begin to get even more unbelievable and ultimately become utterly unrealistic when he reaches the cannibalistic island. Richard Parker’s companionship serves to help Pi through these events. When the reader first is intoduced to Richard Parker he emerges from the water, making this symbolic of the subconscious. Richard Parker is created to embody Pi’s alter ego. Ironically, each of these other animals that Pi is stranded with comes to symbolize another person. The orangutan represents Pi’s mother, the zebra represents the injured sailor, and the hyena represents the cook. Pi fabricated the people into animals in his mind to cope with the disillusion and trails that came upon him while stranded at the erratic and uncontrollable sea,
Mr. Patel continues explaining how his father contracts a Japanese ship to transport his family, along with a number of their zoo animals, from India to Canada in order to avoid political upheaval. While traveling, the ship began sinking and Pi was the only one to manage to make it onto the lifeboat and survive the wreck. The disaster left Pi, along with a few animals, to be the only survivors all in one lifeboat.... ... middle of paper ...
The story about the humanlike animals most likely was just an illusion, Pi used, in order to survive the reality that he had to abandon his morality; what he believed in, for
His love and understanding of zoology was the reason he survived on the life raft. Even though Pi went against his morals and ate meat, Pi saw it as necessary to survive. His will to survive and to eliminate all personal boundaries allowed him to do what ever deed needed to survive. And finally using his knowledge of animals as a means of maintaining a psychological level of sanity, which kept him motivated and sane throughout his time at sea. With the extreme circumstances that Pi lived through, and the means he used to cope with them, it is obvious that his choices were
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.
In Life of Pi, Pi is influenced by the decisions that animals make while onboard the lifeboat and the humanlike characters that they represent in Pi’s factual story. Many readers believe that the story of the animals is just a figment of Pi's imagination and that it was just something to keep him alive. Others believe that the story of the animals really did happen in Pi's time on the Pacific Ocean. No one will ever know what the real story of Pi's journey was, but everyone who has heard about Pi's multiple stories will have their own opinions and interpretations of what really happened.
In the first place, Pi spends more time telling the animal story, instead of the true account, which shows that he prefers a zebra, a tiger, a hyena, and an orangutan over the real people involved because with real people the tragic events must also be real. While telling his story to the two Japanese men investigating him once he