The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar.... Pi's Testimony of Human Will

I really enjoyed reading this book. It was a great story of triumph and the test of human will. Pi was able to survive a ship wreck, loss of family, dehydration, famine, wild animals, loss of sight, and cannibalism. It is very clear that Martel is trying to stress to the reader that living creatures will do extraordinary and unexpected things to survive. However, they will also do barbaric acts when faced with the same circumstances. For example, the hyena’s treachery and the blind Frenchman’s turn toward cannibalism show just how far creatures will go when faced with the possibility of extinction. Another theme that was present in the story was the connection between Pi and Richard Parker. (This is the deep structure consisting of the text’s ideas and truths, which the writer tries to convey through the action and exposition of the story.) At the end of the story, Pi realizes that he and Richard Parker is actually aspect of his own personality. This realization is made aware to the reader when Pi is retelling his story of despair to the two officials from the Maritime Department in the Japanese Ministry of Transport. They don’t believe his story, so Pi replaces the animals with people. Could this story have been an extreme hyperbole??? (Exaggeration or overstatement of the truth) I assume that Pi has made up the story about the animals as a coping mechanism and a way to disconnect with the horrible things he had to witness. Martel uses theses parallel stories to show the symbolism between animals and humans. (Person, place, thing that is in a text, used to represent something else.) Furthermore, he drives home the point that we humans are not so different from animals after all. Deprived of the luxuries and conveniences we have built up for ourselves in modern times, we resort to our basic instincts and animalistic roots.