Life of Pi

It is a long road to walk from the point you are born to adulthood. The bumps in the road are things you are just going to have to try and get over so you can keep moving forward towards your growth of being an adult and learn the aspects of how to act as an adult. We are just waiting and waiting for the time to come when we can be independent; to not rely on our parents for everything. At the same time, we are scared for this large step in life that we have been preparing for, for the past 14 years of our lives. We just have to take a leap of faith, see where it takes us, and hope for the best. The main character, Pi Patel, is a loveable teenager with a lifelong curiosity for animals and religion. Pi grows up as the son of a zookeeper in Pondicherry, India. He practices Hinduism, Islam and Christianity equally. When Pi is about 16 years old, his father decides to relocate the family to Canada. Pi's father arranges for the family to accompany some of the animals bound for North America on a cargo ship named Tsimtsum. The ship suddenly and quickly sinks. Pi is instantly orphaned and left to survive. The novel, Life of Pi, is a tale about survival, the struggles of life, and taking that leap of faith to help you become a stronger person inside and out.

What is a taboo? Taboo is a topic of discussion that you wouldn’t want to actually discuss with certain others in sight. Relating to the novel though, a taboo is like an ocean compared to a pool—which is where Pi got his nickname. A pool is safe with boundaries, whereas an ocean is wide open symbolizing the struggle and journey of life itself. It is a sense of unknown, a sense of vast power, and a loss of direction. What do you rely on to take action when there is no one there to guide you? The answer is yourself. This novel is about surviving on your own and knowing your boundaries. Pi was meant to go on this journey across the ocean to explore and find who he really is. "Things didn't turn out the way they were supposed to, but what can you do? You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it." (91) Even though Pi was confronted with uneasy circumstances, he still has to take it the way it comes at him and handle it in the best way he can. If he makes a mistake along the way it is okay, because we as humans are meant to make mistakes so that we can learn from them and grow as a person. This is the kind of thing that makes us stronger and it is the kind of thing that made Pi stronger as well. Life is like a game of baseball. You have to time it just right to hit the ball, and then you finally take a swing and make a run for it. The outfielder has to be prepared to catch that ball at any given moment. In life you have to take your time to get things just right, and then when the situations strikes you, you have to put it all out there and go for it. Also, things in life are thrown at you unexpectedly and you have to be ready for the worst, and turn the worst into the best.

When we are in that stage of taking chances, our fear tends to overwhelm us. To the average brain, there are many things that all of us are "afraid" of, but do we truly know what fear is? It is just a four letter word. A four letter word with a simple definition-- to be afraid or feel anxious about a probable situation. "I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life." It is your decision to choose if fear defeats your life. It is only up to you for that not to happen, and Pi came across this decision many times along his journey. He had to choose between living life or letting fear take over himself. Taboo is displayed all throughout this novel, fear being one of the subtopics of it. Even though fear isn't a comfortable topic of discussion when you having a conversation with others, it is still something we have to face as children and as adults. My biggest fear is death, but I know we all have to go through it. Life would be pointless if it went on forever. What would you be living for? Death is supposed to scare us a little and make us think that our lives could end at any second, so you should always live life to the fullest with no regrets. "You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you." (162) Don’t hide from your fears, because they will always catch up to you. Being open and expressive is better than keeping your thoughts trapped up inside of you forever. It is all part of the growing process from your youth to an adult.


By experiencing fear it means that we are in reality. "I have a story that will make you believe in God." Once we hit reality, belief is a part of knowing who your are. Another closely linked idea in the novel is belief, religious belief. Pi has three religions, Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam. Each comes with its own tales and fables that are used to spread the teachings of beliefs of that faith. Pi enjoys the richness of these stories, but also gets the sense that each story might be aspects of a greater story about love. Life of Pi also has links to religious beliefs because Pi declares that both require faith on other human beings as well. Surprisingly, Pi admires atheists, for him being such a religious young man. "If we, citizens, do not support our artist, then we sacrifice our imagination on the alter of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams." (x11) Pi is showing that you should be believing in something no matter what it is. It is better to have faith in something than nothing at all, and that something is what gives life a purpose. Although religion can be a taboo to most people, that doesn’t mean you can't have different beliefs than others. Pi can appreciate the atheists and their ability to believe in the absence of God without knowing about the truth of absence. To Pi, people that can't make a leap of faith in any direction are like people who can't appreciate the truth inside a fictional story. It seems to me that Pi believes in many things because he is afraid of having his mind set on one belief and making a commitment to that belief. It is hard to believe something without knowing the other side if there is any. "If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? Isn't love hard to believe?" This goes to show that seeing and experiencing is believing. It is hard to believe in love unless you truly know you have experienced it before. How do you know if you are in love though? It is about taking that leap of faith and going after what your heart thinks. If you think you believe in something and have experienced it then go after it and don’t give up.

Pi definitely understands, not only the meaning of life itself, but the meaning of his own life as well. He is faced with taboos along the way on his journey, and not once did he back down from them. He has concurred a new world, a new life, a new him after all the battle he put up with. He has grown as a person and as an adult. In the novel, Life of Pi, Pi took a leap of faith and made it throught his struggles of survival on his journey to finding who he truly is.