Life of Pi Analysis Essay

A. Example oneIn the too soon stages of animation of Pi, Martel mentions a place that Pi and Ravi had gone to visit dapple on vacation. While looking aimlessly through the window, they noticed common chord hills. On top of one hill was a catholic church, other a Hindu temple, and the other a Muslim mosque. Each hill portrays for to each one one of the religions in Pis complex faith. The hills represent Pis struggles to understand each religion. Later on, we find out that Pi is caught in between these three religions. He couldnt completely slue any of the religions, so each one kept hawkish for a place in his brio. In How to involve Literature wish a Professor, Foster rep beatedly says how symbols usually have more than one thinkable meaning. So another mathematical meaning for the three hills is that each of the warring religions has a different part in his life. The religions argon separated by being on each hill, but they live simultaneously in the same general area. Just as, in Pis life, each religion has its separate area of his sagaciousness, but they all partake in his life.B. Example 2In How to Read Literature like a Professor, Foster also talks about allegories. The relationship between the tiger and Pi eject be considered an allegory. A lot of the time dog-tired on the boat is the classic fight of good vs. vicious. Pi, assistn as a naive child who could do no wrong, takes the role of the good character. Richard Parker represents the unusedcat well dark side and takes the role of evil. As the story progresses you see that each could not survive without the other. Richard Parker showed Pi that he could not have survived by being the sweet faultless male child who could not kill and eat a fish. Pi showed Richard Parker that he is inferior to Pi by procreation him and getting him food. The battle between the two at the beginning digressed to a mutual realization that good cannot always conquer evil and evil cannot always conquer goo d. Its the plain truth without Richard Parker, I wouldnt be alive today to tell you my story. (Martel, 164)C. Example 3colors play a very important role in Life of Pi. The color orangish represents hope and survival. He had an orangeness life buoy and an orange whistle. If there hadnt been a life buoy, I wouldnt have lasted a minute. (Martel, 117) There was an orange tarpaulin that he secured himself in on the life boat. All of these objects helped him survive the sinking and gave him hope for proximo survival. Richard Parker mightve been the biggest thing keeping him alive, and he was a 450 pound orange Bengal tiger. Orange is the color of Hinduism as well which shows how religion still gives him hope. The near color is green. It is the symbolic color of Islam. Muslims believe that green represents home and safety. The alga Island was a blinding green and kept him safe from starvation for a day and let him be on solid ground like his home. Green and orange represent two of the three religions that kept Pi fighting for life. Green gave him safety and a sense of home and orange gave him hope for survival.2. Chapter 5 Now, Where Have I Seen Her Before?A. Example 1Theres no such thing as a wholly original work of literature. (Foster, Chapter 5) Foster presented the idea that, knowingly or not, every author takes ideas from other stories and twists them into their own. In the case of Life of Pi, Yann Martel may not have been thinking about any other circumstance piece of literature, but Life of Pi, specifically the sinking of the Tsimtsum, is very mistakable to a very famous story known as big. The Titanic was an enormous ship that was thought never to sink in a million years. According to piscine, the Tsimtsum could not sink either. For days the ship had pushed on, bullishly negligent to its surroundings. The sun shone, rain fell, winds blew, currents flowed, the sea built up hills, the sea remove up valleysthe Tsimtsum did not care. (Martel, Chapt er 38) But nonetheless, both the Tsimtsum and the Titanic ended up at the bottom of the ocean with a great fight.B. Example 2Later in the story, Pi reveals a second interpretation of the septet month journey. He replaces the brutes with hu existences like his mother and the cook. In this side, Pi portrays himself as the ferocious tiger, Richard Parker, essentially becoming his doppelganger. While Pi was on the inescapable lifeboat, he was trapped with Richard Parker. In accordance to Fosters idea that no literature is original, this version could be extremely comparable to(predicate) to The Picture of Dorian Gray and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian is forced to deal with an evil side of him aft(prenominal) he trades his life for youth. In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jekyll accidentally creates a concoction that gives him another personality called Mr. Hyde who commits crimes and can easily be named evil. In all three cases, the protagonist is go abou t with an uncontrollable alternate personality.C. Example 3Another obvious equivalence is the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast. One can clearly see the resemblance between Life of PI and Beauty and the Beast if they turn the plot of both stories. Pi is a standard Indian boy with a somewhat eccentric father who goes through a series of unfortunate events. These events somehow lead to him being stuck in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. With time, the tiger becomes his friend and his savior from other wild animals. Belle is a normal young woman with an unusual father. She is also dragged through a series of unfortunate events in which she finds herself stranded in the middle of a timberland kept in a castle with another unidentified wild beast that also saves her from a pack of wild dogs and also stepwise becomes her mean friend and lifelong companion. It is easily assumed that piscine and Belle, and Richard Parker and Beast, are the same. The point is this stories grow out of ot her stories, poems out of other poems. (Foster, Chapter 5)3. Chapter 26 Is He Serious? And Other IroniesA. Example 1In How to Read Literature like a Professor, Foster says, Irony trumps everything. (Foster, Chapter 26) I was named after a swimming pool. Quite peculiar considering my parents never took to water. (Martel, Chapter 3) Water is the fixings of torture in Pis existence. The very basics of Piscines life are ironic. He is named after a swimming pool, but throughout the early parts of his life, he is tortured because of his name. His parents and the lie down of his family are killed by drowning after a shipwreck. He spends the most concentrated seven months of his life surrounded by water. During that time, he comes close to dying(p) of dehydration because he has no water to drink. The whole time he has an abundance of water, but since it is salt water, it will only make his station worse. He needs water to live, but it has been the main factor in most of the traged ies he has experienced. The irony of Pis relationship with water trumps everything else in the book, just as Foster said it would.B. Example 2It seemed the presence of a tiger had saved me from a hyena- surely a textbook example of jumping from the frying pan into the fire. (Martel 136) It is ironic that the tiger, the animal thought to pose the most danger, saves him from the less dangerous hyena. It is thought that Richard Parker would be the end of Pi because he is the most ferocious animal, but instead he becomes Pis savior from the other animals. It is ironic that at the beginning of the book, Pi and the rest of the people surrounding him have violence over the animals. Just beyond the ticket booth Father had painted on the wall in bright red letters the motility DO YOU KNOW WHICH IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL IN THE menagerie? An arrow pointed to a small curtain. There were so many eager, mirthful hands that pulled at the curtain that we had to replace it regularly. Behind it was a mirror. (Martel 31) Pi came from a world where he was always in a stake of superiority, but now on the boat, he is helpless and inferior to the tiger and the other animals. I am alone and orphaned, in the middle of the Pacific, intermission onto an oar, an adult tiger in front of me, sharks beneath me, and a beset raging above me. (Martel 107)C. Example 3At the start of the book, Piscine is seen as a sweet desolate nave boy. In his mind and religions, doing bad things never led to good things, so he remained innocent and faultless. He held doing the right thing and never the wrong very close to him. Ironically, all of his values went out the window by the end of the book. At first he wouldnt eat meat because of his religions, but his food on the boat was fish. Murder used to be the worst possible thing someone could do, but he murdered the other man on the lifeboat in order to stay alive. He loved beau ideal and his religions so much, but he finds himself screami ng and yelling at God. In all of these instances, he loses his innocence, morals, and everything he treasured before the wreck, but without qualification the hard decisions he had, he wouldnt have survived. In a way, his loss of innocence is what kept him alive.