Free Will In Yann Martel's Life Of Pi

Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, once said, "Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you is determinism; the way you play, it is free will." This idea is shown by how Pi used his free will to choose to think critically and positively to survive a desperate near death situation. He has to survive on the sea with a Bengal tiger in his boat for 227 days after his family was killed in a boat accident. Yann Martel’s Life of Pi influences spiritual advancements for secular readers through Pi 's balance of religion and science in his survival journey, and also the free democratic choice it gives to them. Even with the situation of a Bengal tiger on a survival boat in the middle of nowhere, Pi still holds

Later in the book, Pi explains another story to the Japanese because they would not believe his story, which shows that temporal people views the world in a monotonous way and they choose to live a life of uncertainty and doubt, without any tale to guide them. Yann Martel gives the readers a democratic choice, which one is the better story? The one with humans tells us the evil nature of man and is what people want it to be: "dry, yeastless factuality"(336). Even though the story with the animals does not seem accurate, but it gives Pi hope in desperate times. The choice, one of the reasons Life of Pi appeals to secular readers; it gives "the desire to believe rather that the belief itself(Ishmael).” When Pi reaches the depths of his despair, the only thing he could do was to escape the physical reality of hopeless endurance on the lifeboat, and so he soars into the realm of imagination. At his lowest point, Pi has nothing left but the remaining sources of salvation available to him: faith and creativity. So Pi turns to God and invents the better story which pulles him out of the pit of misery and becomes his escape hatch. Pi’s better story is not just about believing in God but reconciling the prophets of science and religion(Stephen). Moreover, by looking to their God through Pi’s eyes, outside of the rules and boundary forced by uniformed religion, secular and religious readers may both glimpse a new concept of God’s dwelling