Life of Pi Reflection Essay

In the novel Life of Pi, Piscine Molitor Patel, otherwise known as Pi, lives in a life of paradox. All of the things that occur in this novel balance out equally. Pi relied on his conventions during the beginning of the novel and threw them out the window once he climbed aboard the life boat. Animals and humans create one person in this novel, 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." (17) Animals, like humans, need the assurance that they have safety. Near the beginning of this novel, 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 novel, 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." (197) 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." (4) 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. “[E]scaped zoo animals are not dangerous absconding criminals but simply wild creatures seeking to fit in.” (42)

Paradox comes into play throughout the entire novel 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." (117) 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 novel, 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." (6) 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 novel 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.