The Will to Survive

an essay response to the novel Life of Pi, by Yann Martel

Life is a struggle. The will to survive is what keeps people going every day. People make choices every day, although they are usually ones like what we’re going to eat for lunch or what to watch on TV, choices that are small and irrelevant in the greater scheme of life. Rarely are people ever thrust into situations where decisions are influenced by the will to survive, and the decisions they make today determine if there will ever be a tomorrow. Pi Patel is thrust into that situation, after he is deserted in the middle of the Pacific Ocean without a way to contact any humans. The novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel shows that throughout the easiest parts of life, and the most trying struggles in life, one thing keeps us going, the will to survive.

As a boy living in India, Pi was a strict vegetarian. His Hindu religion taught him that animals were also God’s creatures and that they should be treated like human beings. Pi refused to meat and wouldn’t even eat bananas because the sound of it peeling sounded like an animal dying. The first few days aboard the boat, Pi tries to remain a vegetarian, by eating biscuits, but it becomes clear that he will have to eat meat to survive. Pi’s will to survive overcomes a lifelong practice and completely turns it around, turning Pi into a meat eater. Oftentimes, we adopt habits in the easy times of life that are considered acceptable, and in the hard times in life, we realize the impracticality of frivolous habits.

Apart from changing his eating habits, Pi also has to perform acts which break all conventions and which bypass all of his religious teachings as a child. As Pi’s food situation deteriorates he realizes that to survive he will have to kill animals to survive. Pi’s religions have always taught that killing is bad, and children have it engrained in their head from a young age that killing is one of the worst things you can do. And yet, Pi understands all of this, and still makes the decision to kill for food. The first fish that Pi kills, a small flying fish, leaves a deep mark on Pi. After he finally snaps its neck, he cries and ends up praying for it for the rest of his life. Martel shows through this scene that the will to survive often drives us to desperate measures, but at the cost that we often regret our decisions later on.

At the conclusion of the novel, Martel presents us with an interesting story, in which the entire story was made up, and the animals were in fact people. In this version of the novel, all of the animals are given a human counterpart, including Richard Parker being Pi. If this version of the story is true, all of the atrocious acts that Richard Parker committed would actually be acts that Pi had performed. This would include acts of cold-blooded killing of other human beings and facing the greatest taboo of all: cannibalism. At the point where it’s just Pi and the sailor, the sailor comes to realize that the decisions he made to survive are so horrendous that life was not worth living anymore. Pi kills the sailor, but realizes that to survive, he must eat the sailor. Pi also experiences cannibalism later on in the novel when he meets the man on the lifeboat and Pi kills him and eats his remains.

Martel also shows the distance that living creatures will go to survive not just in Pi, but also in the other people in the boat. The story which Pi tells that involves the humans displays the acts that people are capable of to simply keep on surviving. The young sailor that breaks his leg from the jump to the lifeboat lives for days after having his leg amputated. Even when he is knocking at death’s door, he still fights to stay alive every second, despite the fact that they are stranded in the lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean. After the sailor dies the cook understands that it is necessary to eat the sailor’s remains to stay alive. Pi’s normally calm mother attempts to fight off the cook, until he overwhelms her and kills her. Pi eventually kills the cook and becomes the lone survivor on the lifeboat.

Throughout his entire ordeal, Pi has very little to live for. His situation is dire and throughout the whole ordeal Pi realizes that there is little chance of him being found. And yet, Pi knows that even through all of the struggles and perils of life, the joyous moments and the happy moments make life a beautiful thing.