The Struggle For Survival In Yann Martel's Life Of Pi

“When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival,” claims the author of Life of Pi, Yann Martel, in the voice of his character Piscine “Pi” Patel. Pi survives as a castaway for 227 days after the cargo ship Tsimtsum sinks for an unknown reason, and takes Pi’s family with it. Now Pi must face survival with only a limited supply of food and water and the fully grown Bengal Tiger, Richard Parker, for company. Pi’s story shows the difficulty of retaining aspects humanity while doing anything and everything to survive. Foremost, Hunger, thirst, Isolation, and the seemingly endless monotony of daily survival causes feelings associated with being human to be skewed. Happyness, for example, is banished and replaced with despair, as evidenced with the statement from Pi, “I was just another animal that had lost everything and was vowed to death.” Martel also shows that, despite lowering himself to animalistic behavior, a survivor still has the illusion that his life of pi durango fish …show more content…
Pi is a devoted believer in the beginning, but as time passes, survival is prioritized the majority of the time. Especially during his blindness, Pi loses his hope and his gods are forgotten for a time. His turmoil even led him to say, “By the next morning, I had lost all fear of death and resolved to die.” However, Immediately after he states this he thinks of his family and his religion and gives thanks to the gods for his life. Similar to the time of his blindness, Pi catches a flying fish and uses it as bait and catches a dorado fish. He cries out to Lord Vishnu, praying in thanks while also asking for forgiveness for killing a living creature. Pi has gone against what he believes in many times in order to survive his horrifying