Novel

Life of Pi  by Yann Martel

"I had to tame him. It was at that moment that I realised this necessity. It was not a question of him or me, but of him and me. We were, literally, and figuratively, in the same boat. We would live- or we would die- together. He might be killed in an accident, or he could die shortly of natural causes but it would be foolish to count on such an eventuality. More likely the worst would happen: the simple passage of time, in which his animal toughness would easily outlast my human frailty. Only if I tamed him could I possibly trick him into dying first, if we had to come to that sorry business.
But there's more to it. I will come clean. I will tell you a secret: a part of me was glad about Richard Parker. A part of me did not want Richard Parker to die at all, because if we died I would be left alone with despair, a foe even more formidable than a tiger. If I still had the will to live, it was thanks to Richard Parker. He kept me from thinking too much about my family and my tragic circumstances. He pushed me to go on living. I hated him for it, yet at the same time I was grateful. I am grateful. It's the plain truth: without Richard Parker, I wouldn't be alive today to tell you my story." (Martel, 181-182)

...Life of Pi is a story about a 16-year-old boy named Piscene Patel (Pi) who grew up in India with his family who owned a zoo. They decide to move to Canada when conditions become too difficult in India. The cargo ship sinks and Pi is left alone on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean with a hyena, an orang-utan, a zebra with a broken leg and a Bengal Tiger. The animals all die but the Tiger, whom is named Richard Parker. He survives 227 days on the lifeboat with Richard Parker. There are many ways to interpret the story, you can take it literally, and say that he was in fact sharing a small boat with a 450-pound Bengal Tiger, or you can say that the tiger was a manifestation. In my opinion, Richard Parker was a figment of Pi's imagination that acted as a conscience to him. The excerpt describes his dependence on Richard Parker saying, "without Richard Parker, I wouldn't be alive today to tell you my story." (Martel 182) It's possible that his conscience was represented as an animal because it was his animal instincts that allowed him to survive the shipwreck. He speaks about taming Richard Parker because he has to live with him. I look at it as though he is taming the animalistic side to himself but he still has to live with it because it allows him to survive. He doesn't want to become a cannibal, but he must step out of his comfort zone as a previous vegetarian to kill fish and birds to survive. He has inner turmoil while his conscience battles with his morals and his survival...