Choice assignment: analysis

When Pi throws the Lifebuoy to Richard Parker so that he is able to climb aboard the lifeboat immediately after the Tsimtsum sinks, it illustrates the theme: the will to live.  “He would not make it. He would drown. He was hardly moving forward and his movements were weak. His nose and mouth kept dipping underwater. Only his eyes were steadily upon me.” (2.37.9).  At first Pi notices the lack of strength that Richard Parker possessed while in the ocean, and Pi attempts to keep him swimming by blowing the whistle on his life jacket, but Richard Parker soon gives up.  “His head was barely above water. He was looking up, taking in the sky one last time. There was a lifebuoy in the boat with a rope tied to it. I took hold of it and waved it in the air.” (2.37.13). However, the sight of the lifebuoy gave Richard Parker hope and started beating the water with vigorous strokes.  It is this fierce, unrelenting power and survival instinct that inhibits all living creatures and with which life will fight off death that drives Richard Parker aboard the lifeboat and to stay alive for 227 days on the lifeboat.  Martel uses the colour orange to symbolize survival, for example: Richard Parker, the whistle, the lifejacket, the lifebuoy, and the tarpaulin.  This vitality is drawn in contrast to the loss of life, human and animal, on the lifeboat.  The colour orange is also the colour of the second Hindu chakra (the energy center in the body) which relates to emotional identity, the water, and the ability to accept change.  Another theme at work in this moment is religion, and since his religious values are providing him with the motivation to save himself and another of God’s creatures, i.e. a tiger, explains why Pi would bring a deadly creature aboard. 

“She came floating on an island of bananas in a halo of light, as lovely as the Virgin Mary. The rising sun was behind her. Her flaming hair looked stunning.” (2.24.1).   For Pi, Orange Juice’s appearance is moving because she is the most human-like out of all the animals and she emphasizes the loss of human life.  “Bearing an expression profoundly sad and mournful, she began to look about, slowly turning her head from side to side. Instantly the likeness of apes lost its amusing character. She had given birth at the zoo to two young ones, strapping males five and eight years old that were her—and our—pride. It was unmistakably these she had on her mind as she searched over the water, unintentionally mimicking what I had been doing for the last thirty-six hours.” (2.46.3). Pi notices her distinct humanity through her seasickness, to her staring out at the water in search of her two sons as both hopeful that they’ll return and hopeless as she doesn’t expect them to.   Pi is able to find solace and sadness in her presence by their parallel loss of family and her humanity while he is left grief-stricken and alone without his family.



“She pulled back her lips, showing off enormous canines, and began to roar. It was a deep, powerful, huffing roar, amazing for an animal normally as silent as a giraffe. The hyena was as startled as I was by the outburst. It cringed and retreated.” (2.46.6). In chapter 46, where Orange Juice was shown off as a maternal symbol, in chapter 47, when she fights the hyena, she represents a motherly defender to Pi.  “She thumped the beast on the head. It was something shocking. It made my heart melt with love and admiration and fear.” (2.47.8). The brutality of the orang-utan teaches Pi that the qualities an animal or human will exhibit when unprovoked, differs from when the ones that they will display if attacked or threatened.  Pi has never before seen her make exhibit such aggression since he had assumed her nature to be sweet and benevolent.  However, he suddenly realizes that the personality of an animal, as well as humans, is separate and distinct from instinct.  “She made to bite, but the hyena moved faster. Alas, Orange Juice’s defence lacked precision and coherence. Her fear was something useless that only hampered her. The hyena let go of her wrist and expertly got to her throat. Dumb with pain and horror, I watched as Orange Juice thumped the hyena ineffectually and pulled at its hair while her throat was being squeezed by its jaws. To the end she reminded me of us: her eyes expressed fear in such a humanlike way, as did her strained whimpers.” (2.47.13, 14).  In the end, despite her show of ferocity and brutality, her fear and lack of fighting experience defeat her.

“The hunter, whose name was Richard Parker, picked it up with his bare hands and, remembering how it had rushed to drink in the river, baptized it Thirsty. But the shipping clerk at the Howrah train station was evidently a man both befuddled and diligent. All the papers we received with the cub clearly stated that its name was Richard Parker, that the hunter’s first name was Thirsty and that his family name was None Given.”  Giving the tiger the human name Richard Parker challenges the distinctions that exist between humans and animals, which Pi has been exploring all along.  There are several examples of shipwrecked Richard Parkers.  For example: in 1837, Poe wrote his only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, about a shipwreck where Pym and other survivors from the shipwreck cannibalize a third survivor named Richard Parker.  A yacht, the Mignonette, in 1846, sank and a cabin boy named Richard Parker was killed and eaten by the other survivors.  On the Titanic, another Richard Parker died when it sunk in 1912 and his body was never recovered.  Therefore, the name itself was carefully chosen by Martel and it hints at cannibalism and the possibility of him disappearing.

“Several times I started bringing the hatchet down, but I couldn’t complete the action. Such sentimentalism may seem ridiculous considering what I had witnessed in the last days, but those were the deeds of others, of predatory animals. I suppose I was partly responsible for the rat’s death, but I’d only thrown it; it was Richard Parker who had killed it. A lifetime of peaceful vegetarianism stood between me and the willful beheading of a fish.” (2.61.22).  During a fluke of nature, a school of flying fish jump over, into and around the boat while trying to escape dorados, resulting in Pi’s first catch.  The placements of the fish that jump into the lifeboat are Martel’s way of pointing out that man cannot be completely separated or independent of nature.  Martel also lowers Pi’s humanity, bringing him closer to an animal’s existence as he uses a method of self-preservation: imitation, by adapting to his wild companion’s behaviour.  “Tears flowing down my cheeks, I egged myself on until I heard a cracking sound and I no longer felt any life fighting in my hands. I pulled back the folds of the blanket. The flying fish was dead. It was split open and bloody on one side of its head, at the level of the gills. I wept heartily over this poor little deceased soul. It was the first sentient being I had ever killed. I was now a killer. I was now as guilty as Cain.” (2.61.25, 26).  According to the book of Genesis in the Bible, Cain is the firstborn son of Adam and Eve, who was jealous that God accepted his Brother Abel’s sacrifice but not his, so Cain murdered Abel.  Pi likens himself to Cain after he kills the flying fish since he couldn’t allow another mistake after the flying fish he threw to Richard Parker flew away before he could eat it.  When Pi descends into feralness, the distinctness of human civility and animal behaviour begin to blur, however, his humanity resists when he hesitates to kill the fish.  “You may be astonished that in such a short period of time I could go from weeping over the muffled killing of a flying fish to gleefully bludgeoning to death a Dorado. I could explain it by arguing that profiting from a flying fish’s navigational mistake made me shy and sorrowful, while the excitement of actively capturing a great Dorado made me sanguinary and self-assured. But in point of fact the explanation lies elsewhere. It is simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything, even to killing.” (2.61.33). It is at this moment when Pi truly mimics the brutality and ruthlessness of the hyena, making his humanity insignificant during his efforts to survive.