227 days. 227 days of starvation and dehydration. 227 days of isolation and fear. 227 days of delirium and anguish. These things are only a fraction of what Pi experienced while stranded on the Pacific Ocean for 227 days. The Life of Pi is a Canadian adventure novel written by Yann Martel. The story is told in the perspective of the novel’s protagonist, Piscine Molitor Patel, known as Pi. In the novel, Pi recants his experiences of being lost at sea after being shipwrecked and alone with only himself, a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena and a 450 pound tiger named Richard Parker.
Eventually, Pi and Richard Parker are the only occupants left on the tiny lifeboat and the two must coexist with one another for survival. At the end of the novel, Pi reveals that each of the animals may represent actual people. The symbolism of the animals prove to be an integral part of Yann Martel’s Life of Pi as it is used as a coping mechanism for Pi and ensured his survival. The man behind the fantastical adventure novel, Yann Martel, was born June 25, 1963 in Salamanca, Spain. He is the first born to parents, Emile Martel and Nicole Perron.
His father was a diplomat for the Canadian government and his mother worked as a literary translator. The two were avid travelers; therefore, Martel was raised in various countries around the world, such as Canada, France, Spain, Mexico and Costa Rica. Martel worked several odd jobs which ranged from yard maintenance to restaurant dishwasher before he devoted his career to writing (British Council Writers). Being the frequent traveler like his parents, Martel spent thirteen months in India where he was richly inspired by the culture and religion. He often prayed at mosques and visited Hindu temples.
He also explored the many other religions as well stating that “round the corner from where the Hindu gods lived there was always a church or a mosque or a temple of another faith (Yann Martel). ” His passion for Hinduism led him to another interest: animals. Martel was entranced with how many animals that were featured in the Hindu religion. He began frequenting many of India’s zoos and studied the animals (Paul Liety). Many speculate this journey inspired The Life of Pi. Other works written by Martel include Self, Beatrice and Virgil, and The Children we Ate Last. The Life of Pi is sequestered into three parts.
Part one is set in Pi’s home town, Pondicherry, India. He tells of his life growing up in family’s zoo. He speaks fondly of the zoo, calling it his “paradise on earth (Martel 43). ” As a child, he was teased incessantly for his name, so he shortens it to “Pi. ” The change of name is one of many developments in Pi’s life. As he grows older, he becomes fascinated with religion, despite growing up in a non-religious home. His fascination extended so much so that he began practicing Hindu, Christianity, and Islam simultaneously, much to the distaste of his family and priests.
Part two begins with Pi’s father selling the family zoo to embark to Canada, along with selected few of animals. Disaster strikes, however, after a storm rips through the boat and sinks it. Pi is left stranded on a small life boat with a zebra with a broken leg, a hyena, an orangutan, and a tiger called Richard Parker. Due to several events, Pi and Richard Parker are the only ones left on the small life boat. Pushing his misery aside, Pi finds in himself the will to live. He trains Richard Parker and hunts for food, abandoning his vegetarian lifestyle*. The end of the novel is part three. Pi and Richard Parker land on the shores of Mexico.
Upon setting foot on land, Richard Parker runs into the jungle and never returns. Pi is rescued and offers another version of the events on the pacific in which the animals represent humans. In the first version of the story, the animals that were initially on the lifeboat with Pi and Richard Parker were a zebra, a hyena, and an orangutan. In the next version after the boat sunk, there is an injured Chinese soldier, Pi’s mother, a French chef, and Pi himself. Each of the animal characters represents one of the humans. Firstly, the zebra symbolizes the sailor. Both the zebra and the sailor are described as having great beauty.
He calls the zebra “a lovely animal with glowing wet markings (Martel 234)” and describes the sailor as being “beautiful… and [having] a shining complexion (Martel 630). ” The zebra and the sailor suffered miserable fates by severely breaking their legs and were eaten alive by the remaining survivors (Martel 234 and 630). Next, the orangutan is a representation of Pi’s mother. Pi describes the orangutan of possessing maternal instincts. The orangutan is a said to have had two sons. While on the lifeboat, the orangutan “unmistakably had [her sons] on her mind as she searched over the water… Martel 267). ”
Pi’s mother also had two sons, Pi and his brother Ravi. Ravi had not survived the shipwreck. Both the orangutan and Pi’s mother mourn the losses of her sons. Further examples of the maternal instincts the two possess, they both expressed contempt at the callous treatment of the young sailor and the zebra. The orangutan leapt to the defense of the zebra whilst the hyena began to devour it (Martel 269) and Pi’s mother nursed the sailor the best she could and displayed her scorn at the chef’s cruel actions by calling him a “selfish monster (Martel 579-634).
Furthermore, because of its ruthlessness, the hyena is depicted as the French chef. Repeatedly throughout the beginning of part two, Pi uses several negative connotations to describe the hyena. He calls it “ugly beyond redemption (Martel 248)” before going on to explain the animal’s typical traits. Pi narrates that “cannibalism is a common occurrence during the excitement of feeding [in hyenas]… it feels no disgust at this mistake. A hyena will drink from water even as it is urinating in it. Hyenas will snack on the excrement of herbivores with clucks of pleasure…
It’s an open question as to what hyenas won’t eat (Martel 250-251). ” These distasteful traits are similar to the chef’s own. In the story without the animals, Pi tells of an incident on the lifeboat; “he ate flies. The cook, that is… we had food to last us for weeks; we had fishing gear… yet there he was, swinging his arms and catching flies and eating them greedily… he was a disgusting man (Martel 629). ” This shows the correlation between the hyena and chef’s eagerness to eat anything, no matter what it is. Another characteristic the hyena and cook share is the cook’s willingness to cannibalize.
Not even a second after the sailor died, the chef butchered his body and devoured it, even using some pieces as bait (Martel 636-637). He then later moved on to killing Pi’s mother and cannibalizing some parts of her body (Martel 641). Like the hyena, he felt no remorse or disgust for his actions. Lastly, Pi himself is Richard Parker. Pi is vegetarian. He has never killed a living thing in his life. Richard Parker is a carnivore. His primal instinct is to kill. At a surface it is hard to see the similarities between the two. As the novel progresses, however, Pi slips more and more into Richard Parker’s way of life.
Pi explains, “you may be astonished in such a period I could go from weeping over the killing of fish to gleefully bludgeoning [a fish]… it is simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything even killing (Martel 392-393). ” Pi abandons his vegetarian life style to meat-eating like Richard Parker. Richard Parker is Pi’s animalistic side of himself. Pi struggles with this at the beginning as seen in when he kills his first fish. He “wept heartily for over [the fish’s] poor deceased soul… (Martel 388). ” Eventually, he slowly comes to acceptance and learns to coexist with these instincts. He learns to coexist with Richard Parker.
In the version without the animals, the events taken place are undoubtedly traumatic for anyone to experience. Pi chooses to replace the humans on the lifeboat with animals simply because Pi is used to the idea of animals killing each other for food. By Pi growing up living on a zoo, he is accustomed to the circle of life. He has been exposed to how animals eat one another. An example would when Pi’s father fed one the goats to the tigers (Martel 88). It is much easier to cope with seeing animals kill one another rather than seeing humans do so. In conclusion, the animals in the first story are symbols of humans in the second story.
The zebra and sailor suffered the fate of being eaten and they were both beautiful. The orangutan represents Pi’s mother because both mourn the loss of a son and demonstrate maternal instincts. The hyena symbolizes the chef because of their greed for any food they can find and their unabashed feelings of cannibalism. Finally, Richard Parker is a representation of Pi. The two have animal instincts that are essential for their survival. Pi chooses to replace humans with the animals because he is the accustomed to the idea of animals killing each other rather than humans.