Emmanuel M.

Nacion
BSCS 1-3
Life of Pi
Having just experienced the sinking of his family’s ship, and being put onto a life boat with only a
hyena, Pi felt completely lost and alone. When he sees Richard Parker, the Bengal tiger from his family’s
zoo, it is a familiar face to him. His initial reaction is to save the life of his familiar friend so that he may
have a companion, and a protector aboard the lifeboat. Suddenly Pi realizes just what he is doing. He is
saving the life of Richard Parker, by welcoming him, a 450 pound Bengal tiger, onto the small lifeboat. He
experiences a change of heart when helping the tiger onto the boat. Pi realizes that he is now posing a
threat on his own life. With Richard Parker on the boat, Pi is faced with not only the fight to survive
stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but the fight to survive living with a meat eating tiger. The
change of heart that Pi experiences might possibly mean that he is an impulsive thinker. It may mean
that he often does something on impulse without thinking it through, and then later regrets his actions.

Pi maintains his religious beliefs while on the life boat through his daily prayers. He takes time
aside each day to say the prayers that he always would say. In one instance, he turns where he believes
Mecca is located, and prays his traditional prayers towards Mecca. Pi also often states that he will include
specific animals in his prayers, such as the zebra aboard his lifeboat, and the first fish that he ever killed.
With Pi keeping his ritual prayers going, it helped him to survive. He was able to somewhat maintain the
religious lifestyle he had prior to the sinking of the Tsimtsum. We also find him making many religious
affiliations throughout his journey. He made comparisons between that of Orange Juice, the orangutan,
and the Virgin Mary, and would also often bring up Jesus on the cross. Truly, Pi’s religious faith remained
strong throughout his journey on the Pacific Ocean.

Piscine Molitor Patel, otherwise known as Pi, lives in a life of paradox. All of the things that occur
in this film balance out equally. Pi relied on his conventions during the beginning of the film and threw
them out the window once he climbed aboard the life boat. Animals and humans create one person in
this film, with the animals playing the role as another side of the humans; Pi forgets all conventions as a
human when his animal side shines through.

A taboo is a topic difficult to have a conversation on, and on the opposite end of the spectrum is
a convention which is an agreed upon subject that is safe and comfortable to talk about. Conventions are
like a locked up room with walls on all four sides and the only opening secured shut. This border that
allows you to wander around in the general area represents safety. Our brains are wired in the way that
we sometimes fear the unknown therefore enjoy to have our own, fixed area. "Animals are territorial.
That is the key to their minds." Animals, like humans, need the assurance that they have safety. Near the
beginning of this film, Pi experiences the gruesome scene of a goat being torn to shreds and it involved
so much pain that he wouldn’t dare express his feelings about it nor bring it up to talk about from that
point on. Further along in the film, Pi is stranded on a life boat and his survival mode kicks in. Then and
only then is when the Bengal tiger climbs aboard. "I descended to a level of savagery I never imagined
possible." He becomes forced to live outside of conventions creating another side of himself.
 Understanding how a man can survive on a small life boat with a ferocious tiger on board is very
difficult to understand until the idea comes up that the man and the tiger are actually one, single person.
Richard Parker, the name of the Bengal tiger, is not really tiger but rather an alter ego for Pi. He thought
this terrible side of him would kill him since it was irregular human behavior. This explains how the
Richard Parker never slaughtered Pi, how they went blind at the exact same time, how both the man and
the tiger regained their vision once again, and how they easily fit on the boat, however. It seems very
hard to believe that Pi killed the hyena especially considering the hyena was also human.

Plato’s The Allegory Cave involves a man who lives among many people in a cave and he decides
he wants to get out and discover how other humans live. "The three-toed sloth is not well informed
about the outside world." The sloth here is in the same situation as the man in the story and simply
wants to see the world for what it is. This, however, is an example of a man breaking the agreed upon
conventions. In Life of Pi, animals like to have barriers around them, but sometimes the animals gain the
curiosity to know how the rest of their species lives. This doesn’t necessarily make zoo animals
dangerous, just curious. “Escaped zoo animals are not dangerous absconding criminals but simply wild
creatures seeking to fit in.”

Paradox comes into play throughout the entire film with several concrete examples. The hyena
that is on the lifeboat with Pi actually is the character of the cook; the zebra also the sailor and Orange
Juice, the orangutan, is Pi’s mother. When the hyena slays the zebra and decapitates the orangutan, the
cook is really eating the sailor alive and taking of the head of Pi’s mom. "Its delights are too many to
admit disgust at anything." The people were all so feeble on this boat and the cook had reached such a
severe state of starvation that he didn’t care if he persecuted these animals in a disgusting way, but
found a happiness in having a full stomach; he didn’t want it to be repulsive so decided to not think of it
as wrong. Another example of paradox, portrayed so clearly in this film, is how life and death rely on
each other. "The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity—it's envy. Life is so
beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can." Life is
such a miracle because death is such a tragedy. If we didn’t have catastrophic things happen in the
world, life wouldn’t be so precious which is the reason why even death has a jealousy of life.

Life of Pi incorporates many ideas including paradox and conventions. From Pi growing up in a
type of environment with animals, he grew to be just like them. Pi has his conventional, obedient
lifestyle and then comes out his unconventional, rebellious, animal side. The creation of this other side
of Pi allowed him to escape from his normal life and kept him from feeling the guilt he should from the
hideous things he does to fellow humans on the lifeboat. This film couldn’t bring these ideas out any
clearer. For us as humans, including Pi, after being in an atmosphere for a long period of time, we
change, so Pi changed many of his previous conventions to fit this renewed style of life. He gained
knowledge from his treacherous journey in the wild, just as we will grow and flourish into our new
selves.