Many people have read Life of Pi, and are familiar with the main character, Pi Patel. Although, how many of you have actually tried to observe tiny details of his life in order to understand why he is the way he is? Well, in this paper, we plan to do just that, to grasp more of an understanding of his mentality. Pi has had a very abnormal life, and that can cause him to be very different mentally and have different daily habits than most people. So, with all of that in mind, let’s go on this journey of Pi’s strange mental state. Why don’t we start in Pi’s childhood, where it all began? Pi grew up in a small town in India. He grew up in the zoo environment, with his dad being the ZooKeeper. So, that very clearly …show more content…
He planted a goat into the tiger exhibit and it very quickly reached down, snatched it up, and ate it. His dad said after, which you can find on page forty two of the story, “Tigers are VERY dangerous, I want you to understand that you are never, under any circumstances, to touch a tiger, to pet a tiger, to put your hands through the bar of the cages, or even get close to a cage.” Without that example, Pi and his brother may not have been able to learn that lesson. Our next example from his childhood is that Pi was always a very open-minded child, and he was always very optimistic and excited (Sparknotes.com). This could have affected how Pi stayed alive and his will to live. Without that kind of optimism, his life could have ended long before he would have ever seen shore. Before Pi was stranded on the lifeboat he had been …show more content…
While he was in the lifeboat, he used praying for a couple of things. He used it to pass the time, but it also was used by him to keep his faith restored, and help him get through this really rough time in his life. He often prayed whenever something would go wrong, but at the same time he would just pray to pass some time, and talk to god. The last thing that occurred on the lifeboat that could have affected his mindset is his realization that his family was really gone. He started to understand this heart-wrenching fact in chapter 49, when he starts to decide to look through the rations of the lifeboat. His realization that they are dead causes him to have a decrease in hope of being found and he kicks into survival mode and doesn’t focus on being found but just staying alive. Pi was on the lifeboat for a very long time. 227 days to be exact. In that amount of time, many people tend to lose their sense of communication with others. It is typically highly unlikely that people can just come back into the normal world. However, when Pi returned, he was fully functioning, and was able to come back and do interviews, and later have a wife, children, and pets. That is pretty amazing when you think about it. Lastly, Pi is seen as the protagonist in the entire duration of the story That can prove that he had great determination and will to live because he came out a hero. He did a lot of really great things whilst on the