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Archetype In Life Of Pi

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Mental Battles at Sea
227. The number of days Pi survived at sea with little food, little water and, even a Bengal Tiger..or so he thought. Life of Pi, written by Yann Martel, describes the journey of a young boy named Piscine Patel, also known as Pi, whose father owns a zoo in India. When his family decides to sell the zoo and move to Canada, the freighter they travel in breaks down and sinks. Luckily, Pi gets on a life boat just in time but weirdly enough, with four zoo animals who were also in the freighter. Pi continues his journey by learning how to live in a small space with these animals and even training one of them. In the end Pi reveals another story with people replacing the animals that were on the lifeboat before. Pi had initially used animals which best represented the people who were really in the boat. This showed how throughout the story, since these people were put into a life threatening situation, they had revealed a more primal side. Life of Pi is accompanied with various symbols, with each …show more content…

The shadow self archetype represents the traits that one doesn’t like in themselves or even tries to cover up. The shadow self of Pi is especially shown when Pi retells his story toward the end of the book. His story reveals that instead of the tiger eating the hyena, since Pi is revealed as Richard Parker, Pi really killed and ate the french cook. This is quite surprising since Pi is a vegetarian but his will to live and anger at the chef for killing one close to Pi overcomes him. We also see this is a shadow self since Pi used a tiger to describe that part of himself instead of admitting it was him. After this, Pi describes the killing of the cook/hyena surprisingly easy, this is the shadow self and survival instincts shining through as well. what does this say about pi? Has this changed him? Go into more depth, this seems a little rushed. Concluding

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