Life of Pi was a fantasy drifting film which was directed by Mr Ang Lee and the film was based on Yang Martel’s same name novel. The film told the story about the young Pi and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker drifting in the sea for 227days. There were a tiger, a child, a lifeboat and a piece of ocean. On the one hand, the film Life of Pi showed an unique visual feast to the audience, and on the other hand it also showed the necessary of faith. Full of curiosity, Pi had embraced four religious at the age of 17. His parents hold different opinion view to faith. And his father insisted that believing everything was believing nothing, but his mother encouraged him to stick to his faith. They decided to migrated to Canada to search a better life. …show more content…
Unfortunately, the ship encountered a storm. At last there were a hyena, a zebra with a broken leg, a female orangutan and a Bengal tiger on the same boat. However, the risky things happened. The hyena killed the the orangutan and ate the zebra. After that the hyena was killed by the tiger. At the end of an accident, Pi lived alone with the tiger on the sea. Initially, Pi wanted to kill the tiger in order to protect himself. But with time went by, Pi found the tiger partly inspired his hope for survival. If the film was ended like this, it could be only a wonderful fantasy drifting film. However, the last part of the film is the main idea. When Pi told the story of his fantasy adventure to the two Japanese insurance company representatives, the two representatives doubted the truth of the story. So Pi told another version to them. The hyena was a bad tempered cook in the ship, zebra was sailor, female orangutan was Pi’s mother, and the tiger was Pi. Two different versions were shown to the two
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.
Pi Patel in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi is a young Indian boy who is put through a tremendous traumatic experience; he gets lost at sea! Not only does he lose all his family, but he is forced to survive 227 days at sea with very limited resources. This ordeal causes great psychological pressure on Pi and causes his mind to find ways to cope with all the stress. When asked to describe what happened, Pi tells two stories: one with him surviving with animals including an adult Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, and a parallel story with humans in which Pi is forced to bend morality. Pi’s story of his survival with Richard Parker is a fiction that he creates to cope with a reality that is too difficult to face.
The reader is meant to think Pi manages to survive about a year at sea with an adult bengal tiger, and considering the reader's knowledge so far in the novel that makes sense. Amazed by this idea, the reader continues, each chapter becoming more, and more intriguing. Until just about the last chapter this novel seems almost logical, despite its unrealistic premise. Yann Martel does such a good job of conveying such convincing information about Pi’s journey with Richard Parker that there is not a thought in the reader's mind that this could just be a story. When the Japanese officials from the Ministry of Transport come, Pi tells them his unbelievable story, and to them it is too unbelievable. They ask him to tell a new story, a more realistic one. And Pi does, one that doesn’t have tigers, zebras, orangoutangs, or hyenas. Instead it is a story of Pi, his mother, the cook from the boat, and the sailor. In this new story Pi is represented as the tiger, his mother is the orangoutang, the cook is the hyena, and the sailor is the injured zebra. As it turns out Pi’s unbelievable story might not be as unbelievable as the reader originally thinks. Pi, as said in the quote above, is twisting his story to bring out its essence whether that is on purpose or
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
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.
They brought me comfort that is certain. But it was hard, oh, it was hard. Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love.” (Yann Martel, Life of Pi, 231) At a certain point in his journey, Pi started to question God because he could not understand why God was not listening to his prayers and in reality if God was with him, how was God letting him go through all this pain. He also started to learn that he could not be completely faithful to what each religion stands for. Pi had to kill a fish and he felt very guilty and sad about doing so but he knew he had to put aside his Hindu beliefs to survive. He had to adapt which consequently added more disbelief into Pi’s head. However his adaptations were not just ignoring rules but it was also him trying to adapt to figure out a way how he could oblige to each religion 's way of communicating with God (Praying). For Islam, he had to figure out which way Mecca was so that he could pray, solitary masses without priests and communion hosts for Christianity, and darshans without murtis for Hinduism. That being said to add more fire to the flame, right before he fully lost belief he found an island, he assumed he was imaging it but after hanging around in the algae-filled land he thought of as a reward. He starts to enjoy his time and eats some of the algae and finds some fresh water. Just as his faith was being restored the island turned out to be a carnivorous island and loses faith once again. He turns to atheism and realizes that the only way to live is if he starts to use science. Despite his doubts, he still continued to follow his religions. He mentions that “The blackness would stir and eventually go away,
Of course, the law of nature eventually rules and Pi ends up as the tiger's last remaining occupant. He must use all his knowledge of zoology and animal behavior to create boundaries and survive. Which he does for 227 days.
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,
This alternate ending plays a key role in understanding how to view the novel through Freudian lenses. Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis clarifies many troubling issues raised in the novel Life of Pi. 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.
It is said the a person’s process of discovery is shaped by their personality, culture, history and values, however the opposite is also true, someone’s personal, cultural, historical and social contexts and values, their personal aspects, can also be shaped by the discoveries they make, with discovery acting as the journey towards a change in one’s personal aspects. This is true of the film, “Life of Pi,” directed by Ang Lee and the illustration, “Self Help,” by Michael Leunig. The most striking features of the film is Pi’s faith to God and his connection with religion. His discovery and spirituality rely on each other, depicted as a gradual progression that spans his life, his childhood all the way to his time with Richard Parker on the life
Pi tries to make the Japanese men understand that he knows their misguided intentions by saying, “I know what you want. You want a story that won’t surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won’t make you see higher or further or differently.” (302) The men interrogating Pi wanted a story that they could grasp easily in order to appease their advisors as well as their own minds.
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 survived because he was faithful. One of the factors that made him survive was by praying. He had a daily ritual, to pray five times a day, which is a ritual in Islam. He considered this just as important as survival preparations. “My heart stopped and then beat triple speed. I turned. "Jesus, Mary, Muhammad and Vishnu!" I saw a sight that will stay with me for the rest of my days. Richard Parker had risen and emerged. He was not fifteen feet from me. Oh, the size of him! The hyena's end had come, and mine.” This quote is one of Pi’s prayers. Pi was close to death at that point, but because of the power of his prayer, the tiger has not attacked him. This is significant because it supports the idea that faith can protect us, and through praying, nothing is impossible. Pi thinks of God and Richard Parker every time as they are the reason for Pi to live on. Faith kept Pi from giving up.
As the reader examines the novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel, the reader recognizes the similarities between the story of the animals and the factual story. The main character Piscine Molitor Patel, known as Pi, goes through many struggles once he is stuck on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean which are shown between both of his stories. Throughout the novel, Martel describes to the readers the relationships the Pi has between the animals in the story of animals and the real people in the factual story. In Life of Pi, Pi meets many different animals on his journey on the lifeboat that influence him in many ways, including the zebra, which represents the Taiwanese sailor; the hyena, which represents the chef; Orange Juice, the orangutan, which represents Pi’s mother; and the Royal Bengal tiger, Richard Parker, which represents Pi himself.