Life of Pi

Exposition refers to the beginning of a story, where the author establishes a setting, introduces the characters, and provides a foundation for all of the coming action and conflict. We get to...

I thought it might be interesting to expand a bit upon the "clerical error" mentioned above. There is an interesting bit of irony involved, for sure. The tiger's name should have been "Thirsty."...

The significance of Pi's name is that he chose it for himself. Pi felt a desire to change his name due to the teasing and torment brought on by the phonetic sound of his birth name, Piscine Molitor...

Let us look at the “significant events” of Life of Pi in terms of its plot elements. The exposition introduces the characters and the setting. It is most often found at the beginning. Therefore,...

Yann Martel's Life of Pi is chock full of metaphors, so I will focus on religious and animal metaphors in this post. Religious Metaphors: 1. "In a second everyone was laughing. It fell away as we...

Pi survives mentally after seven months at sea on a lifeboat by keeping his mind busy with the following: completing daily tasks, such as reading, fishing and writing a diary; taming Richard...

The answer to this question isn't likely possible to know without having the author create some kind of list or explanation that tells readers what parts are real, what parts are based on reality,...

Richard Parker, the adult Bengal tiger who ended up in the lifeboat with Pi, helped keep Pi Patel alive in many ways in Yann Martel's novel Life Of Pi. One way Richard Parker contributed to Pi's...

Pi grows up as a Hindu and loves the trappings of the religion. His mother took him to a temple in Madurai. He says that the color, sound, and mystery of the temple stayed with him and made him...

Pi uses the structure of religious ritual and scientific study in order to survive. This is part of his maturity. But, he also had to compromise some of his values by eating human flesh and...

Since Pi practices faith in three major religions, he draws upon all of them to pull him through his suffering on the lifeboat. Not only does his commitment to three different religions show that...

Tough question. Normally the climax of a book is super easy to nail down. That's not the case with Yann Martel's Life of Pi. I've actually read one analysis that listed the ship's sinking as the...

Pi's mother and father both die in the sinking of the Tsimtsum, the Japanese freighter vessel meant to transport the animals to North America. It is important to note that Pi's mother is part of...

Chapter 8 is when Pi's father gives him a lesson that he never forgets. Against his mother's wishes, Pi's father takes the whole family down to Mahisha's (the Bengal tiger) enclosure where a goat...

If you go with the non-animal version of the ending, he represents a world in which doing whatever is necessary for survival is not only okay, it is expected and normal. If the tiger does indeed...

Throughout Life of Pi, author Yann Martel relies heavily on imagery to bolster a realistic atmosphere within a fantastic setting and highly improbable narrative. The detailed imagery supports the...

On this subject, though Pi notes that “In a general way we mean how our species’ excessive predatoriness has made the entire planet our prey,” what he is really talking about it the ignorant...

I wonder--could you tell my jumbled story in exactly one hundred chapters, not one more, not one less? The number one hundred is a very "ordered" number. Ending with the very even and very...

When the Tsimtsum--the Japanese freighter that was intended to transport the Patels' animals to their new zoo in North America--sinks in the horrific storm, Pi Patel must cope with more than the...

Pi describes the sloth as a beautiful example of the miracle of life because of the animal’s nature and characteristics. Pi got a chance to study the sloth in its natural habitat in the equatorial...

This is a very interesting question—it can be rephrased as, how do each of the animals function as metaphors for Pi's personality? On the lifeboat, the hyena is aggressive and violent, killing both...

The quote you have highlighted is a perfect example of a metaphor, as it compares the memory of Pi to an ocean where he is bobbing up and down on it. Of course, when we read the entire book, we can...

By telling the reader that the story has a happy ending, it relieves some of the tension that the reader is feeling and will feel throughout the book. The book is very tense throughout the second...

Yes, you are correct in your surmise about the meaning of the quote! It is saying that doubt paralyzes us. If we are constantly plagued with doubt, we will never make a mistake, but we will never...

Pi's knowledge of zoos and zookeeping uniquely equipped him to survive his ocean voyage with a 450-pound Bengal tiger. He had a healthy fear of the tiger, he established his territory as an animal...

In Yann Martel's novel Life of Pi, there is, at the beginning of the novel, an author's note. It is here that Martel says, "This book was born as I was hungry." He goes on to describe the debut of...

This question is wide open for various answers from various readers. Different readers are going to gravitate toward different passages for analysis. Additionally, the analysis could go a variety...

Pi is born Piscine Molitor Patel. Pi received his given name as homage to a family friend, Francis Adirubasamy. Pi renamed himself to escape ongoing jokes about his name. Rather than be called...

The answer here is subjective, and various readers are going to have their own thoughts on it; however, it is important to look at Pi's entire statement regarding death and love because the second...

When Pi and Richard Parker are at the beginning of their journey, after Pi's family is killed in the shipwreck, Pi fears Richard Parker, but he is forced to find a way to co-exist with him in order...

Pi tells two versions of his ship sinking and time on the life boat. One story is quite logical in its telling and does not include any animals. The other story is a tale of epic proportions...

Pi Patel, the narrator and main character in Life of Pi, received the name Piscine Molitor from his father, who named him after a swimming pool in Paris, France. Unfortunately, since the name was...

Irony is when the opposite of what is expected happens. Verbal irony can be found in chapter 50 when Pi discusses the size of the lifeboat and how it should be able to accommodate thirty-two...

The previous answer was pretty disparaging of religion, but one does not need to be. When one begins to compare zoos with religion, there are many things one can see in terms of similarities. Let...

Chapters 21 and 22 of Yann Martel's novel The Life of Pi are at the core of the novel because they grapple with and seek to answer the core theme, which is the existence or absence of God. In his...

Pi is an incredibly wise character, and reading about his life and religion philosophies is a highlight of the book for many readers. It is always interesting to read about how Pi personally mixed...

Pi led an interesting life since childhood. At one point he simultaneously observed three religions (Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam). Unfortunately, he lost both his parents and his brother in a...

Mr. Patel seems to merge his knowledge of animals and running zoos with his ideas of parenting in Martel's Life of Pi. Mr. Patel draws parallels from the animal kingdom to the human world while...

The answer to this question can be found in Chapter 53, when Pi tires to launch his raft so that he can escape the boat and the increasingly perilous situation that exists with being trapped on a...

The quotation "When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling" appears at the beginning of Life of Pi. In making this remark, Pi is revealing that...

When Pi begins being teased about his full name, Piscine, and mockingly nicknamed "Pissing Patel," he decides to take matters into his own hands. When he begins as a student at a new school, he...

At the time of this story, Pi is a middle-aged man living in Canada, retelling the story of his life growing up in India and the dramatic trip he took across the Pacific Ocean. The story focuses on...

The items in "the man's house" can be summed up in the first five words of the chapter: "His house is a temple." Everything in this house is conducive of accouterments found in a temple area....

Chapter 8 in Martel's Life of Pi has two critical sentences that are meaningful to the real world as well as to the story. The first sentence in the chapter is as follows: "We commonly say in the...

Pi's father, as the owner and manager of a zoo, taught Pi many lessons about the nature of animals. and about human interactions with him. The most memorable is when he leads Pi to the tiger cage...

I'll start with a broad overview of Pi and his knowledge of science and religion. First, Pi's knowledge and usage of religion is quite broad and tolerant. That's why he is able to combine...

Richard Parker's ferocity in life equals Pi's resolve to find land; therefore, the two together fight to survive almost a year at sea alone on a lifeboat. Richard Parker not only represents Pi's...

Although the floating carnivorous island in the Life of Pi is fictitious, there are ecosystems on this earth that are changing so drastically that many carnivorous animals are finding themselves...

To Pi Patel, an atheist has faith because the atheist either believes that there is no God or he believes that there is no need for a god. Atheists believe that science and reason are the ways to...

The major question one might ask after reading Life of Pi might be the following: What is humanly appropriate when faced with surviving a traumatic and life-threatening experience? Decent and...