According to the Oxford dictionary, the term “Animal” means a living organism which feeds on organic matter, typically having specialized sense organs and nervous systems and able to respond rapidly to stimuli. Although this is a very apt definition as it defines the word thoroughly, the Oxford definition missed out a great aspect of what animals truly are. The Oxford definition did not define the charisma of an animal nor did it define the emotions of an animal. What the Oxford dictionary could not achieve (in simple words), the Life of Pi did. The Life of Pi is a powerful novel by Yann Martel which narrates the endearing journey of an animal, the Royal Bengal Tiger known as Richard Parker from its master, Piscine Molitor Patel’s perspective. Yann Martel described Richard Parker in a way no one else could have. The book showcases Richard’s perseverance; his …show more content…
Richard Parker’s obligation to Pi Patel defines who he is as a being. And lastly what made Richard Parker unique and peculiar was his act of independence. His act of freedom illustrated a trait of his kind. Tigers are generally solitary creatures that prefer to live alone and that is what Richard Parker validated. Due to the fact that Richard Parker demonstrated perseverance, obligation and independence during his first attempt at adventure he proves that one’s identity is shaped by unique life experiences.
An important factor that should be kept in mind throughout out this writing is that Richard Parker is a tamed zoo animal that has never seen anything outside the confinements of his cage. He has been treated with expert care with a healthy amount of food that he has been given without being asked. So it must have been very hard for Richard Parker. This being said, Richard Parker’s perseverance is what kept him alive throughout this entire journey. It was his perseverance that made him kill (for all the right
...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)”
Pi was afraid and surprised that Richard Parker was in the boat once he had lifted the blanket. Then Richard Parker had roared at him and tried to attack by his claws ,but pi had gotten away as soon as he did. Pi and Richard Parker started to roamed slowly around the boat in the middle of the ocean. Pi didn't trust Richard Parker because he knows that he only wanted to kill and eat pi. Pi tried to get rid of the tiger and then he tried avoiding the tiger, but as time goes on he got tired of trying get rid of Richard Parker. So then he began tame the tiger by using his whistle he had gotten from his locker. As he and Richard Parker started to get along through the past days,they have become really close friends.
“When you look into an animal’s eyes, you are seeing your own emotions reflected back at you,” (Lee, 2013, scene 50) a young Pi Patel’s father tells him after being found sticking his hand into the cage of Richard Parker, the Bengal tiger kept at their family zoo. From an early age, the boy had connected to a sense of humanity and personhood in the animals he grew up around, something that grows to animate itself even further in his adolescence when Pi finds himself a castaway with Richard Parker and several other animals after the ship carrying his family of people and jungle creatures from India to Canada sinks in the middle of the Pacific. Many years later Pi tells the story of his struggle for survival to an American writer, claiming that it will make him believe in God. His father’s foretelling assertion echoes in the ears of film analysts, as the relationships Pi describes forming with his companions at sea can be interpreted as a symbolic manifestation of Pi’s own psychological processes. Through using a psychoanalytic lens to analyze Pi’s story
Both of the main characters in each work created an alter ego for themselves. In Life of Pi, Piscine’s alter ego was a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, who lived in the Pondicherry Zoo, which Piscine’s father ran until the Patel family decided to move to Canada. This was not evident during the course of the novel, but it became clear to the readers at the very end of the book when Piscine, also known as Pi, conversed with officials from the Maritime Department in the Japanese Ministry of Transport. After Pi told the officials two varying stories of how he survived 227 days at sea, Mr. Tomohiro Okamoto and Mr. Atsuro Chiba exclaimed that “the Taiwanese sailor [was] the zebra, [Pi’s] mother [was] the orang-utan, the cook [was].the hyena—which means [Pi was] the tiger” (Martel 346)....
Humans appear to regard their animal counterparts as something “Other”: creatures meant to complement humans as companions, or more accurately, albeit crudely, slaves. They are one of the most popular sources of humanity’s entertainment, cuisine, objects of marvel, and laborers. Forthwith, one can assume that having defined the “Other”, there is a disparate force that acts their counterpart. Thus, accordingly, an invisible line is drawn between humans and animals. The protagonists of two notable novels, H.G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau, and Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, bridge the divide between animality and humanity in a way that mediates on the differences between humans and animals through the juxtaposition of, respectively, Prendick
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.
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.
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,
The protagonist, Pi is initially apprehensive to accept Richard Parker on the raft, but later comes to appreciate the tiger once he realizes this animal’s presence is crucial for his survival on the boat. First, Pi is scared and reluctant to accept his shadow self because it conflicts with his character and complicates his beliefs. This is evident when he says, “Together? We’ll be together? Have I gone mad? I woke up to what I was doing […]. Let go […] Richard Parker […] I don’t want you here […]. Get lost. Drown! Drown!!” (Martel 123). Though Pi recognizes his shadow self by encouraging Richard Parker to come on the boat, he soon realizes that he is about to accept his shadow self. He instantly regrets his decision and throws an oar at him in an effort to stop Richard Parker. His action symbolizes his denial and confusion he feels towards the extent of br...
It also makes it very clear that Richard Parker could have been a disguised idea of Pi’s actual id, the reason for his survival. Meanwhile Pi stood for his own ego and somewhat managed to answer to both his id and super ego to some extent. By the end of the novel the readers come to conclude Mr. Patel does come full circle and carries all three aspects, the id, ego, and super ego and is a functioning member of society once again. Works Cited Martel, Yann. A. Life of Pi.
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
To begin with, Pi’s success could not happen without believing in animals. Since he was grew up in a zoo, animals were a significant part in his childhood. He believed that all animals are spiritual in the beginning. However, one event changed Pi’s opinion a little bit. When Pi was only a child, his father stopped him from trying to feed Richard Parker and showed Pi tiger’s inhuman natural instinct by letting him see the entire process about the tiger killing a goat. At that moment, Pi said,“ I heard two things at that moment: Father saying “Never forget this lesson” as he looked on grimly; and the bleating of the goat.” (Matel 44). This experience certainly made Pi feel shocked and afraid. He started to question himself whether the animals were as pure as he thought. This change of attitude towards animals strongly affects the later
W.Somerset Maugham said “There are three rules for writing a good book. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.” Life Of Pi displays examples of writing a good book. It includes characters that inspire readers, a message to the readers, and a twist to the story.
The projection of Richard Parker helps Pi to be aware of this current situation, which was him being stranded in the ocean on a lifeboat in comparison to his beliefs in his religions. His fear towards Richard Parker was one of the reasons of his survival. Pi says, “Fear and reason fought over answer. Fear said yes. He was a fierce, 450-pound carnivore. Each of his claws was sharp as a knife” (Martel 108). Pi describes Richard Parker as an extremely dangerous, fearful, and vicious predator. This causes Pi keep aware because he is on a boat with a deadly carnivore. He tries to keep awake at night while being on the lifeboat with Richard Parker from the fear of being attacked and eaten by the Bengal tiger. However, since Richard Parker is Pi’s id, it was actually him keeping himself aware and alive. Pi states, “If I still had the will to live, it was thanks to Richard Parker. He kept me from thinking too much about my family and my tragic circumstances” (Martel 164). This shows how Richard Parker occupies Pi’s mind and influences his thoughts about the tragic incident that has happened. The will to live for Pi is no longer his family, but Richard Parker, his id. Richard Parker taught Pi how to survive based on his instincts an...
Animals can be perceived in many different ways. While some humans consider animals to be mindless machines programmed with instinct, others view them as spiritual creatures capable of coherent thought and emotions. I feel that animals are somewhere in the middle. Although they rely heavily on instinct, the ability to feel emotions shows that their mental capacity is not far from that of a human.