In the bildungsroman novel, Life of Pi, Yann Martel uses the experiences of the protagonist, Pi Patel, to broaden the reader’s awareness about the concept of reality and what is possible. Pi’s reality, for the first sixteen years of his life, is as a vegeterian boy living a comfortable life in Pondicherry, India. His family has money and standing in the community and Pi attends good schools in his neighbourhood. He has the freedom and desire to explore and practice three different religions simutaneously. Yann Martel explains in an interview with Sabine Sielke that when a person is immersed so completely in their reality they do not know there are other ways to experience life until something happens to change their current thinking ( pg. 18). While moving from India to Canada, Pi experiences a dramatic change in his reality, which alters how he thinks about his life, when the Japanese cargo ship, Tsimtsum, sinks and thrusts him into a world where he must leave all his comforts behind and embrace the life that lies before him. Pi learns that reality changes and when it does he must accept the new version and redefine it when neccessary.
Reality changes continuously. Current reality influences new technology, thinking and language in all aspects of life and in turn these things influence the current reality. For example, when scientists discovered the atom they thought they held the key to understanding what matter was made of and how the universe works. However, when scientists were able to see inside the atom they realized that it was made of even smaller particles which prompted the thought that there might even be something smaller inside those particles. The theories continue to grow and they will be altered as reality chan...
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...onform to one idea of reality would be impossible.
Works Cited
Digital Nation. Dir. Rachel Dretzin. Perf. Rachel Dretzin, Douglas Rushkoff. PBS, 2010. Film.
Martel, Yann. Life of Pi: a novel. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2001. Print.
Moisse, Katie. "Rusty Knife Removed From Man's Head After Four Years - ABC News." ABCNews.com: Breaking News, Politics, World News, Good Morning America, Exclusive Interviews - ABC News. N.p., 18 Feb. 2011. Web. 10 Apr. 2011. .
Sielke, Sabine. "The Empathetic Imagination": An interview with Yann Martel." Canadian Literature 177 (2003): 12-32. Literary Reference Center. EBSCO. Web. 10 Apr. 2011.
“What is a Rainbow?” n.d. Retrieved from http://www.onlineschools.org/rainbow/
What is Reality? Dir. Shariatmadari, Helen. PBS, 2011. Film.
Throughout the novel, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, the notion of how the concepts of idealism and truth mold an individual’s life are vividly displayed. This is emblematized as Pi questions the idea of truth and the affects it has on different aspect of life, as well as his idealistic values being transformed due to the contrast between taking action and sheer belief. The messages generated will alter the way the reader thinks, as well as reshaping their overall perception of truth.
Reality is something that we humans have a hard time comprehending. We don’t know the exact reason why we live and why we exist but we have many theories that could be the reason. For example, Christians believe that God made the world in six days and that we live as his creations, to worship and adore him. Jose Luis Borges likes to conduct thought experiments with his stories and one theme he uses quite often is the nature of reality. Borges created a perplexing universe in “The Library of Babel” that plays with the idea of never being able to grasp certain concepts because of the limit of what one can perceive.
"BR: In every sense we create our own reality, and this goes much further than most people aware of or are willing to admit. The reason most people can't see this is because everyone is creating their own reality, but 99.9% of them are creating the same one-using
People experience loss often, sometimes even major loss. In Life of Pi the author, Yann Martel, reveals a truly devastating tale. Life of Pi tells the story of Pi Patel, a boy who survives a sinking ship and lives with a tiger on a lifeboat for 227 days. During certain parts of the novel, the narrative will change to a reporter interviewing Pi about the ship sinking and living with a tiger. This novel portrays that when people experience a major loss they try to cope by creating illusions about what really happened.
From modern civilisation to a purely primitive existence adrift on the Pacific Ocean, Yann Martel’s Life of Pi illustrates how knowledge, religion, companionship and routine can be successfully combined to promote survival against “the incredible odds.” Pi’s terrifying adversity challenged his humanity and faith and forced him to find courage and endurance in his battle to live. His hope for an escape from death drove him to make difficult decisions while clinging to his religious beliefs.
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.
The Life of Pi, written by Yann Martel, is the story of a young man, Piscine, or Pi for short, who experiences unbelievable and unrealistic events, which are so unrealistic ambiguity is aroused amongst the reader. Duality reoccurs over the course of the novel through every aspect of Pi’s world view and is particularly seen in the two contradictory stories, which displays the brutal nature of the world. Martel wonderfully crafts and image of duality and skepticism though each story incorporated in this novel.
The power of Imagination can give humans the will power to accomplish anything. In the book Life of Pi by Yann Martell Imagination helped Pi the main character get through his long journey aboard a lifeboat. Over the course of this story Pi encounters many different situations where he needs to use his imagination. Towards the end of the book you as the reader have the option to believe the story you just read or a second story, a more vulgar and less interesting story. As the reader you have to use your imagination just like how Pi needed to use his imagination. Imagination allowed Pi to survive by keeping him sane, protecting him and lastly to acquire the traits of telling a beautiful story.
Choices play a prominent role in ensuring comfort and happiness in life. People make choices, which ultimately shape their lives. In Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi, the main character, Pi Patel is forced to make choices, which go against his morals, but ultimately keep him alive. This becomes clear when Pi chooses to change his person by eating meat. Pi then chooses to eliminate all personal boundaries, due to his incredible will to survive. Finally, he chooses to view all of the people on the life boat as animals in order to cope with the psychological distress of being lost at sea. When faced with choices, Pi puts all morals behind him to survive.
In his first voyage in 1492, when Christopher Columbus set out to search for Asia, he ended up landing in America on a small island in the Caribbean Sea, which he confidently thought was Asia. He then made several other voyages to the New World in search for riches, thinking that he was exploring an already explored land, but he had found the greatest riches of them all, undiscovered land, America. This shows that when one sets out on a mission, they face different challenges on the journey but in the end, achieve more than what they planned on achieving. The novel The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, and the novel Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, both describe two journeys where the characters achieve more when they learn about life, survival and patience, by understanding religion, tackling their fears, associating with nature, and encountering other characters from whom they learn something. The former is about a young shepherd named Santiago, who has a recurring dream of a treasure in Egypt, for which he makes a journey to achieve his “Personal Legend” by the help of a man who claims to be...
Society is known to put everyone and everything into roles that, if or when the role assigned is changed, all hell breaks loose. Through Freud’s theory, he explains the behaviors that are associated with the id, the ego, and the superego. Being that Pi was someone who had been relatively well-off prior to embarking on his trip to Canada and then thrown into a new scenario that involves him becoming a starving survivor of a boat wreck stuck in a boat with a tiger that is threatening to eat him, it can be seen that Freud’s theory is displayed. When observing the events that take place throughout Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, it is observable that he creates an impressive relationship between Freud’s theory of the id, ego, and superego and Pi’s mental facade while using a paradox within the specific animals, as well as his strive for survival.
A quick glance at Life of Pi and a reader may take away the idea that it is an easy read and a novel full of imagination, but take a Freudian view on the work and it transforms into a representation of the human psyche. Martel’s novel takes the reader on a journey with Pi as he struggles for his own survival. Pi experiences a breakdown of each component that makes up ones personality according to Freud throughout the novel. One by one id, ego and super ego both express a huge factor in Pi’s choices and emotions throughout his story. The readers are also introduced to an alternate ending to choose from. 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.
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.
On its surface, Martel’s Life of Pi proceeds as a far-fetched yet not completely unbelievable tale about a young Indian boy named Pi who survives after two hundred twenty-seven days on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. It is an uplifting and entertaining story, with a few themes about companionship and survival sprinkled throughout. The ending, however, reveals a second story – a more realistic and dark account replacing the animals from the beginning with crude human counterparts. Suddenly, Life of Pi becomes more than an inspiring tale and transforms into a point to be made about rationality, faith, and how storytelling correlates the two. The point of the book is not for the reader to decide which story he or she thinks is true, but rather what story he or she thinks is the better story. In real life, this applies in a very similar way to common belief systems and religion. Whether or not God is real or a religion is true is not exactly the point, but rather whether someone chooses to believe so because it adds meaning and fulfillment to his or her life. Life of Pi is relevant to life in its demonstration of storytelling as a means of experiencing life through “the better story.”
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.