What is fiction? “[I]sn’t it, the selective transforming of reality?” (viii). Or what about “the twisting of it to bring out its essence?” (viii). In Life of Pi by Yann Martel, the boundaries of fiction are pushed to the limits. Piscine Molitor Patel, a devoutly religious Indian boy, falls victim to a shipwreck and is stuck for two hundred and twenty seven days on a lifeboat. Through starvation, storms, trauma and several near death experiences, Pi chooses to depict his lengthy story first with animals, contrasting to the second story later told in the book to some insurance men, using humans. At the end of the novel the reader is left questioning, which story is the real story? Through personification, imagery and parallelism, Yann Martel
…show more content…
Two Japanese insurance men visit Pi while he is recovering in a Mexican hospital. The insurance men become frustrated at the animal story, thus Pi gives a different story. “Four of us survived. Mother held on to some bananas and made it to the lifeboat” while the cook and a Taiwanese sailor were already aboard the raft (303). Although the stories are practically the same in both the animal and human accounts, the human version is easier to comprehend due to the developed characters and similar parallels. The human story is further revealed through questioning insurance men, connecting the parallels between the animal and human stories. The Japanese insurance men act identical to the reader, as they are slow to process the immense relations between the animal and human characters. After Pi retells his challenging tale, but this time with humans in place of the animals, both the reader and insurance men conclude that “the Taiwanese sailor is the zebra, [Pi’s] mother is the orangutan, the cook is...the hyena - which means [Pi’s] the tiger!” (311). These specific network of parallels and exact associations reveal enormous amounts of personality. The Taiwanese sailor, who did not know English. seemed rare and out of place. Much like a zebra he was hard to understand and read due to his communication barrier. Orange Juice, the orangutan, acted the most human out of the animals. Pi’s mother being represented by an orangutan is substantial due to the fact that orangutans are closely similar to homosapians. The cook being the hyena features his gross, savage-like and selfish nature, contrasting with everyone else on the boat. Finally, Pi’s parallel, Richard Parker, the tiger symbolizes Pi’s inner strength. Without his devout faith and perseverance, he would have perished on his intense
Two Japanese insurance men visit Pi while he is recovering in a Mexican hospital. The insurance men become frustrated at the animal story, thus Pi gives a different story. “Four of us survived. Mother held on to some bananas and made it to the lifeboat” while the cook and a Taiwanese sailor were already aboard the raft (303). Although the stories are practically the same in both the animal and human accounts, the human version is easier to comprehend due to the developed characters and similar parallels. The human story is further revealed through questioning insurance men, connecting the parallels between the animal and human stories. The Japanese insurance men act identical to the reader, as they are slow to process the immense relations between the animal and human characters. After Pi retells his challenging tale, but this time with humans in place of the animals, both the reader and insurance men conclude that “the Taiwanese sailor is the zebra, [Pi’s] mother is the orangutan, the cook is...the hyena - which means [Pi’s] the tiger!” (311). These specific network of parallels and exact associations reveal enormous amounts of personality. The Taiwanese sailor, who did not know English. seemed rare and out of place. Much like a zebra he was hard to understand and read due to his communication barrier. Orange Juice, the orangutan, acted the most human out of the animals. Pi’s mother being represented by an orangutan is substantial due to the fact that orangutans are closely similar to homosapians. The cook being the hyena features his gross, savage-like and selfish nature, contrasting with everyone else on the boat. Finally, Pi’s parallel, Richard Parker, the tiger symbolizes Pi’s inner strength. Without his devout faith and perseverance, he would have perished on his intense