The Theme

Although there are mmany themes in this book, the central theme is the will to live. No matter how civilized your life is, if you are thrown into a situation where your life is on the line, you will do anything to survive. Life of Pi is a story about struggling to survive through overwhelming odds. The shipwrecked inhabitants of the little lifeboat don’t comply to their fate; they actively fight against it. Pi is a vegetarian, but because he does not know how long he will be stuck on the boat, he leaves his vegetarianism and eats fish to sustain himself. Orange Juice, the peaceful orangutan, violently fights against the hyena. Even the severely wounded zebra battles to stay alive; his slow, painful struggle strongly illustrates the sheer strength of his life force. As Yann Martel makes clear in his novel, living creatures will often do extraordinary, unexpected, and sometimes heroic things to survive. They will also however do shameful and barbaric things if needed. The hyena’s betrayal and the blind Frenchman’s turn toward cannibalism show just how far creatures will go when faced with the possibility of death. At the end of the novel, when Pi raises the possibility that the fierce Richard Parker (the bengal tiger), 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.