Consequences In Yann Martel's 'Life Of Pi'

Every action you take comes with consequences and every consequence affects your life in one way or another. In the spiritual novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel, a young boy named Pi Patel is stranded on a lifeboat and is faced with serious decisions that affect him and his future. Following a shipwreck, Pi is left alone with nothing but a royal bengal tiger, Richard Parker, and his God. At the climax of the story he encounters a paradise island which has everything he needs, but he makes a choice to leave the island and keep on sailing until he reaches Mexico. Pi’s choice to leave the island he encounters is the biggest decision he makes with a heavy impact on the course of Pi’s life and how he chooses to tell his story. Pi comes from a background …show more content…
The story Pi tells for the majority of the novel is not how it really went, but the “better story” where he tells what happened in a more interesting and fantastical way while coping with the moral guilt of what he had to do while surviving. The island is the point where the unbelievable things are at their height but where Pi’s important spiritual and moral lessons are learned. Only telling this “better story” could Pi have really gotten the point across that he used his religion to guide him through a two hundred day journey stranded on a lifeboat and faith is the guiding force towards everyone’s lives, religious faith or not. If Pi did not encounter the island or the lessons he learned on the island, the story would arrive at a stop and just be a pitiful telling of a young boy who got lucky and survived. Pi’s decision affected everything and he uses his experience at the island or whatever happened in place of the island to shape how he tells his entire …show more content…
Pi, with his strong morals, builds an imaginative and vivid picture of how he coped with trauma using animals to represent himself and other people. One scene and decision he makes at a delusional island brings fantasy and reality together to show deep spiritual symbolism and character development while being the key to how the whole story is told. Pi leaving the island definitely ties in with Yann Martel’s themes of the role of religion in our lives and our willingness to survive. Pi felt safe at the island but he would not survive, and this willingness to survive is something found in both animals and humans. The strong parallels between animals and humans in the book is a way of saying we’re not so different after all. Pi chose to tell the “better story,” but the lessons he learned and the things he experienced were all the