In Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, we will learn how animals and humans may share the same characteristics. According to Pi, we can see that whether it was a tiger, zebra, hyena, and an orangutan or a cook, sailor, a mother, and Pi, the story works with both sets of characters because humans and animals are very similar. Sometimes we do not realize that our actions in our everyday lives are feral but in this day and age it has become normal in society. Humans and animals are very alike, but in the end we all share the same desire to survive even though we do it differently. An animal can represent a human by linking the characteristics together and comparing. Humans are the most dangerous animal of all since we are driven differently than animals.
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For example, the sailor is unable to speak to the group due to a language barrier, much like zebras, that makes him a passive herbivore whose life will end quickly since he can not fight back. As we come to find out the sailor cannot speak english, the idea of the zebra being injured right at the beginning of the shipwreck is very ironic since if the sailor is unable to communicate it is as though he is handicapped from the beginning like the zebra. The cook is cruel and feral, much like the hyena, an animal that is known as a scavenger will make do with any means of survival. As the story progresses, the cook shows more of his feral side as he begins to eat bits of the dead sailor to survive before the meat spoils. Pi’s mother, Gita, is represented as a caring maternal orangutan who ends up getting attacked by the cook (hyena) but ends up killed and decapitated. Gita’s animal is the orangutan in Pi’s story because primates are the closest animal that reminds humans of us, so, Pi uses an animal that reminds him most of his own mother. Richard Parker is the bengal tiger that Pi spends the majority of his adventure with. Richard is a symbolism of Pi’s feral instincts. To survive, Pi must act like a tiger and do whatever it takes to survive even if it means to kill another person, “A person can get used to anything, even to killing.” (P.205).. As Pi tells the investigators the second story, he then tells them that Pi is the tiger and that Richard was simply another version of him that made the story more palatable for those he would tell first story to. In a brief moment in the book, Pi ends up sailing to an island full of algae. On the island we meet meerkats, and lots of them. These meerkats are brainwashed, they simply do what others do and act like robots who all follow one another. The meerkats in the story represents religion as a
For example, the sailor is unable to speak to the group due to a language barrier, much like zebras, that makes him a passive herbivore whose life will end quickly since he can not fight back. As we come to find out the sailor cannot speak english, the idea of the zebra being injured right at the beginning of the shipwreck is very ironic since if the sailor is unable to communicate it is as though he is handicapped from the beginning like the zebra. The cook is cruel and feral, much like the hyena, an animal that is known as a scavenger will make do with any means of survival. As the story progresses, the cook shows more of his feral side as he begins to eat bits of the dead sailor to survive before the meat spoils. Pi’s mother, Gita, is represented as a caring maternal orangutan who ends up getting attacked by the cook (hyena) but ends up killed and decapitated. Gita’s animal is the orangutan in Pi’s story because primates are the closest animal that reminds humans of us, so, Pi uses an animal that reminds him most of his own mother. Richard Parker is the bengal tiger that Pi spends the majority of his adventure with. Richard is a symbolism of Pi’s feral instincts. To survive, Pi must act like a tiger and do whatever it takes to survive even if it means to kill another person, “A person can get used to anything, even to killing.” (P.205).. As Pi tells the investigators the second story, he then tells them that Pi is the tiger and that Richard was simply another version of him that made the story more palatable for those he would tell first story to. In a brief moment in the book, Pi ends up sailing to an island full of algae. On the island we meet meerkats, and lots of them. These meerkats are brainwashed, they simply do what others do and act like robots who all follow one another. The meerkats in the story represents religion as a