In How to Read Literature like a Professor, Foster also talks about allegories. The relationship between the tiger and Pi can be considered an allegory. A lot of the time spent on the boat is the classic fight of good vs. evil. Pi, seen as a naive child who could do no wrong, takes the role of the good character. Richard Parker represents the savage “dark side” and takes the role of evil. As the story progresses you see that each could not survive without the other. Richard Parker showed Pi that he could not have survived by being the sweet faultless boy who could not kill and eat a fish. Pi showed Richard Parker that he is inferior to Pi by training him and getting him food. The battle between the two at the beginning digressed to a mutual realization that good cannot always conquer evil and evil…
the hyena feels no disgust at this mistake” (Martel 146). Animals kill. It is in their nature to do so, it is their basic instincts. The hyena fed on the zebra and Pi understood that it was a necessity. This is the natural order of life, it must kill for survival. As for the chef, the Chinese sailor became a source of food. This was cannibalism. Just as the hyena ate the zebra, the chef maliciously munched the Chinese sailor. He was met with disgust and indignation. A scene Pi beholded with his own eyes, a deep-seeded hatred was planted. A painful blow at Pi’s spirit, a disintegration of innocence. At this point, Pi’s would have lost all hope in humanity if it was not for his anthropomorphization of the hyena. The hyena was chosen to impersonated the chef for its similar traits of cruelty, vileness, and savagery. Pi creates this illusion maintain his spirit in times of darkness. This new reality is his coping mechanism, a way to accept the partial truth of everything. It allows Pi to go forth without the thought of how low a human can become. The reality is that man can do the worst things in order to carry on…
He was not speaking to a tiger but to a French man who survived on a lifeboat just like Pi. Pi didn’t realize he was speaking to another person because the lack of nutrition caused his eyesight to fade. The french man, suffering from the same things as Pi, has resorted to murder to survive. He has killed two people, a man and a woman. His desperation makes him realize that in order for himself to survive, the others need to die. He does not feel any guilt, saying, “It was them or me” (247). Because his will to live was so strong, two innocent people were…
Chapter 91 demonstrates the way that humans are not so far from the rest of the animal kingdom. Richard Parker, who symbolizes Pi’s primal instincts, had just killed a man. Pi, representing the civilized side of himself, felt sorry for the man, but he still stole all of his possessions, used his body as fish bait, and ate part of the man. He says “I will further confess that driven by the extremity of my need and the madness to which it pushed me, I ate some of [the man’s] flesh.” (284).…
Darwin's theory—the survival of the fittest, emphasizes the fierce and somewhat ruthless struggle of survival among the species and the individuals. It is indeed true in most cases. But in Life of Pi, it describes a picture of human and animal's co-existence in a more harmonious way and proves that their struggle and contradiction are not so irreconcilable. In this movie, Pi was taught at his childhood by his father, that the animals, esp, the tiger, etc are not his friends. So at the first of the drift, Pi didn't intend to co-exist with the tiger. He had had the chance to kill it. But his virtuous nature didn't allow himself to do so. So he made the final decision to co-exist with this ferocious animal. He supplied the tiger with food and fresh water to survive so that he himself would not become the dinner of it. The threat to each other and the certain kind of peaceful co-existence helped them persevere to be saved at last. Even Pi himself admitted that "the fear of Richard Parker kept me alert. I wouldn't survive without Richard…
Romeo And Juliet is an amazing play written by the all knowing William Shakespeare. It is a love story/tragedy that includes the two lovebirds Romeo and Juliet. They are from two different households that are enemies; Romeo is of the Montague family and Juliet is a Capulet. This makes it close to impossible for them to be together especially since Romeo killed Juliet’s cousin Tybalt whom Juliet’s parents loved very much. In the end, the couple ends up killing themselves over their “suicidal love” for each other. Over the course of the play, Romeo was supposedly in love twice. Once with Rosaline and then again of course with Juliet. At the beginning of the play he was infatuated with Rosaline and claimed that he would never get over her and…
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…
In this quote, Pi is explaining how he made it through his journey on the lifeboat. It wasn’t his human nature that saved him, but his animal Richard Parker. The conflict Man v. Self appears in this passage. He has two sides, the innocent boy that he was before the ship sank, and his dark, animalistic side that will do anything to stay alive. Another theme going on in this passage is Man v. Nature. Pi has an animalistic side, Richard Parker, that comes out when only when he does something that is necessary for a means of survival. This passage also shows how there are two sides to Pi. One side was the innocent vegetarian one and the other side was the vicious, animalistic side he had. which came out when Pi was hungry. Richard Parker symbolizes…
First off, Life of Pi teaches that anything is possible with God and constant perseverance. Pi manages to live on a twenty-six foot lifeboat with a 450 pound Bengal tiger for a stunning 227 days! He can only do this by keeping the constant belief that God is present. While in India, Pi states, “Religion will save us” (Martel 27). He keeps this belief the entire voyage. For example, Pi states, “I practised religious rituals that I adapted to the circumstances. They brought me comfort; that is certain. But it was hard, oh, it was hard. Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love – but sometimes it was so hard to love” (Martel 208). Despite Pi’s low spirits, he continues to trust that God has a plan and will get him out of the current situation. Not only is Pi one with God, but also one with nature. He is deeply thankful for every sea animal he kills, using every part of the animal’s dead body. He even goes as far as drinking a dead sea turtle’s blood. Life of Pi is a passionate story that strongly reaffirms the existence of a God and for this reason, should not be…
Furthermore, the idea of mankind only believing what we want to believe is not only shown and explored in this book but also experienced after reading the book. In this book the two Japanese man who interrogate Pi once he is in the hospital didn’t believe the story with the animals since it did not make sense to them for their report, but in the end they admitted that they would like to believe it. To add to this, after reading the book the reader wants to believe and most the time manages to believe the animal story, since it is less violent and does not reflect the…
This is where the beautiful allegory comes into play. On a surface level, Richard Parker is dangerous because of the simple fact he is a huge 450-pound tiger. He can physically harm Pi “limb to limb, organ by organ” (158) with his massive teeth and claws. On a deeper level, Richard Parker is metaphorically Pi himself. Martel allegorically comments on humanity and life here say that you are your biggest tempter. You must believe in yourself in order to pursue on in life’s journeys or else you have no reason to keep moving forward. Perhaps this is why Pi created the animal story. After telling the Japanese men the two stories, Pi asks them which story they preferred. They both answered “the story with the animals” (317). Why? The story with the animals is more pleasant and meaningful. It is easier to take in than the awful and blunt nonfictional story. Although on both literal and metaphorical senses Pi makes the archetypal decision to survive, in the story with the animals it is as if Pi has more of a purpose of living because of Richard Parker. He rationalizes that in order to survive he must tame Richard Parker so he will not eat Pi. In an allegorical sense, Pi has to tame himself to no eat away at this physical and emotional mind or else he will die. This gives him life in a sense. In one scene Pi and Richard Parker find themselves in a very intense storm. Pi describes the lightning they see and how “that close encounter with electrocution and third-degree burns as one of the few times during his (sic.) ordeal when he felt genuine happiness” (233). The reason he feels happiness is because the lightning represents life. It is as if a breathe of fresh air is overcoming him through lightning, and its beautiful. It gives him hope and inspiration. Through Richard Parker and “breathes of life” like the lightning Pi finally finds things worth living for which, through the help of God, keeps him…
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…
After discovering the simplicity in catching turtle, Pi began to eat them. More specifically, Pi butchered the turtles and drank the “sweet lassi” (212) that would spurt from the turtle’s neck. Not only did turtles become Pi’s “favorite dish” (212), but it also ate everything that turtles had to offer, whether it be their liver, heart, lungs, flesh, or intestine. Pi’s methods for killing the turtles and his behavior when eating the turtles showed how Pi was slowly transforming into a version of Richard Parker. His eating habits were becoming animalistic and they continued to worsen as Pi spent more time stranded out in the Pacific. In addition to ravenously eating his prey, Pi’s mood began to reflect the amount of food he ingested. Once Pi’s rations were gone, “anything was good to eat” (213). Instead of using his morals and sense of reasoning, Pi would just eat anything he could find, regardless of the taste. Even Richard Parker’s feces caused Pi’s mouth to water. Pi’s need for food numbed his mind from making reasonable decisions. In Pi’s mind, everything was edible, much like how animals perceive everything to be…
* This relates to the topic to growth and adapting because Pi is forced to go against what he has been taught and has to convert from being a full vegetarian to eating a turtle and human organs to keep himself alive.…
The world’s natural resources are balanced by the humans need for survival. Martel suggests this theory in his book “The life of Pi” because it can relate to how humans today go in a balance life relationship with the world’s natural resources. Although humans currently comprise only a minuscule proportion of the total living biomass on Earth, the human effect on nature is disproportionately large. Because of the extent of human influence, the boundaries between what humans regard as nature and "made environments" is not clear cut except at the extremes. Even at the extremes, the amount of natural environment that is free of discernible human influence is presently diminishing at an increasingly rapid pace. Pi the main character shares a life boat with Richard Parker (the tiger) when their ship sank to the bottom of ocean. The fear Pi grows starts to increase every moment he shares with the tiger because of being eaten or attacked. Martel shows how when things go out of balance in the world then the way of life starts to cooperate for benefit of surviving.…