Yann Martel's Survival

A survivor is someone who is defined by outliving others in a time of death for others. If an interview was conducted with survivors from different situations they would come up with a diverse group of tips for survival, but many would be repeated. In the book Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why Laurence Gonzales has taken a collection of these common stretegies and created a survival book for any situation. Through this book you are able to connect similarities in two completely different situations. On one hand in the book Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, Pi is lost at sea after the boat he is on sinks and in the movie Touching the Void where Joe gets injured and has to make the trek down a 20,000 foot mountain alone. Despite having two …show more content…
Two that pertained to Pi’s situation are he wasn’t prone to high emotional states and he prayed and carried on in his faith while at sea. Being able to keep your cool in high stress situations is one way Pi kept his sanity. In Gonzales book he refers to this a having a “positive mental attitude” or being able to maintain your emotional state and not fluctuating emotions often (177, Gonzales). He was able to stay calm and collected in any of the situations he was in. One example of this is when Pi is on the lifeboat with the hyena is running laps around it. Pi states that he “could only watch” the hyena do this as he sits and wait for the unpredictable hyena to stop. Instead of going crazy and freaking out over this he just sits and waits (114, Martel). The longer Pi was on the boat the more he was able to set a routine he did every day and this was another reason he was able to stay calm. He kept doing what he knew and was able to have “relaxing moments” and “measures of calm and a little bit of hope” to help him through the journey (174,176, Martel). The second strategy that Pi uses to help him survive is his continued faith. Regardless of if there is a high force like a God focusing on praying allows you to “formally announce your needs” and helps you focus on taking actions needed to help you survive (180, Gonzales).The last item listed on the list of supplies found on the lifeboat is “1 God” (146, Martel). This shows that religion is a big part of Pi, not only does it make it on the list but it is the last item listed so you finish off the list with that item. Pi also uses prayer to motivate him to live. One of his many prayers starts off with “I was giving up. I would have given up- if a voice hadn’t made itself heard in my heart” (148, Martel). It continues on to say that you have made it this far you can’t and won’t give up because he has the power of God on his side. After that he