The story Life of Pi by Yann Martel is a tale that revolves around one kid, one ship and one tiger all on the Pacific Ocean. Piscine Molitor Patel is the main character; Pi Patel is raised alongside a zoo located in a small town named Pondicherry, India. Pi’s family decides to move to Canada due to political defilement that exists within their country. While at sea, their ship sinks at sea and Pi is left on a life raft with Richard Parker [Tiger]. Being stranded at sea altered Pi’s whole life and outlook about the world. He uses the concepts of religion and god in order to find hope and faith in order to survive. Life of Pi investigates the importance of religion and faith for humanity through the main character Pi Patel. The novel explores …show more content…
While practicing Hinduism and the gods associated with the religion, Pi soon encounters Jesus Christ, “It was Lord Krishna speaking. I heard him. And I followed him…Lord Krishna led me to meet one man…I met Jesus Christ” (55). This point in the novel expresses character development because Pi Patel moves away from society’s norms of one religion and decides to follow multiple ones. As Pi Patel’s exploration of different religions began, he stated, “[it] bothered me, the less I could forget him. And the more I learned about him, the less I wanted to leave him” (63). Prior to learning the conventions of this new religion [Christianity], Pi Patel has built a close relationship with Jesus Christ and cannot forget his newly found beliefs. In fact, Pi states that he feels closer to god because he practices more than one religion. Ultimately, this indicates that Pi is willing to do anything in order to become closer with God to gain that sense of hope and faith. In the novel there are many Christian symbols, including: the fish at sea and the ship itself. In Pi’s journey to Canada he is aboard a ship which sinks, “The ship was sinking. My mind could hardly conceive it” (114). In Christianity, the ship is recognized as a symbol to represent a church. When the ship Pi and his family are aboard sinks, it indicates that the event was an act of god. God is testing Pi’s beliefs and his loyalty to god by …show more content…
Pi follows more than one religion, and through his journey he explores and meets numerous animals. These animals that he runs into are all signs of god. They are all religious beliefs and that’s what gives Pi Patel the strength to survive and stay alive on the ocean. The novel explains and illustrates the importance of keeping faith and how religion plays a crucial role in human lives. God is within everyone, and in the book Life of Pi, having and keeping with in god it can conclusively give you a sense of hope, survival, and accomplishment. It is the person’s choice whether or not to believe in
Stranded for 227 days at sea in a lifeboat, with no one else except an adult Bengal tiger. This is exactly what the main character Pi, in "The Life of Pi" went through. "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel is a story about a boy named Piscine Molitor Patel, an Indian boy who survives more than seven months floating on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean, with no one else but a 450-pound tiger (Cooper). Yann Martel was born on June 25, 1963, in Salamanca, Spain. His parents, Emile Martel and Nicole Perron, were both born in Canada. He spent his childhood in several different countries, including France, Mexico, the United States, Canada, and Costa Rica. As an adult, he lived in many other places but one of them was India, which may be where he got inspiration for writing “Life of Pi”. Yann Martel uses the literary elements similes and foreshadowing, to express the theme that believing in religion can give you the faith to want to survive.
The novel Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, chronicles the life of Piscine Molitor Patel, a Indian boy living in Pondicherry in the 1970’s.Piscine Patel also known as Pi Patel, strangely practises three religions at the same time; Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity. Piscine’s father is a hard working individual who runs a zoo, and owns a large variety of animals. In the beginning of the novel, Piscine’s father must sell his zoo to a company in America, so they can move to Canada. The ship that carried the zoo animals has capsized, and Piscine emerges as the sole human survivor. The rest of the story is about Pi and his strenuous ordeals on a lifeboat, with an orang-utan, a hyena, a zebra, and a 450-pound Bengal Tiger. The novel Life of Pi is sometimes compared to the film The Old Man and the Sea, directed by John Sturges. I can see why, as there are similar elements that are present in both stories. The Old man and the Sea, is about a Cuban fisherman’s lone struggle with a gigantic Marlin. There are some similarities in Martel’s novel and Sturges’s film, including the loneliness that both main characters feel during the journey. Both stories also depict the feelings of hate experienced by the protagonists towards the animal they were with; and indeed both Life of Pi and The Old Man and the Sea, emphasize the importance of perseverance and show that without perseverance one’s life will surely end in defeat.
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 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
The Life of Pi by Yann Martel is a fantasy adventure novel. The main character of this book is Pi Patel, a 16 year old South Indian boy who survived at sea with a Tiger for 227 days. He was originally Islam, but then practiced Christianity and Islam. His father runs the Pondicherry zoo. Right when Pi turned 16 his family decided to close the zoo and move to Canada. His whole family boarded the Tsimtsum with all the zoo animals, in the process of being sold.
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.
Pi maintains his religious beliefs while on the life boat through his daily prayers. He takes time aside each day to say the prayers that he always would say. In one instance, he turns where he believes Mecca is located, and prays his traditional prayers towards Mecca. Pi also often states that he will include specific animals in his prayers, such as the zebra aboard his lifeboat, and the first fish that he ever killed. With Pi keeping his ritual prayers going, it helped him to survive.
Life of Pi begins with an author’s note in which Martel describes being told by the character Mamaji that Pi has “‘a story that will make you believe in God’” (ix). This essentially sets up the basis for the entire theme of the novel. The main character, Pi, claims to practice three religions simultaneously: Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam (Martel 81). Much of Pi’s explanation of his own childhood consists of his own religious journeys. He begins with an explanation of how his aunt introduced him to Hinduism upon ...
Martel’s novel is about the journey of a young man being forced to test his limits in order to survive the unthinkable predicament of being lost at sea alongside an adult Bengal tiger. Life of Pi starts out by introducing an anonymous author on a quest to find his next big story and goes to a man by the name of Piscine Molitor Patel who supposedly has a story worth hearing. Patel begins his story talking about his childhood and the main events that shaped him such as his family’s zoo, the constant curiosity in religion he sought as a young boy and also how he got his nickname Pi. 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 life boat and survive the wreck. The disaster left Pi along with a fe...
Life of Pi is about a sixteen year old boy named Piscine Molitor Patel who lives in Pondicherry with his family. In Pondicherry, his dad owns and runs a zoo. Then, the family decides to move to canada for more opportunities, however, on the way there, the boat that had the family and all of the animals crashed. That resulted in Pi being stuck on a lifeboat with a bengal tiger for 227 days until he landed ashore in Mexico. The story is about his life back home, and
It would seem that Pi’s survival is a two-fold journey. One part is in maintaining his faith in God or in a higher spiritual existence; and the second part is in discovering his confidence or belief in himself. It is truly admirable that the young boy, Pi, is ultimately able to thrive in his spiritual faith when most people would struggle deeply with bitterness over such a tragic experience. But another amazing aspect of this account is how Pi was able to quickly transform himself during his misfortune at sea from a victim to the ultimate victor, walking away with his life and his mental soundness. Perhaps Pi transforms his spiritual faith into a physical and mental strength that unfolds into a faith in his own self, or his own will to survive. When Pi begins his ordeal he
In Life of Pi, Yann Martel illustrates the main allegory is, religion is the better story because while religion may seem unlikely its not impossible the story without animals is like life without God, and Pi said “and so it goes with God” when the two Japanese men agreed that the first story was the better story. Life of Pi takes place in the pacific ocean when Pi and his family were moving from India to Canada on a cargo ship with all of their zoo animals aboard the ship. In a sudden turn of events the ship sinks and Pi is stranded in the ocean on a lifeboat with a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, a tiger, Richard Parker. Pi is later saved when he washes up on the beaches of Mexico.
Pi is an indian, but except Hinduism, he also believes in Christianity and Islam. It is pretty unusual. However, these three religions save his life when he meets storm on the sea. Religion is a key component in Pi’s survival because it lets him understand that he has to coexist with other creatures, it leads Pi to accept that even if he did not survive he would be redeemed, and it gives Pi the hope for survival.
Pi enjoys different aspects of each religion which is: Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity. Despite the fact that these religions may contradict each other, Pi finds a way to love and accept each of them. Pi comes across a priest, and Imam, and a Pandit who change Pi 's life forever. These three encounters let Pi into the world of different belief systems, in which he become increasingly interested. Early on in the novel, Pi starts to discover different rituals, and rules of each religion. The reader also gets to see religious objects that have sentimental meaning to religious and faithful groups that allow for comfort. Through Pi 's discoveries of these things the theme of religion becomes more evident. People use religion, beliefs, rituals, and routine to simply make life more enjoyable, easier to live by, and less boring by giving someone something to believe
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.