Life Of Pi Rhetorical Analysis

Imagine being trapped in a confined alteration of your natural habitat. An alteration created by a foreign species who are convinced that they know what’s best for you. Seems like living a nightmare, doesn’t it? This is exactly what Yann Martel claims to believe be good for the animals in, “Life of Pi.” He creates zoos, a confined and controlling place and turns them to sanctuaries in the reader’s mind. Behold, fellow readers, this is the rawest form of manipulation.
Yann Martel fails to present his argument objectively, especially since the voice he writes about grew up in a zoo (Pi’s parents were zookeepers.) Martel’s writing is obviously inclined towards the sentiments of zookeepers and not the animals’.
Martel says that animals are “conservative,” and “reactionary,” and that they do not want to roam around, that they wish to stay in a constant place equipped like their natural habitat. Let’s say that this is true, even then no one would wish to be taken from their natural habitat and put into a faulty, mimicking artificial one, however constant the latter may be.
“In a zoo we do for animals what we have done for ourselves with houses: we bring together in a small place what in the wild is spread out.” Ah! The irony of this statement seems to be leaking out in floods. If that animal’s natural habitat has resources spread out, this should be a stark indicator to us ‘scientific’ human beings that animals are meant to roam around freely and not in a constrained