Orange Juice In Pirtel's Life Of Pi By Yann Martel

In the novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel, the main character Piscine Patel, “known to all as Pi Patel,” is a teenage Indian boy who grew up in a family-owned zoo (Martel 22). As the son of a zookeeper, Pi is around animals most of his life, which ultimately makes him aware of certain behaviors that the animals possess. For example, he recognizes that monkeys, especially Orange Juice, are friendly; whereas tigers, such as Richard Parker, were exceedingly hazardous. One day, Pi’s father unexpectedly tells him that they are moving to Canada and selling their animals. On his voyage to the New World, however, the cargo ship he was on encounters a storm and sinks; his two stories “account for the 227 days in between” the day that the ship sank and …show more content…
This story exemplifies traditional animal behavior as well as the natural aspects of the food chain. For example, the hyena eating the zebra is not an action that alerts the reader as an unacceptable means for survival. Even the hyena attacking the monkey, named Orange Juice, does not spark an immense amount of emotion, despite the fact that Pi was friends with Orange Juice. By beginning with the story of the animals, Martel shows that it is ordinary for animals to murder and eat each other as a means of survival. Because the reader becomes numb to the savage acts of the animals, this story lessens the barbarity of cannibalism. Not only does it lessen the violence of humans murdering and devouring each other, but it also weakens the disgust of eating live, uncooked animals. For example, eating a live rat is socially unacceptable and disgusting; however, a “squealing rat disappeared into [Richard Parker’s] mouth like a baseball into a catcher’s mitt” (Martel 153). He also eats live fish which, although is unheard of for humans, is a societal norm for numerous animals. This metaphorical story ultimately provides the animal perspective on survival at sea, causing the human story to seem less …show more content…
With support from his initial story, the cook slaughtering and eating Pi’s mother and the Japanese sailor seem less barbaric since the hyena underwent a similar scenario. Although most people view Pi killing the cook for revenge as an appropriate consequence, the audience feels slightly less emotion because of the exposure to the gruesome deeds in the first story. Despite the fact that the story first story is not factually true, which Pi justifies in the end when he tells the Japanese men not to worry about driving into Richard Parker because he is “hiding somewhere that [they] will never find him,” it has substantially more cruelness, which only slightly limits the savagery of the second story (Martel 317). Martel reveals this at the end of the novel when the Japanese men explain that “the story with the animals is the better story” (317). Since both stories follow an almost identical plot, the reason that the Japanese men favorited the previous story is because it seems less cruel for animals to endure cannibalism rather than