Evidence
Analysis
Religion- “The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shining point of light in my heart. I would go on loving.”(209)
Pi uses religion to lift himself up from despair he uses religion as a mechanism to remain positive. He also does this as pats his pants and yells that “THIS IS GOD’S ATTIRE”. This quote demonstrates that even as darkness comes, it will leave, and that God and his love would be constant within Pi.
Fear- “By the next morning, I had lost all fear of death, and I resolved to die.”(241)
Pi throughout the novel has this constant fear of death, first because of the hyena and Richard Parker, and also because of hunger and thirst. But now he has accepted death, and is no longer scared
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Amen” (148)
Pi trust in God is very strong. He believes as long as he trusts and has faith in God, he will survive. It is also important to note that he does not mention any other religious figures, such as Allah or Ghandi. This may be because the word God, does not reference one specific figure, but is used to represent any universal spiritual being.
Religion- “It was natural that bereft and desperate as I was, in the throes of unremitting suffering I should turn to God.” (284)
This quote represents that Pi has a strong faith in God. He uses his faith in God to fight his suffering from dehydration and starvation. This brings him closer to God, and throughout the novel he reaches to out to God and his belief to strengthen him in his darkest times.
Survival- “I looked at Richard Parker. My panic was gone. My fear was dominated. Survival was at hand” (165)
Pi gets over his fear of Richard Parker, because the need to survive is far stronger than is fear of the tiger. Pi realizes that fear and panic are useless, and that his will to live is stronger than those feelings of fear and
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Sometimes my heart was sinking so fast with anger, desolation and weariness, I was afraid it would sink to the very bottom of the Pacific and I would not be able to lift it back up.” (263)
Even though Pi has a strong faith in God, it becomes hard for him to fully trust in God, because of all the hardships which he had struggled with. To completely trust in God’s love is hard when Pi loses everything he loved for no apparent reason. But, Pi must keep his head up and maintain his strong faith because he knows that if he does not he will truly be left with nothing. Pi needs his faith to survive, and to not fall into despair.
Fear: “If your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.” (162)
Pi speaks about how fear is the true enemy. The only way to get over and to conquer your fear is to face it. But if you do not, you risk the fact that your fear will be hiding,and your fear will continue to haunt you, until you face
...o face our fears, looking them dead in the eye. He notes that tigers only attack when you are not looking straight in the eye. When Pi tries to tame Richard Parker by blowing the whistle, while Richard Parker is seasick. Pi faces his fears instead of letting it sit there and control him. We need to ‘blow the whistle’ on our own fears and admit we do have a fear, so they become easier to control in our lives. Richard Parker also teaches Pi his inner strength even though Pi does not display it himself. "This was the terrible cost of Richard Parker. He gave me a life, my own, but at the expense of taking one. He ripped the flesh off the man's frame and cracked his bones. The smell of blood filled my nose. Something in me died then that has never come back to life. (Martel 139)”
To live with fear and not be overcome by it is the final test of
The most dangerous fear that Pi deals with is Richard Parker who has no mercy on his victims. Pi knows that he should deal with Richard Parker in a small damaged lifeboat. He can't run away from his fears, so he makes a border between Richard Parker and himself. Pi says, " I started thinking seriously about how I was going to deal with Richard Parker. This forbearance on his part on hot, cloudless days, that is what it was and not simple laziness, was not good enough. I couldn't always be running away from him. I needed safe access to the locker and to the top of the tarpaulin, no matter on what time of day or the weather and no matter of his mood. It was rights that I needed, the sort of rights that come with the might. It was time to impose myself and carve out territory," (Martel, 224). If one runs away from self-fears, the person will not achieve the goals for which Pi is no different. Despair has had the most destructive effect on Pi that has really stopped him to try rescue him. The only factor that forces despair to diminish is taking practical steps. Pi could survive 227 days on the lifeboat with faith. He reminds himself everything in this world is a creature of God. He says, " Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression. I thank God it always passed. A school of fish appeared around the net or a knot cried out to be reknotted. Or I thought of my family, of how they were spared this terrible agony. The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shining point of high in your heart.
Pi has many traits that tend to enhance throughout the story, but we would like to elaborate further on his religious beliefs. It would be an understatement to say that Pi is simply a religious person. Pi’s initial religion was Hinduism, but as time went on he began to practice several ‘separate’ religions. Everyone told Pi that he could only have one religion to which he countered, “Bapu Gandhi said, ‘All religions are true.’ I just want to love God.” (87 Martel) At one time he asked his mother for a prayer rug and made this point, “If there’s only one nation in the sky, shouldn’t all passports be valid for it?” (93 Martel) Through all of the tragedy and sorrow that Pi had to endure, even through times of great doubt, Pi always came back to his
Religion is and always has been a sensitive topic. Some choose to acknowledge that there is a God and some choose to deny this fact to the death. For those who deny the presence of a higher being, “Life of Pi” will most likely change your thought process concerning this issue. Yann Martel’s, “Life of Pi”, is a compelling story that shows the importance of obtaining religion and faith. Piscine (Pi) Patel is both the protagonist and the narrator of Martell’s religious eye-opener who undergoes a chain effect of unbelievable catastrophes. Each of these catastrophic events leaving him religiously stronger because he knows that in order to endure what he has endured, there has got to be a God somewhere.
Having just experienced the sinking of his family’s ship, and being put onto a life boat with only a hyena, Pi felt completely lost and alone. When he sees Richard Parker, the Bengal tiger from his family’s zoo, it is a familiar face to him. His initial reaction is to save the life of his familiar friend so that he may have a companion, and a protector aboard the lifeboat. Suddenly Pi realizes just what he is doing. He is saving the life of Richard Parker, by welcoming him, a 450 pound Bengal tiger, onto the small lifeboat. He experiences a change of heart when helping the tiger onto the boat. Pi realizes that he is now posing a threat on his own life. With Richard Parker on the boat, Pi is faced with not only the fight to survive stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but the fight to survive living with a meat eating tiger. The change of heart that Pi experiences might possibly mean that he is an impulsive thinker. It may mean that he often does something on impulse without thinking it through, and then later regrets his actions.
...knowledge his shadow self. He was able to survive his plight on the lifeboat because of the characteristics of his shadow self, Richard Parker. Even at the loss of his shadow self, Pi remains connected and constantly misses this part of his persona. After his ordeal on the lifeboat, Pi becomes rational and humane; however his experiences has scarred him, and will forever remain with him. Readers can definitely learn from Pi’s experience with his shadow self. The more we refute our shadow, the more it weighs us down. However, if we are willing to come to terms with the reality of our shadow, learn how it works, “tame” it so that it does not control us, we would be more literate and enlightened.
Pi is a young man from India, who, like any other teenager growing up, is at something of a crossroads, trying to discover a grand purpose and meaning to life. Through his family and everyday life, Pi is exposed to four different religions during his childhood: Hinduism, Catholicism, Islam, and to an extent, Atheism. After being exposed to the three religions and his father urging him towards Atheism and rational though, Pi comes to the conclusion that he, “just wants to love God”, showing the audience that Pi derives his understanding of the world through God, and his idea of God through each religion. However, Pi’s complacent views of the world are challenged during his meeting with Richard Parker. In this scene, Pi seeks to discover Richard Parker’s soul, believing God will allow him to form a spiritual connection with the tiger. The connection begins to form, as close up shots of both Pi’s and the tiger’s eyes
Pi is the source of food and water for Richard Parker, who he himself cannot satisfy on his own while Richard Parker has saved Pi from the hands of the hyena and the blind Frenchman. Therefore, Pi admits that had temporarily surrendered his humanity for the sake of both his and Richard Parker’s survival. Pi acknowledges that there is a beast within him that he alone is powerless to
Many people would abandon their religion in a situation like Pi’s. However, Pi instead uses it both to help him survive and to give himself a reason to keep living. Pi says keeping himself busy is one of his greatest tools to surviving (Martel 239). At times, Pi’s prayers are answered, proving he should keep his faith. Immediately after the Tsimtsum crashes, Pi prays to his God for Richard Parker to make it to the lifeboat: “Jesus, Mary, Muhammad and Vishnu, how good to see you, Richard Parker!
They believed that the only reason Pi made it out of his situation alive is because he had faith in God, and they in return had faith in him and his story. Out-of-text, I believe Pi’s quote refers to those who have been through incredibly traumatic events, especially events that have caused people to make decisions they usually wouldn’t. When a person goes through something that forces them to go against their moral and spiritual beliefs, that person usually ends up feeling an overwhelming guilt for having done so. The answer that many people who have been in these types of situations come to is faith; by turning to God and asking for His forgiveness, their guilt eases away and is replaced by a sense of understanding. They know that while they may have sinned, they have been forgiven and are still good in the eyes of God.
Once, Pi almost gives up on the sea, but prayers let him take heart of grace again: “I was giving up. I would have given up-if a voice hadn’t made itself heard in my heart. The voice said, ‘I will not die. I refuse it. I will make it through this nightmare. I will beat the odds, as great as they are. I have survived so far, miraculously. Now I will turn miracle into routine. The amazing will be seen every day. I will put in all the hard work necessary. Yes, as long as God is with me, I will not die. Amen.’” (Martel p.186). When Pi stays on the lifeboat and hopes for being rescued, he keeps busy with daily rituals. Pi prays more than he does anything else on the raft. He considers prayers just as important as any other physical preparation. Religion is Pi’s emotional anchor, it gives him the sense of belief and hope for survival. Therefore, religion is significant in Pi’s
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.
In conclusion, the main idea in Life of Pi is that having the will to survive is a key component to survival. The three ways this is shown is through symbolism of the colour orange, having religion on the protagonist’s side and the thirst and hunger experienced by the protagonist. Things do not always happen the way one would want them to happen: “Things didn’t turn out the way they were supposed to, but what can you do? You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it” (101) Faith determines ones destiny and nothing can be changed about that, one can live their life to the fullest and enjoy every moment and not regret it. No matter what faith throws at one, as long as they have the will to survive they can pull through anything.
Adversity has the effect of evoking abilities which, in booming circumstances, would have lain dormant. Through adversity we come to see ourselves grow and advance as individuals, and realize our true potential. In retrospect, we see Pi overcoming fear and loss and realizing what he is capable of and his potential as one of God's disciples. Adversity brings out the finest in people, the most magnifcant qualities and abilities that a person can possess. Yann Martel expresses through this writing that people fall victim to adversity all the time, but our understanding for different situations makes us able to determine our capabilities as individuals. Pi has many potential talents and abilities that he just hasn't uncovered yet and could use to survive. Throughout the novel Pi goes through many life changing experiences, overcomes many obstacles and pushes his limits. Like when Pi catches the fish and kills it for the first time. He's hesitant and begins to fret over it, but he soon comes to realize that in order for him to survive he has...