Tigers are wild beasts, created to hunt and kill. Coexisting with such a large, dangerous animal seems frankly crazy. However this was the case for Pi in Yann Martel’s novel, Life of Pi. Pi was stranded in what seemed to be a hopeless situation with not much more than his faith, a tiger, and his will to live. In this novel as well as in normal human life faith is a very important aspect of people's lives. For Pi this was evidenced in his time stranded on the boat with a 450 pound bengal tiger. At the end of the novel however the reader is brought to a question, is the tiger real or is he not. Both sides of the story, real or fake, have compelling evidence and the fact that the question is left unanswered leaves the reader thinking and questioning
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The tiger depends on Pi for survival because while floating out at sea, Pi is the one catching the food, the fish, for both of them to eat. Without Pi, Richard Parker would be at a loss for a more or less sustainable source of food. More evidence to suggest the interdependence between the two is the scene with the other castaway who Richard Parker kills and ends up saving Pi’s life. If the tiger was so easily ready to kill why would he have spared Pi for so long. This is all assuming the tiger is real however. If the tiger isn't real how would they have depended on each other? Assuming the tiger is fake that means that the tiger was created by Pi so he can directly associate all the bad things he had to do with someone or something else. Richard Parker would then represent the primitive survival instinct that Pi would of needed to be able to survive so long in such a dire situation. This sort of primal instinct relies on Pi in the sense that Pi in the original story directly counters how the tiger acts. The tiger is wild and acts out while on the other hand Pi thinks and uses rationale to make decisions that would affect his survival. In this way, if the tiger wasn’t real and if the tiger was a manifestation of Pi’s survival instinct, then the tiger depends on Pi to make rational decisions and to maintain faith in their unforgiving
The tiger depends on Pi for survival because while floating out at sea, Pi is the one catching the food, the fish, for both of them to eat. Without Pi, Richard Parker would be at a loss for a more or less sustainable source of food. More evidence to suggest the interdependence between the two is the scene with the other castaway who Richard Parker kills and ends up saving Pi’s life. If the tiger was so easily ready to kill why would he have spared Pi for so long. This is all assuming the tiger is real however. If the tiger isn't real how would they have depended on each other? Assuming the tiger is fake that means that the tiger was created by Pi so he can directly associate all the bad things he had to do with someone or something else. Richard Parker would then represent the primitive survival instinct that Pi would of needed to be able to survive so long in such a dire situation. This sort of primal instinct relies on Pi in the sense that Pi in the original story directly counters how the tiger acts. The tiger is wild and acts out while on the other hand Pi thinks and uses rationale to make decisions that would affect his survival. In this way, if the tiger wasn’t real and if the tiger was a manifestation of Pi’s survival instinct, then the tiger depends on Pi to make rational decisions and to maintain faith in their unforgiving