Life Of Pi Essay English Literature Essay

Life Of Pi Essay English Literature EssayLife of Pi, written by Yann Martel, is an try Novel about a 16 year-old boy addressed Pi who , along with his family, gets carrywrecked. The theme is about struggling to survive against all odds. Only Pi and or so animals survive. The book is divided into three crashs After the authors note, part 1 tells about Pis young life and his love of animals and religion. Part 2 is the main part of the book which describes the sinking of the ship which is carrying Pi, his family, the crew and some zoo animals. Pis family perish and Pi is left alone to survive with some animals. Eventually he manages to nark land. In part 3 he tells the story of his adventures but is not believed and he retells the story using humans instead of animals. The reader is left to piddle away his own mind up regarding which is the more credible story. In Yann Martels Life of Pi, symbolic representation plays an important part.Throughout the story, the discolor orangi sh appears many times. The color orange symbolizes survival and hope. Pi himself keeps hope when he is all alone on his lifeboat. He wants to survive no matter what happens. When the ship (Tsimtsum) sinks the Chinese crewman patron him by giving Pi a lifejacket with an orange whistle the lifeboat which was essential for his survival was also orange. In a flash forward at the closing of part one before the ships sinks the narrator describes visiting adult Pi and his family at Pis home in Canada.Shes holding an orange twat in her arms. dickens front legs sticking straight up and deeply sunk head be all that is visible of it above her crossed arms The rest of the cat is hanging all the way down to the floor. The animal seems quite relaxed about being stretched on the rack in this manner.(page 89)Usha (Pis daughter) holds an orange cat. This gives the reader a stop that Pi will survive the catastrophe. The orange cat symbolizes Richard Parker the Bengal tiger, who helps Pi to surv ive during his 227days at sea. The tiger, the lifeboat and the whistle (all orange) all contribute to the survival of Pi and give condescend during emotional difficult times.Pi explains how closely religion and zoology ar aligned and he uses zoos as a symbol for religion.I know zoos are no longer in peoples favorable graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about large-mindeddom plague them both.(page 29)Some people consider themselves to be free from any belief or religious system, just like others misunderstand that the wild is not free for an animal. Zoos are often critized because they take wild, noble animals from their natural habitat and put them into boring domesticated cages. Pi vehemently disagrees he finds that animals are creatures of habit and will adjust to their new caged environment. In the zoo they dumbfound all their needs compressed into a safe environment. This is, according to Pi, heaven for animals. In the same way religion offers people boundaries within which they feel conceptive and safe. When Pi was desperate on his lifeboat he turned to religion. He had in fact three, Christianity, Islam and Hinduism.Pi explains I practiced religious rituals that I adapted to the circumstances- solitudinarian Masses without priests or consecrated Communion hosts, darshans without murtis, and pujas with turtle meat for Prasad, acts of devotion to Allah not knowing where Mecca was and getting my Arabic wrong. They brought me comfort. (page 187)When you believe in God or have faith in something you are certain of yourself. Unlike atheists who do not believe in anything which makes them uncertain, Pi embraces religion to gain certainty The repeat above bears this out.Another symbol in the book is Pi which is the main character Piscines nickname. Pis full name is Piscine Molitor Patel. When he was still in original school kids sometimes used totease him by calling him Pissing instead of Piscine. Pi got his name from the swimming pool of Paris, Piscine des Tourelles and wherefore children found Piscine hard to pronounce.My name isPiscine Molitor PatelKnown to all as-I double underlined the first two letters of my given name-Pi PatelFor good measure I added(Page 31)When Pi started going to secondary school he decided that to prevent people from calling himPissing he decided to call himself Pi (see quote). The name Pi is a very unusual name and it alsobrings a great deal of symbolism with it. Pi is the Greek scrap for sixteen and Pi was sixteen whenhe got shipwrecked. The number Pi is used to determine the circumference of a circle with theformula . There is also symbolism behind this because the correlationbetween the linear journey to Canada and the cycles of doubt and faith are experienced by Pi. Thenumber Pi is a very tangled number. In fact, it has so many decimal places that it is too difficult for human minds to accurately comprehend it, just as it says in the book that some realities/situations are just too difficult to face. Pis experiences are explained rationally by Pi. Pi uses pi () to figure out the circumference of the algae island.In brief it batch be said that symbolism plays a big role in the story Life of Pi. The symbols help us to truly understand Pis fight for survival. The color orange, the animals, religion and pi are just a few examples of how symbolism is used in the story. Even though Pi changes his account of the sinking of the ship and his survival, (by substituting people for animals) the events remain consistent with his original story. Storytelling (with symbolism incorporated) helps Pi to rationalize his dramatic experience and overcome despair.