Survival And Survival In Yann Martel's Life Of Pi

Yann Martel’s book, Life of Pi, whether the story is mostly fact or mostly fiction, presents us with a very large fact of life. It is found within two recurring motifs that are very important: adaptation and survival. Martel gives plenty of examples for both motifs using humans and animals. The lesson he is trying to teach with these two motifs is that adaptation is necessary for survival. Already in the first half of the book it is clear to the readers that Pi is a very open minded protagonist. He is able to adopt many ideas and understand many people. One enormous example of this is his trio of religions. Rather than stick with one religion and limit himself to one belief system, Pi has embraced and openly practices three religions. At …show more content…
The ability to adapt becomes so much more important when their survival is put on the line. Pi loses some of his compassion. He adapts to become more focused on survival than other moral values that he previously held. He also realizes that the Bengal Tiger in his lifeboat and himself need to learn to coexist as peacefully as possible. To do so, Pi adopts some animal characteristics such as marking his territory: “I splashed my urine on the tarpaulin and over the locker lid to stake my claim” (172). By way of contrast, Richard Parker’s natural instinct to kill moves into an effort to trust Pi. To show Pi that he is willing to adapt and move away from his natural instinct to kill, Richard Parker makes prusten. Martel explains to his audience, most of whom did not grow up in a zoo around tigers and so do not know what prusten means, that “Prusten is the quietest of tiger calls, a puff through the nose to express friendliness and harmless intention” (164). Both Pi and Richard Parker realize that to survive they need to adapt to their surroundings and the other being sharing the small habitat of the