Life of Pi' Expository Essay

Is the primary concern of good fiction the representation of human experiences in Life of Pi?

It is accurate to say the primary concern in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi is the representation of the human experience of time as life, death, and eternity. The concept of time as life is represented throughout the novel through its symbolic representation, and the exemplification of the instinctual human desire to survive. The human experience of time as death is embodied through the many occurrences of physical deaths or figurative deaths as well as Pi’s further acceptance of life’s demise. The human experience of time as eternity is explored through the affirmation and challenge of Postmodern ideas such as fragmentation and the death of originality, as well as the unchanging rudiments of the novel, as they are reflected everlastingly in the framed narrative, creating the idea of eternal truth. Martel’s representation of the human experience of time is influenced by the Old Testament, Postmodernism, Nietzsche, and personal contextual influences. The depiction of the notion of time as life, death, and eternity is the predominant concern in Life of Pi (2002).

The primary concern of Martel’s Life of Pi is to represent the human experience of time, which is epitomized as life. This theme is first introduced in the opening sentence of the novel; “This book was born as I was hungry”, and concludes the novel in “Story of sole survivor, Mr Piscine Molitor Patel”, which Martel uses to represent the experience of time as life. In contrast, the instinctual yearning for survival in “Something in me did not want to give up on life, was unwilling to let go, wanted to fight to the very end”, “your empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival”, and “survival had to start with me”, where the primeval desire to live shown through Pi represents the experience of time as life. In contrast, the color orange is symbolic of life, as shown in the survival equipment on board the boat “10 or so orange life jackets, each with an orange whistle attached”, “2 buoyant orange smoke signals, 2 orange buckets, 2 orange plastic bailing cups”, as well as the tarpaulin “The bright orange tarpaulin was held down by a nylon rope”, and Orange Juice, the Orangutan which is representative of hope “She came floating on an island of bananas in a halo of light, as lovely as the Virgin Mary”. Despite Pi’s clothes fraying away due to exposure “for months I lived stark naked except for the whistle that dangled by my neck from a string”, his orange whistle remains around his neck; a persisting symbol that is representative of the human experience of time as life. The algae island is utilized as a metaphor by Martel to convey the human experience of time as life. As a thriving organism in the harshest of biomes, “The leaves were brilliantly green, a green so emerald that next to it, vegetation during the monsoons was drab olive”, It is representative of the persistence of life. Upon second reading, the island is also an allusion to the Garden of Eden in the biblical book of Genesis; parallels can be drawn in the fantastic vegetation “A green to outshine food coloring and flashing neon lights”, as well as the abundance of food and resources for Pi “Was there not more fresh water I could ever desire. More algae than I could ever eat”, and an isolated tree of knowledge “I noticed the tree because it seemed to have fruit”, this fruit being the one that eventually drove Pi off the island. This theological allusion is utilized by Martel to represent the notion of time as life. The bildungsroman structure of the novel displays Pi’s maturation over its course, such as from his reluctant killing of a fish “A lifetime of peaceful vegetarianism stood between me and the wilful beheading of a fish” to almost casually butchering a turtle “I took hold of the hatchet and brought it upon its neck”. It is through the symbolic depiction of life in the color orange, the algae island, as well as the conveyance of the instinctual human desire to survive, as well as Pi’s development over the novel that Martel represents the experience of time as life.

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The ordeal that Pi faced on the Pacific Ocean is characterized by death and his experience of finality and mortality. Pi leaves India to immigrate to Canada as a faithful vegetarian “Several times I brought the hatchet down to kill the fish, but I couldn’t complete the action”, yet arrives there much later after breaking these principles to the point of cannibalism; “I ate some of his flesh”, where the stark juxtaposition between these polar opposites emphasizes the experience of time as death. The narrative of Pi’s experiences is representative of humanity, and his familiarity with fatality is what Martel uses to convey the human concept of time as death. The reality of literal mortality to Pi is not abundance on the lifeboat and island, with the Frenchman: “The smell of blood filled my nose”, the birds; “I broke its neck by leveraging its head backward”, the turtles; “Butchering a turtle was hard work”, the meerkats; “He was moving through them, blazing a trail of murder, blood dripping from his mouth”, or the many instances of fish. Pi’s exposure to such high quantities of death desensitized him to it, shown later in part two where he kills and eats without hesitation; “I took the knife and killed two meerkats and soothed the pain with their blood”, which Martel uses to highlight the basic human experience of time as death. There are also many instances of symbolic bereavement that Martel uses as a metaphor for the experience of time as death; either Pi’s reaction to the Frenchman’s end “Something in me died then that has never come back to life”, the death of hope “By the next morning I have lost all fear of death, and I resolved to die”, or the symbolic death of God “Some say God died during the Partition in 1947. He may have died in 1971 during the war” which reflects the thought of Nietzsche; a significant influence on Martel when he was studying philosophy. The novel represents the human experience of time as death through Pi’s involvement in death and his familiarity with it over time, which is evidently the predominant concern of Pi’s 227-day voyage and further Martel’s novel.

The primary concern of Martel’s Life of Pi is to represent the human experience of time as eternity. A myriad of elements are emblematic of time as eternity in Life of Pi, for instance, Pi’s name “In that Greek letter… the number to understand the universe, I found refuge” where the infinite and irrational series of digits represent the concept of time as eternity. Similarly, the endlessness of the Pacific Ocean, “the sea, so immense, so breathtakingly immense”, and “nothing but sea and sky”, are conveyed by Martel using hyperbolic language. Upon initial investigation, the representation of animal behavior in “Animals in the wild are free neither in space nor in time, nor in their personal relations” displays its invariable nature, to further conceptualize the idea of time as eternity. Upon second reading, the impact of Postmodernism can be observed in Life of Pi; the characteristic of the fragmentation of structural norms is reflected in the framed narrative; a fictional writer’s notes “This book was born as I was hungry”, Pi’s storytelling “My suffering left me sad and gloomy”, and the transcripts of the Japanese transport employees “We have come to see you about the sinking of the ship on which you were a passenger” where this technique signifies the notion of time as eternity, as the novel seemingly follows a finite narrative configuration to no avail. This idea was challenged by the thought that Postmodern ideas are not only conveyed but also contradicted in the novel, for instance, the idea that there is nothing new to contribute is refuted at the denouement of the novel “His story is unparalleled in the history of shipwrecks… none can say they have survived in the company of an adult Bengal tiger”, and the absurdity of Pi’s story similarly rebuts this notion “You don’t really expect us to believe you, do you… these things don’t exist”. This denial of the Postmodern idea of the death of originality conveys our ability to perpetually apprehend imaginative notions, which further conveys the idea of time as eternity. The human experience of time as eternity is explored through the affirmation and contradiction of Postmodern ideas such as fragmentation and the death of originality, as well as the representation of unchanging rudiments of the novel, as they are reflected everlastingly in the framed narrative, creating the idea of eternal truth.

In conclusion, the primary concern in Martel’s Life of Pi is the representation of the human experience of time as life, death, and eternity. The notion of time as life is represented through symbolism and the idea of the human instinct to survive. The concept of time as death is embodied through the myriad of physical and figurative deaths, and Pi’s desensitization and familiarity with demise. The experience of time as eternity is explored through the affirmation of Postmodern fragmentation but the challenging of the death of originality, and the unchanging elements of the novel, creating the idea of eternal truth. This representation of the human experience of truth serves the purpose of demonstrating the diverse ways texts can represent personal and public worlds and further is the predominant concern of good fiction.