Genre : Fiction (Fantasy)
CHARACTER LIST
Piscine Molitor Patel (Pi)
Pi is the main character/protagonist of the story. He is a teenage Indian boy, son of a zookeeper. He practices three religions, Christianity, Islam and Hinduism. His faith and knowledge of animal psychology help him survive 227 days at sea in a lifeboat with a 450 pound Bengal tiger
Richard Parker
He is the Bengal tiger that becomes Pi’s nemesis as well as his reason for living. The tiger ended up with a human name as the result of a clerical error where the name of the tiger, Thirsty, and the name of his captor, Richard Parker, were accidentally reversed.
Francis Adirubasamy
He is a close friend of the Patel family and a former competitive swimmer. He teaches Pi to swim. Pi refers to him as Mamaji, mama meaning uncle and ji indicating respect and affection. He is also the man who refers the author to Pi for the “story that will make you believe in God.”
Father (Santosh Patel)
Pi’s father is the owner/keeper of the Pondicherry Zoo. He teaches Pi the finer points of animal care and control, along with respect for the animals’ strength. He dies in the shipwreck
Mother (Gita Patel)
Pi’s mother is loving and nurturing, especially in the area of education. She reads widely and shares her books with Pi. She dies in the shipwreck, or, she may have had the role of the orangutan in Pi’s second story.
Mr. Atsuro Chiba
He is the junior representative from the Japanese Ministry Of Transportation who accompanies Mr. Okamoto to Mexico. He sees deeper meaning in Pi’s story, but goes along with whatever Mr. Okamoto says.
SETTING
The story is initially set in India in the late 1990’s. The author has traveled to Pondicherry, a coastal town in the former French territory of India, which joined Independent India in 1954. The territory of Pondicherry still has many French citizens, as well as an unusually wide variety of churches/places of worship. The author then travels to Canada to interview Pi Patel, the narrator of the story, but little of the actual story is set there, save the author’s observations of the adult Pi’s home. Pi grew up in Pondicherry in the mid-1970’s, but the setting for the greater part of his story is the Pacific Ocean, specifically along the equatorial counter-current which runs east to west along the equator. The last pages are set in Mexico where Pi recovers from his 227 day ordeal at sea.
Plot
Life of Pi is divided into three sections. In the first section, the main character, Pi, an adult, reminisces about his childhood. He was named Piscine Molitor Patel after a swimming pool in France. He changes his name to "Pi" when he begins secondary school, because he is tired of being taunted with the nickname "Pissing Patel". His father owns a zoo in Pondicherry, providing Pi with a relatively affluent lifestyle and some understanding of animal psychology.Pi is raised a Hindu, but as a fourteen-year-old he is introduced to Christianity and Islam, and starts to follow all three religions as he "just wants to love God." He tries to understand God through the lens of each religion and comes to recognize benefits in each one.
Eventually, his family decides to sell their zoo over a land dispute with the government, and sell the animals to various zoos around the world before emigrating to Canada. In the second part of the novel, Pi's family embarks on a Japanese freighter to Canada carrying some of the animals from their zoo, but a few days out of port, the ship meets a storm and sinks, resulting in his family's death. During the storm, Pi escapes death in a small lifeboat with a spotted hyena, an injured Grant's zebra, and an orangutan.
As Pi strives to survive among the animals, the hyena kills the zebra, then the orangutan, much to Pi's distress. At this point, it is discovered that a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker had been hiding under the boat's tarpaulin; it kills and eats the hyena. Frightened, Pi constructs a small raft out of flotation devices, tethers it to the boat, and retreats to it. He delivers some of the fish and water he harvests to Richard Parker to keep him satisfied, conditioning Richard Parker not to threaten him by rocking the boat and causing seasickness while blowing a whistle. Eventually, Richard Parker learns to tolerate Pi's presence and they both live in the boat.
Pi recounts various events while adrift, including discovering an island of carnivorous algae inhabited by meerkats. After 227 days, the lifeboat washes up onto the coast of Mexico and Richard Parker immediately escapes into the nearby jungle.
In the third part of the novel, two officials from the Japanese Ministry of Transport speak to Pi to ascertain why the ship sank. When they do not believe his story, he tells an alternative story of human brutality, in which Pi was adrift on a lifeboat with his mother, a sailor with a broken leg, and the ship's cook, who killed the sailor and Pi's mother and cut them up to use as bait and food. Parallels to Pi's first story lead the Japanese officials to believe that the orangutan represents his mother, the zebra represents the sailor, the hyena represents the cook, and Richard Parker is Pi himself.
After giving all the relevant information, Pi asks which of the two stories they prefer. Since the officials cannot prove which story is true and neither is relevant to the reasons behind the shipwreck, they choose the story with the animals. Pi thanks them and says, "and so it goes with God".
Themes
The Will to Live
Life of Pi is a story about struggling to survive through seemingly insurmountable odds. The shipwrecked inhabitants of the little lifeboat don’t simply acquiesce to their fate: they actively fight against it. Pi abandons his lifelong vegetarianism and eats fish to sustain himself. Orange Juice, the peaceful orangutan, fights ferociously against the hyena. Even the severely wounded zebra battles to stay alive; his slow, painful struggle vividly illustrates the sheer strength of his life force. As Martel makes clear in his novel, living creatures will often do extraordinary, unexpected, and sometimes heroic things to survive. However, they will also do shameful and barbaric things if pressed. The hyena’s treachery and the blind Frenchman’s turn toward cannibalism show just how far creatures will go when faced with the possibility of extinction. At the end of the novel, when Pi raises the possibility that the fierce tiger, Richard Parker, is actually an aspect of his own personality, and that Pi himself is responsible for some of the horrific events he has narrated, the reader is forced to decide just what kinds of actions are acceptable in a life-or-death situation.The Nature of Religious Belief
Life of Pi begins with an old man in Pondicherry who tells the narrator, “I have a story that will make you believe in God.” Storytelling and religious belief are two closely linked ideas in the novel. On a literal level, each of Pi’s three religions, Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam, come with its own set of tales and fables, which are used to spread the teachings and illustrate the beliefs of the faith. Pi enjoys the wealth of stories, but he also senses that, as Father Martin assured him was true of Christianity, each of these stories might simply be aspects of a greater, universal story about love.Stories and religious beliefs are also linked in Life of Pi because Pi asserts that both require faith on the part of the listener or devotee. Surprisingly for such a religious boy, Pi admires atheists. To him, the important thing is to believe in something, and Pi can appreciate an atheist’s ability to believe in the absence of God with no concrete proof of that absence. Pi has nothing but disdain, however, for agnostics, who claim that it is impossible to know either way, and who therefore refrain from making a definitive statement on the question of God. Pi sees this as evidence of a shameful lack of imagination. To him, agnostics who cannot make a leap of faith in either direction are like listeners who cannot appreciate the non-literal truth a fictional story might provide.
SYMBOLISM
Algae Island
The island itself is symbolic as a Garden of Eden. It offers temporary salvation to Pi, but he must leave the island Eden once he discovers the black “forbidden fruit” on the twisted branches of the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.” His illusion of the island is shattered. There is a kind of heaven and hell associated with day and night. By day the meerkats eat without having to kill and show no fear, even of Richard Parker. At night, the island becomes carnivorous and the ecosystem feeds on itself.
The Color Orange
In Life of Pi, the color orange symbolizes hope and survival. Just before the scene in which the Tsimtsum sinks, the narrator describes visiting the adult Pi at his home in Canada and meeting his family. Pi’s daughter, Usha, carries an orange cat. This moment assures the reader that the end of the story, if not happy, will not be a complete tragedy, since Pi is guaranteed to survive the catastrophe and father children of his own. The little orange cat recalls the big orange cat, Richard Parker, who helps Pi survive during his 227 days at sea. As the Tsimtsum sinks, Chinese crewmen give Pi a lifejacket with an orange whistle; on the boat, he finds an orange lifebuoy. The whistle, buoy, and tiger all help Pi survive, just as Orange Juice the orangutan provides a measure of emotional support that helps the boy maintain hope in the face of horrific tragedy.1.) What does the title mean in the relation to the film as a whole?
It talks about the life of pi who struggles and do his best to survive life.
2.) Among the characters,to whom you can relate to?
I can say that i can relate to pi. like him i am willing to face the struggle of my life. he gives me inspiration that we need to cherish life and believe that whatever happens we have God to lean on.
3.) Which part of the presentation struck you the most? why?
when pi did nothing to save his parents. It struck me most because if he just do his best to wake up his parents maybe he did not experience what he experienced in 227 days at the sea.
4.) What is the movie's message?
It gives the viewer a lot o inspiration and encourage to continue life even if we are facing any challenges and problems in life. we just need to believe and have faith in God. because God only knows whats best for us.
5.) Did i like this in general? why?
yes. but at first i find it boring, but as i continue watching it i find it interesting because it talks more about life, how could we handle it and how we could face the consequences and struggle of our lives. it gives me inspiration that we should appreciate life. God gives us opportunity and it is only once and we should be thankful with that.
6.)Did i agree with the main theme/purpose? why or why not?
i agree. because the characters deliver it very clear and the purpose of the movie is to persuade the viewers to appreciate life.
7.)What specifically did i like/dislike? why?
i like the effects of the movie and they really deliver the genre of the movie.
8.)Are there any aspects of theme which are left ambiguous at the end? why?
none at all. because i really appreciate the move.
9.) How does this film relate to the things that are happening in your life?
