Life of Pi Essay

      The Life of Pi is an exotic interpretation of the human condition. With flavorful descriptions and suspenseful action, this book doesn't hesitate to delve headfirst into the abyss of mankind's darkest realms.
      Humans are civilized, domesticated, and proud creatures. We are social, intelligent, and belong to a progressive, developed society. We exchange pleasantries and offer courteous gestures to one another when appropriate. But Life of Pi reminds us of our original roots - we are animals. We are incredibly advanced mammals, with instincts and a feral nature. In the 'real world', we have cell phones that can dial 911 with four quick punches of a button and help will arrive in no more than 10 minutes. However, when those services are taken away, our true nature begins to emerge.
     Pi focuses a great deal on religion. He is very dedicated to his spirituality, he is gentle and warm hearted. He relies on his beliefs as a stronghold for his daily life. In the beginning, the reader can't be sure of where the story is going to go because Pi seems like any average, civilized citizen. Of course with his own personal quirks. It is not until the reader gets thrown onto the lifeboat as living bait that we begin to see the plot emerging. Pi is a young and frightened boy. A vegetarian, the thought of taking the life of another animal and ingesting its flesh and lifeblood is utterly repulsive to Pi. When he realizes that the frenzied sailors on the ship threw him to the lifeboat not to save his life but to save their own, his pastel picture of the world and his fellow man begins to distort itself into a blur. He doesn't appear surprised at this epiphany, but the point he realizes this is the point he begins to transform into a beast himself. When Orange Juice is brutally murdered by the hyena, Pi's disposition transforms.
   When we are put in a precarious situation, it is only human nature to find a solution. Instinct takes over, and our bodies are no longer our bodies. We belong to something more powerful, something greater. We belong to sickness, we belong to hunger and thirst. We belong to the forces of nature. Our previous insights are hushed by our need to survive. When Pi disregards his vegetarian practices we find him graphically slaughtering sea animals for food. He states his dominance over Richard Parker and clarifies that he is the boss of the lifeboat. The two both respect each other's space, and even care for one another. But this ritual will only remain consistent if Richard Parker admits submission to Pi during their time at sea.
    The most frightening component of the entire book is the very end. When Pi is rescued and Richard Parker bounds away into the jungle with no reverence or "goodbye" gesture to the boy who has cared for him for years, the reader begins to put the puzzle pieces together. We can assume that Pi needed a method to cope with all of the atrocity, the unimaginable horror that has bestowed upon him in the lifeboat. It never confirms in the book which of Pi's stories were true, but textual clues almost positively assure that Pi was driven by terror to create animalistic characters for the people he was in the lifeboat with (as well as himself) so that he did not have to fully accept the fact that humans really can do things like that to each other. The lifeboat, representing Pi's faith, keeps him afloat in dark waters. It keeps him safe from bitter death. It provides shelter and safety for him. It can be inferred that God was with Pi throughout his trials, and provided Pi with the necessary tools to create animals out of the people he was watching being killed so that he did not have to fully endure what was going on around him. Pi, having spent so much time around animals throughout his childhood, had to create Orange Juice in place of his mother. He had to create the zebra and the hyena in place of people he knew because it was less traumatizing and more realistic for him to visualize animals behaving in such a manner than human beings. Richard Parker was Pi's way of coping with the horrid things he was having to do in order to prevail. That is why when Pi is rescued Richard Parker disappears and we never hear about him again. Pi comments that wild creatures are adept at hiding from people. The underlying meaning of this comment is that once a human is surrounded by other humans, in an organized society with security and safety, instincts recoil and sink back into our marrow for safekeeping. Tools for survival are no longer needed. Pi is able to 'go back' to normal societal functions because of the animal world he created for himself on the lifeboat. It is beautiful, tragic, and the message is the simplicity of the life cycle. Birth, life, death. It envelops this simple core point into a twisting narrative full of hills and valleys decorated in elaborately written descriptions and unsettling, vivid scenes. Life of Pi is a dark treasure, an exposé on who...and what...we really are.