Life Of Pi Isolation Quotes

Loss of Values Through Isolation Isolation is a foe that many face. In Life of Pi, the author, Yann Martel, describes a long, isolated journey where the main character, Pi, is stranded on a lifeboat adrift in the Pacific Ocean. With no human companions and only the company of a Bengal tiger, Pi is constantly surrounded by isolation. Martel illustrates the idea that isolation causes the loss of a person’s values through Pi’s loss in religion, family, and humanity. Isolation causes Pi to lose religious aspects of himself because part of his religious belonging dies when he commits acts that his religions look down upon. During Pi’s days on the lifeboat, he becomes extremely hungry and emaciated. Just to survive, he has to fish for food.

When the food supply on the lifeboat runs out, Pi considers eating Richard Parker’s feces. As Richard Parker’s excrement plops into Pi’s awaiting cup, Pi thinks, “...I will be considered to have abandoned the last vestiges of humanness by those who do not understand the degree of my suffering when I say that it sounded to my ears like the music of a five-rupee coin dropped into a beggar’s cup” (270). Due to his lonesome voyage at sea, Pi sinks low enough to eat the waste product of another animal. This is an act that many view as inhumane. Pi later goes on to carry out a worse offense. Pi tells Mr. Okamoto the second version of his story and describes how the cook dies. “I stabbed him repeatedly. His blood soothed my chapped hands. His heart was a struggle--all those tubes that connected it. I managed to get it out. It tasted delicious, far better than turtle. I ate his liver. I cut off great pieces of his flesh” (391). Numerous solitary days on the lifeboat depreciate the value of human life for Pi to the point where he has no qualms about murder and cannibalism. Pi seems to even enjoy the death when he describes the blood as