he teaches Pi swimming. Mr. Patel is Pi’s father and a zookeeper, he teaches Pi about animals. Mrs. Patel is Pi’s mother and helps him in education. Ravi is Pi’s older, sarcastic brother and likes to tease and bully Pi. Mr. Kumar is a baker that influenced Pi to become Muslim. Father Martin influenced Pi to become Christian. All these characters give him faith and skills to help him continue his journey. The animal characters in this story have similar traits to a human. The tiger, Richard Parker, is very friendly toward Pi when he is not hungry and is always overprotective with anything in his territory. The hyena is very fast, sly, and greedy; when it sees its prey, the zebra and the orangutan, it will stop at nothing to get it. The orangutan is polite and is found on island of floating bananas. The zebra is innocent and an easy target for the hyena because he has a broken leg. These characters’ human like behavior help project how they think, act, and behave. Life of Pi has different settings. First, it takes place in Pondicherry. In Pondicherry, he lives most of his childhood there. He visits the Pondicherry Zoo, church, mosque, temple, and Mr. Kumar’s bakery often. Another important setting is the ocean in which Pi is stranded on. Next important setting is the carnivorous island. The last setting is in Mexico. These settings help Pi have experiences and help him choose subjects in college. In this story, Pi has many conflicts through out the story.
At the beginning of the story, he has many conflicts with the people at his school because they would tease him because of his name. He would have problems going to the mosque, temple, and church; because he practiced three religions. The next conflict is when he is stranded on a lifeboat with a tiger, hyena, zebra, and orangutan; and he doesn’t know how to survive. Then he fights himself to decide if he will live or not. Next he fights nature to survive; such as the sun, ocean, weather, and carnivorous island. These conflicts help story go on by giving more things to achieve. Life of Pi has two main themes. The first theme is humans act more like animals than they think. This is one of the major themes because Pi behaves like an animal to survive. He uses his instincts, turned into a non-vegetarian, and eats whatever he finds. The second major theme is friendship has no species, race, religion, shape, sizes, and color. This goes with the story because in the story he makes friends with Richard Parker and starts to train him. These two themes are important because they show the importance of
friendship. The literary devices in this story usually describe what is going around Pi. The author describes sounds, the tiger, and weather movements using similes. The author also describes religion and destination by metaphors. In addition, the author describes thoughts sharks, waves, and darkness through personification. The literary devices in the book project pictures of what is happening around Pi. Life of Pi is an interesting novel to read. It has many characters. Life of Pi has several conflicts that make the plot line more interesting. It uses literary devices in a meaningful way. Life of Pi has various settings. This book is important to read because it shows lots of faith, religion, bonding, and other traits that help you go through life. Life of Pi is a book that I recommend to read.