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Close reading responds Life Of Pi

The book Life of Pi by Yann Martel is about the story of Pi Patel a 16-year-old boy who survives at sea with a tiger for 227 days. Pi begins his journey when the boat he is one sinks and he gets on a lifeboat. The lifeboat contains a hyena zebra, an orangutan, and Richard Parker the tiger. Throughout the book Pi struggles to stay alive and keep fighting. The theme of loneliness and trying to stay alive plays a big part in this story. Especially in the quote “Without Richard Parker, I wouldn’t be alive today to tell you my story.”

In the quote “Without Richard Parker, I wouldn’t be alive today to tell you my story”. It’s talking about how Pi wouldn’t be alive and wouldn’t had made it through when he was on the boat without Richard Parker. This is strange due to the fact Richard Parker is a adult male tiger that weighs 450 pounds and takes up about a third of the life boat they share. But to fully explain why he thinks this we have to go back to the beginning of their journey together. When they first encounter each other Pi is scared half to death. But over the time they spend with each other they learn to work with each other. I believe that this quote his saying that although the presence of Richard Parker, though initially terrifying, eventually saves Pi from utter loneliness.

There is also Pi’s second story that he tells without animals, in which Pi himself is the tiger. From this it shows how much in fact Richard Parker taught and saved Pi. Pi learned the qualities of nobility and violence, grace and brute force, and intelligence and instinct. Pi realizes that he has to use these qualities. He must overcome his squeamishness in order to eat. He must embrace aggression in order to kill and cook things that otherwise might have killed him. He needed the qualities Richard Parker had in order to survive. In the book Pi also says, “it is animal instinct, not polite convention or modern convenience, that protects

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