The idea of archetypal heroes finds its ways into countless prominent religions, literature, films, and epics. There are many types of heroes, dating all the way back to ancient times, namely Hercules of Rome or Prometheus of Greek mythology, to modern heroes, such as the Spiderman or the Hulk. However, one may perceive some characters in a story as heroes, while others may not. These characters may own some key attributes of a hero, but may lack others. An example of this is the main protagonist of the novel The Life of Pi, Piscine Molitor Patel, by Yann Martel. After selling the zoo in India, Pi and his family decide to move to Canada. During their trip to Canada, their cargo ship encounters a storm that sinks the ship. In the wake of the shipwreck, Pi is the sole human survivor as he boards a lifeboat, and spends what seems like an eternity out in the Pacific ocean in the company of an adult tiger. Throughout his 227-day journey, Pi becomes a clear archetypal hero.
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.
Survival doesn’t always come easy, most of the time you will have to make decisions that will make others judge you, whether you like it or not. For example, if someone left their friend to save themselves, should these people be held accountable for their actions? People shouldn’t be held accountable for those actions because when it comes to life or death that’s so much pressure to that person so of course they’re going to make mistakes and everyone makes mistakes we just have to learn from them. However, people will argue that if they put themselves in that situation they should be held accountable for their action
Did you know that you could compare any two entities and they will always have some similar traits? You could examine two completely opposite things and find similarities between them. For instance, Heaven and Hell are considered to be completely opposite, but one could say that a similarity between the two is that they are worlds which exist in the afterlife. Deliberately or not, Martel's novel, Life of Pi, and Blake's poem, The Tyger, have countless similarities and differences to each other. Similarities among the two consist of the element of ferocity through the tigers and the involvement of the supernatural, while the differences include the perspective of the tigers.
Thesis: Yann Martel is conveying readers that critical thinking, inspirations, and love are the important keys to survival.
Tiger Wood’s embodiment of the tragic hero begins with this noble stature. From a young age, Tiger was known as a golfing prodigy. He began playing from the age of two, and by the time he was 12 years old, he was beating his
The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell is a short story that depicts two hunters hoping to hunt in the Amazon that happen to come across a notorious island known as “Ship-trap” Island. One of the hunters wash up on shore of the Island and is introduced to feeling of being hunted. The author uses this character to show sympathy and compassion towards hunted animals.
If faced with great challenges would you choose to stick by your morals, or do whatever it takes to survive? This is the same question Piscine Molitor Patel or “pi” as he likes to be called, faced. From being stranded at sea for 227 days, to losing his family, Pi’s story is truly extraordinary. Through the use of personification, similes and metaphors proves that hardships in life can truly change someone. Yann Martel describes Pi’s journey with great detail making a story that will truly make you believe in god.
Envision being stranded at sea for two hundred and twenty seven days. Would you survive? This is precisely what the main character faces in Life of Pi by Yann Martel. The book tells the story of Piscine Motor Patel and his obstacles as he is stranded on a lifeboat with a 450 pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker- they had been on a Japanese cargo ship called the Tsimtsum until it sank in a “monstrous metallic burp” in the middle of the Pacific ocean (121). Piscine, otherwise known as Pi, goes against all odds as he fights for his survival. Martel powerfully demonstrates that an individual’s humanity can be chipped away through traumatic isolation; throughout his journey, Pi digresses from predatory behavior to desperation to cannibalism.
Throughout Child by tiger, the author illustrates the racism in 1930’s society. They highlight the horrors that would happen on a daily basis, due to skin color alone. While this sort of action is seen as horrible today, there was a large majority of people in the 1930’s that saw racism as just a normal part of life. The author uses juxtaposition and symbolism to demonstrate oppression.
“The Story of Keesh” and the “Life of Pi”, both discuss having to survive in an extreme environment. How do Keesh and Pi survive in an extreme environment?
In Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, an Indian boy named Pi is stranded on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean for 227 days with a tiger, named Richard Parker, to keep him company. While Pi is on the boat, he has to take care of himself and Richard Parker to avoid being killed by the tiger. Being all alone in the middle of the Pacific with a tiger strikes fear into Pi. He says, “...If your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you” (162). Fear can be best recognized as the ‘unknown’ because when we do not know something, our minds create the worst possible situation. This quote means that in order truly defeat
In the story, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, the main character, Pi, is changed as a person after he must kill a flying fish in order to survive. Through this, Pi’s religious morals changed as well as his personality overall. When Pi first tries to kill the fish he continues to hesitate, and has a hard time committing the action to take the life away. As stated in an excerpt, “Several times I started bringing the hatchet down, but I couldn’t complete the action…A lifetime of peaceful vegetarianism stood between me and the willful beheading of a fish” (Martel 87). Throughout the beginning of Pi’s life, he is told not to kill any animal due to his vegetarian values. However, in this scenario, he has no choice. Through this, Pi transforms into a
In the book “Life of PI” there are two versions or stories, one is about how PI makes friends with a tiger on the lifeboat and the other animals eat each other, and also the other version where Pi ends up eating the other humans. I believe that the second version is true.
The theme in Life of Pi is without a doubt the hardships in order to survive. The whole novel is about enduring pain, hardships, starvation, dehydration and more. I believe the author wrote this novel to reveal the hardships one has to proceed through in order to keep living. Pi certainly shows how quick life can change from ordinary to a long lasting nightmare. Surely this can happen to anyone, but not everyone can survive the long lasting nightmare. Not everyone can stand eating or drinking unpleasant substances, survive while being blind, and live next to carnivorous creatures. Pi on the other hand withstands all this misfortune for nearly a year. Additionally, another theme that comes to mind is that survival instincts result in some