Transcript for:
Life of Pi Summary and Themes

[Music] in today's video we're going to start talking about the novel life of piie and we're going to focus on part one so we're going to focus on four particular aspects of part one which are important to know in terms of the context of part two and the novel in general and you definitely can you know be asked contextual questions on part one even though the main action does happen in part two part one is integral to understanding part two these are also really important points that you can include in a literary essay if you choose if you select to do the essay based on Life of Pi so over here as you can see we're going to discuss some key characters um and this little quote of it is true that those we meet can change us sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards is very very much true of the characters we're going to discuss because these characters that are present in part one really influence pi and help him on his journey um through the Pacific and also in his life after the being at se debacle then we also are going to talk about religion and particularly Pi's perspective of religion which is a very unique um perspective of religion so we're going to unpack his whole journey towards having three religions and what his ultimate idea of religion is and that's really important for part two when we discuss part two you'll see how that religion plays an important role we're also going to discuss what the zoo means to pie and how it's important and then lastly but very importantly we're going to talk about animal related skills and lessons because part one is about P's life in India and that life that he has as the zookeeper's son is very important because he learns a lot of lessons which help him survive at Sea so understanding these lessons is important um so the way that I've done this is through using quotes the reason why I think quotes are such a nice way to analyze a piece of literature is obviously because it's directly from the text so I've compiled the notes that reference these different characters and themes um and also what's really nice is I hope that you can take note of some of the important quotes because if you do choose to write the literature essay on Life of Pi it is always really appreciated and really um it elevates your answer if you include one or two quotes in each body paragraph I would definitely advise that you watch my video on how to integrate quotes if you're planning on using quotes I would definitely advise that you do so as we go through this definitely take note of some of the important quotes and make some notes as well because life of piie is a really dense book there's a lot going on there's a lot of themes there's a lot of things to think about and it's not easy Concepts they're really philosophical so definitely take some notes as you go through um because as I say this is just part one all right so we'll start with P himself and obviously we're just talking about piie in terms of piie in part one and how he grows up so he was named after a famous swimming pool he's a keen swimmer he was bullied at school especially due to his name he is a vegetarian he's very religious he's definitely a thinker um he is eager to explore different ideas and go beyond others definitions of normal he seems more mature in some of his thoughts and actions than a typical teenager so that's just some analysis and now we can get into some quotes that really prove this the sound would disappear but the HT would linger but I always heard the slur I would suffer from following the footsteps of a popular older sibling so this talks about his struggles at school and how he's bullied and how he doesn't really fit in and find his place but through his nickname in that elusive irrational number with which scientists try to understand the Universe I found Refuge so through the number pie or you know the word that we use to describe this number he finds Refuge he finds sort of a new identity a way to to allow himself to to be okay in this environment which he doesn't really enjoy I didn't know much about politics um that is important because the reason why they decide to immigrate or why P's father decides to immigrate is because of politics and Pi is his whole family actually him his mother and his brother are all pretty averse to immigrating they don't understand why or they don't want to and he says he admits like I don't know much about politics I don't understand why we have to leave he feels like he has a really good life at the piter zoo religion will save us I was more afraid than in a few words thrown out he might destroy something that I loved so this is when he's talking to Mr Kumar his biology teacher and Mr Kumar is an atheist he is a communist and so he doesn't believe in religion and Pi is very adamant that religion will save us and he gets very very concerned by the idea that if Mr Kamar says that he doesn't believe in religion that is going to like destroy it for him and he can't bear that so he really has this strong connection to religion and faith and he says what a terrible disease that must be if it could kill God and a man so he really doesn't understand how you can live your life without any sort of God without any sort of Faith like me they go as far as the legs of Reason will carry them and then they leap and I love this quote I think it's so interesting because here we're introduced to what pi perceives of religion while many people see religion as you know different demarcations between people and different distinctions the way that Pi sees it is he sees it as this unifying force that we all believe in something and he even goes as far in this quote to say that atheists we're all on the same sort of level and that those who are religious and those are atheists they actually are more similar than they think because he says as a religious person like me they talking about atheists people who don't believe in God go as far as the legs of Reason will carry them and then they leap so they go as far as they can understand the world in a reasonable rational head space and then they take the leap and they have to actually have some sort of Faith or some sort of um you know you can't go reason up to a c you go to you go with a reasonable sort of head space up to a certain point and then you have to actually have faith and that's really important for what we're going to discuss in part two so definitely keep that quote in mind to choose doubt as a philosophy of a of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation this novel is so dense with some really hectic quotes that really make you think about life and here P says that and this shows us that he is really wise Beyond his years he says to choose doubt in life to doubt things is almost like choosing immobility which means like not moving as a mode of Transport meaning it's no way to live you can't possibly achieve anything if you're going to doubt something the monkey has never asked for the news from Delhi so this shows he finds comfort in being with the animals he doesn't have to talk about the real world and what's happening and as he says there was no emergency in my world he doesn't understand and he doesn't want to understand the political context in which he's living um and all the pressures that are going to lead his father to decide to move the family to Canada next we have his father Pi's father Mr Patel he runs the P poner Zoo he used to run a hotel in madas and there's a nice little um paragraph where P talks about or narrates how is very similar running a hotel to running a zoo which I think is quite humorous because we wouldn't necessarily think these are two of similar things he priz himself from being a secular man and so this is very interesting because both P's father and mother are not religious and Pi's adoption of religion really confuses him because he Prides himself of being secular and being modern and contemporary decides to move the family to Canada as India's political situation worses he worsens he teaches pi and Ravi Ravi is Pi's brother important lessons about the true nature of animals and he cares about and for the animals so let's have a look at some quotes that back up these these um statements the disciplining of children like the tending to animals was generally left to father so this speaks about that sort of um distinguishing of the different roles of his parents so father cares for the animals he works and he also disciplines the children father saw himself as a part of the new India Rich modern and as secular as ice cream so to him religion is sort of SE seen as a regression he's never been religious and he doesn't understand P's fascination with religion spiritual worry was alien to him he's never experienced spiritual worry or sort of concern in faith it was Financial worry that rocked his being so as the provider for the family he is worrying about finances not necessarily about spirituality there are separate religions they have nothing in common so that's what he thinks about religion he doesn't understand why P once how he can have all these different religions because in his mind they're separate you don't have anything in common India is on the cusp of becoming a truly modern and advanced Nation if you don't let technology help you if you resist good ideas you condemn yourself to Dinosaur Hood so we can see that father is definitely someone who values progress and um you know modernity the answer is the same the world over people move in the hope of a better life that's basically why anyone would immigrate in the hope of a better life a zoo is a cultural Institution so this comes in when P talks about moving a zoo and how it's incredibly difficult and he also talks about running a zoo being difficult because it's not like a business um it's a cultural institution you're not going to make a ton of money from a zoo but it's an important thing to have in a society it provides happiness provides Joy the greater good and the greater profit are not compatible aims so he talks about how the greater good and you sees the zoo as a greater good it's not compatible it's not aligned with greater profit like you're not going to make make a lot of money from her running a zoo um longterm bad politics is bad for business another reason why you would be inclined to immigrate people move because of the wear and tear of anxiety because of the annoying feeling that no matter how hard they work their efforts will yield nothing that what they build in one day in one year will be torn down in one day by others so that's important because that's another reason why you'd immigrate is the fear of what you've been building your entire life could be destroyed and during this time India was at a time of Crisis and there was a lot of disorder and so there was that that definite um danger or threat of um everything that fathers work towards declining and that's why he decides to move the family this next quote actually comes from part two but I've included it here because part two we're not really going to be talking about father too much but father regularly sedated a number of the animals to L in their stress and this proves really important this is on the cargo ship father sedates the animals to ensure that they are you know not so stressed this shows us about father that he is incredibly caring but also it's going to it's going to be really important for the story line because it's one of the reasons why um Richard Parker doesn't attack pie the minute they sort of see each other because he is still the sedation is still wearing off then we have mother Mrs Patel she receiv received a Baptist education and she loves to read um I really love this descript description over here these two descriptions about mothers um P's mother's perspective on religion father sees it as completely crazy in terms of um Pi adopting all these religions he sees them as different things he thinks of himself as Progressive and secular and his mother is equally as sort of astonished but she's more broad B and neutral on the subject of religion the Hindu upbringing and the Baptist education had precisely canceled each other out as far as religion was concerned and had left her serenely imp um and that quote we owe them good schools this is sort of significant in terms of the context so remember that pie is sort of Hindu by birth his parents are not religious but he is sort of by default Hindu um and here his mother talks about having a Baptist education and so um and the fact that we owe them good schools so here she's talking about Christianity um so she was a Hindu or she is a Hindu and then she goes to school um and she receives a Christian education and P remarks how they sort of canceled each other out to make her serenely imp that she's no she's not religious in any sense um and we owe them good schools as a result of the missionaries that came to India and built these schools where a lot of students were then educated she also agrees with Father she says these are terribly old-fashioned things you've taken to she doesn't understand why P would be going sort of backward in her opinion into taking on religion she see she even says perhaps Pi is marching to a different drum beat of progress she doesn't understand what drum beat but she says maybe his version of progress is different and then the last quote this is before they yell on the ship to leave for Canada the questions that SWR in mother's mind as she contemplated buying cigarettes and P relates how his mother was like should we buy cigarettes even though she's never smoked in her life it's just that sort of fear and anxiety of moving to a new place um and how she was just wanting to buy cigarettes she has a know what's what's going to happen I think you can put it in your head is this is happening I think in like the 1940s if I'm not mistaken so you think of today when you go to a new country there's still a sense of like nerves right but we have the chance to Google it and research it before we before we actually go um in this case in the story they don't have that ability and they're going to Canada forever it's a long place you know it's a very far away place they don't know what to expect and so the shows sort of Mother's anxiety over Pi's brother Ravi um he's a star cricketer and popular kid at school and he marks Pi for his religious beliefs so um they have a very different experience of school Pi is bullied he doesn't really fit in whereas Rie is like you know the star kid a Fier andola and a powerful batter the captain of the town's best cricket team you only need to convert to three more religions to be on holiday for the rest of your life I really love that quote I thought it was quite funny uh but the first one shows that he's this star cricketer different to pie definitely and the next one shows how he mocks pie and he's like you know you just got to take on some more religions and you're going to be on holiday for for the whole week um for the rest of your life I think what's important to not about Ravi is that Pi they don't really get along but they're still brothers and Pi is definitely going to be really upset when Ravi dies and so just that sort of family connection um that even though this family doesn't seem to maybe understand every aspect of each other they're still family and the loss of his parents and his brother really takes a toll on Pie as you would expect all right then we have Mami who is very important to the story he is the family friends who teaches P to swim but he is also the one who tells the author of Pi story who we refer to just as the author in the book um and he says the way he prefaces the story is is it's one that which will make you believe in god um and he tells them this years later in a coffee shop in po cherry and that prompts the author to actually go and visit p in Canada and interview him and write this book he's a very active man Maji swam 30 lengths every morning and the fact that he teaches P to swim is also significant because he is the he survives the um the Shipwreck which none of his family does because well there's a couple of reasons why but one of the things that sets him apart from his family is he knows how to swim all right and then we have our three characters who influence p in terms of religion so um let's actually start with the Hindu pundit this is P's Hindu spiritual leader we don't have a name for him but we can understand that he's sort of known Pi for like you know since he was young because by default Pi is Hindu based on his birth um and his upbringing then we have father Martin who teaches Pi about Christian Christianity and then we have Satish Kumar who there's two Satish kumars this is the baker who is the Muslim man and he inspires Pi's interest in Islam he's a key influencer in Pi's decision to study religion at the University of Toronto years later so he says here in this quote Mr Mr Kamar led me to study zoology and religious studies at the University of Toronto talking about the two different Mr Kars this one obviously referring to religious studies and he marveled at everything when Mr Kamar comes to visit the zoo Pi shows him around really proudly he's like you know you don't have to pay and he shows them around and it's really important because both of the Mr Kar are at the zoo at the same time and we can compare and contrast how they view the animals and how they think of um and how they think of it um and so we see here Mr Kar he marveled at everything sort of God's creation he sees everything and he's like wow this is impressive and obviously we also have all three of these men who meet pie and his parents that one day where his parents are alerted to the fact that Pi is currently practicing three different religions then we have the other Satish Kumar who is P's biology biology teacher he is a communist he's an atheist who hold scientific beliefs and he inspires P to study zoology years later after the Shreck when he studying in Canada he was a regular visitor who read the labels and descriptive notices in their entirety and improved of every animal he saw each to him was a Triumph of logic and mechan and nature as a whole was an exceptionally fine illustration of science so here we can see the contrast in terms of how the other Mr Kumar looks at these animals so the Muslim Mr Kumar he looks at them wow this is God's creation whereas the Communist Mr Kumar he goes and he looks at all the descriptions and he's like wow you know all this science all these things that have been created he wants to know all the knowledge and he wants to see sort of how they work in a sort of logical manner when Mr Kamar visited the the zoo was to take the Pulse of the universe and his stethoscopic mind always confirmed to him that everything was in order that everything was order he left the zoo feeling scientifically refreshed so to him the zoo confirms his beliefs about the world one might say it's my temple so obviously if you're a communist and atheist you're not religious but he's saying what I think it's say it's my temple this is the place where he reconnects with his version of the universe and what he believes if we had politicians like these goats and rhos we'd have fewer problems in our country and so this talks about his belief in communism because communism believes in the sense of sort of equality or working for the common good and so what he sees in the animals is a work towards the common good as opposed to the politicians within the political situation in India of the time where you know it's not necessarily looking like they're functioning for the common good there are no grounds for going Beyond a scientific explanation of reality and no sound reason for believing anything but but have sense of experience a clear intellect close attention to detail and a little scientific knowledge will expose religion as superstitious BOS God does not exist so this is his perspective of the world and he says that you shouldn't be seeing um life as anything as what it is you should use your own experience to justify sort of scientific claims so you can't just believe in something that someone else has told you like for instance God you must rather see the world for yourself and make conclusions based on that and this is important because as much as Pi is religious he really respects Mr Kumar and he does take on board a lot of what he says and you'll see that in part two as well he definitely employs reason and that's one of the key reasons for his survival is that he combines his sense of religion but also with the sense of um but also with a sense of reason some people say God died during the partition in 1947 so here reference the political situation why he he doesn't believe in God it wasn't God who saved me it was medicine so here is someone who believes in he believes in um reason in rationality and science over religion as he says reason is my prophet and it tells me as a watch stop so we die so that's his perspective of life you live your life you die and like you know religion where it's almost like there's an afterlife there's all other things going on Mr Mr Kamar led me to study zoology and religious studies at the University of Toronto as we mentioned earlier and then he does remark on one of the animals that he sees it's the Royals Royce of equids and I just thought that was such a such an interesting line because it's such an oxymoron because uh Rolls-Royce is you know the fanciest car you can get and equids means equality and this just shows us how he believes that equality is like the most important thing that really communist sort of head space of working together for the greater good um and we can see that in that line the rollsroyce of equids all right so moving on to religion so we're going to start with Hinduism we're going to go in the order of these religions that Pi adopts so this is the religion P was born into although his parents don't practice it it shows Pi an important perspective regarding his suffering which allows him to reframe his suffering as a cast away so this is a really important religious aspect that he practices when he is in the Pacific when he is on the Lifeboat or the raft um it allows him to put his suffering into perspective s a really key thing to allow them to keep going so remember this for part two I became loyal to these sense Impressions even before I knew what they meant or what they were for it is my heart that commands me so I feel at home in a Hindu temple I'm aware of presence not personal the way we usually feel presence but something larger truly I am in a sacred Cosmic womb a place where everything is born and it is my sweet luck to behold its living core but religion is more than right and ritual there is what the right and ritual stand for the universe makes sense to me through Hindu eyes that's already nice short easy quote to include it encompasses that key theme of how he feels at home in Hinduism how he understands the world through Hindu eyes The Liberation accounts of each of us is credited and debited depending on our actions I've been a Hindu all my life with this notion that mind I see in I see my place in the universe she sees in krishna's mouth the whole complete entire Timeless universe so in this way he really connects with this Hindu idea of how the universe is perceived and this allows him to you know this he really has a connection with it while he's even in India and when he's growing up but especially in part two when he's on the when he's you know a cast way in the Pacific um he is able to understand the universe and put his suffering in perspective through his relationship to his Hindu beliefs we then have Christianity this is the second religion Pi acquires the missionaries have been in India for a long time initially Pi struggles to connect with such a human figure of God um he sees Jesus as Too Human of a God where when he tries to compare it to sort of Hindu um hinduism's version of gods he's like this is too much of a human how can I how can I praise this human but what we're going to see about py through these quotes is that he has a very the his adoption of all these religions is not sort of purposeful in the sense that he goes into a church and he tries to adopt a religion but it's all based on his intuition and this connection that he feels and it's very authentic in that regard and so Christianity he initially doesn't understand it but then he feels this connection to it and instead of resisting that connection he leans into that connection and sees what Christianity can teach him about the world and how we can help him and how he can improve that connection with it I knew very little about the religion it had the reputation for a few gods and great violence I was filled with a sense of Peace what peculiar psychology it's a God on too human a scale I couldn't get him out of my head Christianity is a religion in a rush and so here we see all his differing thoughts as he adopts Christianity um he initially doesn't know much about it he then when he's has the experience in a church he actually feels this connection he Fel feels the sense of peace and so really leads into it trying to understand what the religion is about um and he says I couldn't get him out of my head meaning he couldn't get you know the Christian's version of God out of his head um I do like this quote I thought it was quite um quite an interesting remark that Christianity is a religion in a rush meaning that everything seems to happen really quickly if you think of like the days of creation from the Bible it happens in a rush it happens within a week and thirdly we have Islam the third religion P acquires his link to the the religion is very closely regarded to his relationship with the baker Mr Kumar Pi's mother in particular struggles to understand Pi's adoption of this particular religion um and you can think about P's upbringing and his context to understand that deeper quick necessary physical mattered striking it is a beautiful religion of Brotherhood and devotion it felt good to bring my forway to the ground immediately it felt like a deep religious contact I describ Mr Kumar's place as a h yet no mosque church or Temple ever felt so sacred to me I sometimes came out of that Bakery feeling heavy with Glory I would climb into my B onto my bicycle and pedal That Glory through the air I knelt a moral I Rose an immortal the presence of God is the finest of rewards I prayed outside because I liked it I faced Mecca with the help of a ler scratched into the pale yellow ground and carefully kept it up so here we can see Islam is definitely a major religion or a religion that has a major effect on pie and particularly notice the the the emphasis on prayer pray I mean obviously Islam does focus a lot on prayer and especially P acquisition P's acquisition of it and this is going to be quite important in terms of Pi's routine when he's on the Pacific because his praying routine is important it sort of keeps his mind and keeps his um his sanity and his routine going which is really important for his mental capacity ET see and so lastly I wanted to just chat about Pi's version or perspective of religions because obviously it's quite different to understand their religions in isolation because we have to understand the religions in conjunction with one another to understand Pi's heads space so to him religion is interconnected provides him with peace stability and meaning it shows Pi's desire to continue learning and his unique ability to see the world through a different lens he experiences an innate connection to each religion Hindus in their capacity for love are indeed hairless Christians just as Muslims and the way they see God in everything are bearded Hindus and Christians in their Devotion to God are hat wearing Muslims so here we can see that he really believes he's not like his parents who believe that each of these religions is distinct and there's nothing in common to him they all have something unique very much in common to offer thanks to Lord Krishna for having put Jesus of Nazareth whose Humanity I found so compelling in my way so this is just a really sort of interesting statement which you don't hear often because P persective or religion is option of all these religions is definitely unique so he basically thanks Lord Krishna for alerting him to Jesus and for showing him the pathway of Christianity so he thanks this Hindu god for showing him the Christian God I can well imagine an atheist's Last Words alas a sense of community oh so that's sort of referencing um the sense of how he doesn't understand particularly how atheists could be because they his to him they have no faith they have no hope and he doesn't understand how you could live your life without religion in the sense that how can you live your life without faith or hope alas the sense of community that are common with faith brings to a people spell trouble for me so this talks about how despite the fact that he is very much um you know involved in all these religions and he attends prayer services and things like that there's a distinctive like separation especially after everyone finds out he's been practicing all through religions he can't really convert with his community he doesn't have that commun Community aspect to his religion CU people don't understand how he can be dedicated to three different religions they didn't know that I was practicing Hindu Christian and Muslim that was I was a practicing Hindu Christian and Muslim teenagers always hide a few things from their parents isn't that so so I thought that was an interesting quote because obviously what teenagers are typically hiding from their parents is not necessarily they're practicing through religions we were to meet not just one wise man but all three so this is when they actually his parents do find out about the fact that he's been practicing through religions where they meet all three wise men one day so there's like a twist of fate Baba Gandhi said all religions are true I just want to love God to me religion is about our dignity not our depravity I want to be baptized and I would like a prayer rug so these three quotes just show us how dedicated is to religion how he truly this is very like sort of innocent connection to religion how he just really believes that all religions are true and that he just wants to love God in every capacity that he can and that you know this that second last quote I think is really you know a unique perspective that religion is about dignity and not depravity well may not unique perspective but definitely something to think about that to him it represents sort of our humanness and instead of what we what we lack which I think sometimes we can see you know different religions maybe bring out more depravity than digity within us so just something to think about um I would like to be baptized on Like a Prayer EG this shows us how he's dedicated to all three religions that he that he um that he you know registers his interest towards he is dedicated to all three okay the planetary Zoo just a nice short slide um now it is so small it fits in my head it was Paradise on Earth I explore it now and the only place left for it my memory moving a zoo is like moving a city just a couple of things to say about the poner Zoo so this talks about you know it was Paradise on Earth P really really found a sense of Peace within the poner Zoo he really loved it it's one of his key childhood memories also it speaks to the theme of memory and how you know P loses a lot in this novel um and the pon Cherry zoo was one of those things that he that he lost and but he says you know it's so small that fits in his head now and previously he sort of makes this comment about how it was when he was a child it was so massive you know when you're a child and you imagine a place it's like oh when you go through life everything so seems so big I'm sure you've experienced that and then when you go back to that place maybe as an adult it seems a lot smaller and you're like hi is this how I remember it um and to him now it's like really sad realization that it's so small for him now it just fits in his head he's the only person in his life who sort of remembers it um and you know he he can only explore in his mind the loss of the zoo even though the loss of the zoo happens you know before the Shipwreck it's incredibly hurt not hurtful but it's it definitely makes an impact on P he found a home he found a lot of passion within the ponre zoo and also the last one moving of zoo is like moving a city just you know remember the preparations for immigrating took about a year um because moving a zoo is a really really Hefty feat okay and lastly so these are the lessons that he learns about about animals and the skills that he um that he Masters which are going to be incredibly helpful for him um on his journey with Richard Parker so some of the key things that he learns is that animals might actually prefer zoos to the Wild and he talks about misinformation about zoos animals are dangerous and not to be anthropomorphized you should not treat animals as humans because they are dangerous you don't even think of them as animals how to tame or train an animal to an extent or get control of an animal it's really important to remember that he does learn these skills but he never actually like has to apply them before he's on the raft um and he's not a sort of he's a teenager he's not some person who is well versed in survival skills or an expert by any means but these few things that he knows about animals help him control Richard Parker um to some extent the similarities and differences between animals and humans always expect the unexpected with regard to to animals and to life Empire uses the metaphor of animals to explain how we should always expect the unexpected and respecting animals finally so let's have a look at some quotes animals in the wild lead lives of compulsion and necessity within an unforgiving social hierarchy an environment where the supply of food where the supply of food is low and where territory must be constantly defended and parasites forever endured if a man boldest and most intelligent of creatures W won't Wonder from place to place a stranger to All beholden To None why would an animal which is by temperament far more conservative birds are not free a house is a compressed territory where basic needs can be fulfilled clubs by and safely so this is his perspective on zoos and how they get a sort of bad um a bad reputation or a bad um bad press he essentially says that animals in the wild people perceive them as being free but perhaps they're not so free as we might think he says that if human beings who are sort of the most intelligent of creatures don't live in the world right we create houses for ourself we have a sense of stability why would an animal then want to sort of be completely in the wild not have a sense of stability so that's his argument that he that he provides here and he even says birds are not free which is a really interesting statement once again really shows us how p is a thinker he is always thinking about different things and definitely very mature for his age I would say certain Illusions about Freedom plague them both this is as commment about religion and about um animals in the zoo the most dangerous animal in the zoo is man so this is what his father educates him about the cruelty is often more active and direct we have an obsession with putting ourselves at the center of everything is the bane of not only theologians but also zoologists so I thought this was such a clever line because it is very true so he talks about theologians who people study who people who study religion Theology and zoologists people who study animals and he says that we have a tendency to put ourselves being human beings at the center of all these things where in reality we are just one sort of aspect of religion and one aspect of you know the natural world I learned a lesson that an animal is an animal tigers are very dangerous this is when him father teaches Ravi and um and Pie about the dangers of tigers um and dangers of animals he really like purposefully shows them teaches them this lesson because growing up on the zoo he wants to ensure that they his children are safe I may have anthrop anth anthropomorphized the animals till they spoke fluent English but the fancy was always conscious so he says yes sometimes you know I did make friends with the animals I did see them a little bit as human but he does say that he always kept it conscious that he wasn't unconsciously treating them as animals that he knew that in his little like sort of ways and he which he was anthropomorphizing them he knew it wasn't true he knew it he knew the animal was still an animal as he says but I never deluded myself it's the real nature of my Playmates my poking no nose had more sense than that I don't know if I saw blood before turning into mother's arms or if I adored it on later in my memory with a big brush so this is how after he sees um the that that father feeds the feeds a tiger he doesn't know if there was actually blood or if he's put it on in his memory and this is important to the theme of memory as well because um something to think about with this book is is all sort of recollection of memory right and how great is our memory do we add on things do we take away things how how good can our memories be life or in terms of like being compared to the reality of the moment life will defend itself no matter how small it is every animal is ferocious and dangerous getting animals used to the presence of humans is at the heart of the art and science of seeping the key aim is to diminish an animals flight distance this is really important for part two this is the idea of when you run a zoo you have to ensure that the people are going to be able to get to a certain distance to the animal without the animal freaking out and that's the same sort of strategy that P applies with Richard Parker in the Lifeboat life raft situation he has to condition him to when he's in a certain proximity to not bother him and to not be affronted by his presence all living things contain a measure of Madness that moves them in strange ways sometimes inexplicable ways this madness can be saving it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt without it no species would survive if you took the city of Tokyo and turned it upside down and shook it you would be amazed with the animals that will fall out and here he talks about the circus and the circus is important because we're going to see Pi's version of the circus on in the Pacific he establishes that the ring is his territory only the trainer better make sure he always remains super Alpha social rank is essential to how it lives its life when two creatures meet one that is able to intimidate opponent is recognized as socially Superior so that a social decision does not always depend on a fight an encounter in some circumstances may be enough socially inferior animals are the ones that make the most strenuous resourceful efforts to get to know their Keepers zoomorphism when an animal takes a human being or another animal to be one of its kind that measure of manness that moves life in strange but saving ways that fiction guarantees their social well-being so here he's talking about circus trainers and how you have to remain the super Alpha and it's not even about fighting against the animal that you're training but it's about maintaining that position and maintaining that sense of confidence which we're definitely going to see Illustrated in part two of the novel thank you so much for watching I hope that you found this video helpful please remember to like the video And subscribe to the channel and I'll see you in the next one hello and welcome to another chai CH video in today's video we're going to be focusing on part two of the novel Life of Pi particularly time time um Pi's time as a cast away and so I've split this part two into four different sections and today we're going to work on the first section which are the characters so the way that we're going we're going to go through it it's just like we did part one I've collected some quotes which I think are important to know if you're planning to write an essay on life p and we are going to discuss some of those quotes so we're not really talking about the plot we're more talking about the characters themselves and how they link to potential themes and fundamental questions so definitely you have to read the novel first and then you can watch this video to sort of get anal an analysis or insight into these characters that pop up in Pi's time as a Castaway so firstly I've grouped together um the three animals that don't really last too long right at the start of part two so the zebra being first the zebra was being eaten alive from the inside so recall sort of the plot line of that story and I think the use of the zebra or the story line of the zebra just alerts pie to the fact that he's sort of in this animalistic world now and he has to offend for himself and he sees the zebra and something he notices which I think I've put later on under um under my section on Pi but I I think this very barbaric thing that he not that he sees of the zebra being eaten From the Inside Out is really traumatizing but something a piie says is that it it would have been more traumatizing if he had not been experiencing trauma at the same time so he couldn't have so too much empathy for the zebra because he was struggling himself to survive so that's an interesting thing about perspective then we have the H um this is a really interesting one because initially Pi is really afraid of this hyena because he's not he does doesn't realize um that the tiger is there he doesn't realize that Richard Parker is there and so his whole perspective once again is sh is shifts between when he realizes that Richard Parker is there he completely then is not afraid of Thea I was no longer afraid of it so beforehand this is like the sort of alpha um predator on board well that's what pi thinks until he realiz this Richard park is there so when he realizes the tig is there I was no longer afraid of it to be afraid of this ridiculous dog when there was a tiger about was like being afraid of splinters when trees are falling down so um there's a nice little simile to describe that the haa died neither whining nor whimpering and Richard Parker killed without a sound so that's the hena's demise orange juice this is maybe the most interesting of these three because orange juice is an animal that um that pie knows and he remembers from her time at the zoo he knows her whole story and also because of orang likess likess oh they likeness sorry likeness to um to humans he feels a lot of empathy towards her she remained gentle and unaggressive her whole life all my life I known only a part of her um and this he talks about when the aren goes and fights the H he had only known this part of her as being unaggressive but then he sees sort of this other side to her an orangutang may be taller may have very strong and agile arms and long canines but if it doesn't know how to use these As Weapons they are of little use that Hena with only its jaws will overcome the ape because it knows what it wants and how to get it to the end she reminded me of us her eyes expressed fear in such a human-like way as did her strained whimpers so I think that of all of these animals the the orange juice or the IR Tang really is um you know an important loss that P experiences that impacts him later on in the novel okay then we need to talk about pi and I've specifically labeled this Pi's mindset because obviously we're going to discuss Pi in every single part um we discussed him in part one what we know about him and here I'm just quoted a bunch of his the things that are going through his head as he's going through part two and what his mindset is and a lot of this has to do with his survival mindset but also you're going to see the difference between or the way that he balances hope and reason or faith and rationality and that's a very important theme which I'm definitely going to discuss when we get to the themes video but we can see it in his mindset as well and this is why Pi is so successful at why he is successful and why he survives is because he combines these two ideas if he had just had Faith then he probably wouldn't have survived if he had just had reason he also probably wouldn't have survived so putting them together is what actually sets him apart and allows him to survive things didn't turn out the way they were supposed to but what can you do you must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it I mean I think this is a very big understatement um if I remember correctly this is right at the end of part one just before we get to part two and P basically says his life didn't turn out exactly how he wanted which I think would be an understatement because his whole life has been turned around it was shock inactivity something and me did not want to give up on life was unwilling to let go wanted to fight until the very end so this is when he's initially you know cast away and he doesn't really know why he's fighting to love but there's just something innate within him that I think we all really have is that not to give up and to try and to survive no matter the odds you try and you try to survive I only had to ensure my Survivor for the next few hours until the rescue ship came um this is really important for his mindset because early on the initial few days the reason why piie survives is because he has hope because he thinks that this ship is that there's going to be a ship that's come save him he thinks that he that someone knows that he's there and that's what keeps him going and that's going to be a major turning point and a major change or a major um indicator of P transformation is when he actually um decides or he recognizes and realizes oh no one's coming to save me if I want to live I've got to have to like survive myself so that's a big shift but the first the first few days he thinks that he's going to be rescued I will beat the odds as great as they are I have survived so far miraculously now I will turn Miracle into routine the amazing will be seen every day I will put all the work necessary yes so long as God is with me I will not die I discovered at that moment that I had a fierce will to live I was feeling faint with fear a tiger abroad and I had waited 3 days and three nights to save my life so these last two quotes I feel like are really important because I think if you look at Pi you or if you just read a summary of the story you're like oh wow Pi was really Brave and he was Fearless but that's not true I think why Pi is such an interesting character is because he's really human and um I think we spoke about that in the previous video as well with um you know his his take on religion and Atheism and how we go to the lengths that we can and then we um of reason and then we take the leap and here the same sort of thing is he's not Fearless he does feel fear he's like berates himself he hasn't done anything about the tiger for three days and three nights he is fearful but he deals with that fear and that's what's ensures his survival every H me was standing up shrieking with fear the business was far too precarious it only needed a shark to bite the Rope or a knot to become undone or a large wave to crash upon me and I would be lost so you see he is paranoid he is fearful but he deals with that and he still acts my options were limited to pushing above a tiger or hovering over shars so this really emphasizes his um situation his precarious situation barely grateful to be still alive it was Richard Parker who calmed me down it is the irony of the story that the one who scares me witless to start with was the very same who brought me peace purpose I dare say even wholeness this is such an important quote because it is so important to um you know the the fundamental theme and what this is all about and it's essentially saying to us that um and the irony irony is when it's the opposite of what he's expected to occur so you would expect the tiger to impede his survival but actually having the Tiger on board allows P to survive because it gives him purpose it gives him something to do and something to worry about as opposed to the other things that he could have been worrying about if he didn't have Richard Parker and it cures his loneliness so that is the iron of the story is that Richard Parker is actually key to his survival not a threat to his survival I will tell you a secret apot me was glad about Richard Parker a part of me did not want Richard Parker to die at all because if he 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 ch 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 I had to stop hoping so much that a ship would rescue me I should not count on outside help survival had to start with me in my experience a Castaway's worst mistake is to Hope too much and do too little survival starts by paying attention to what is close at hand and immediate to look out with Idol hope is T amount to Dreaming one's life away so this is what spoke about earlier about this transformation about the shift he realizes okay now I actually have to ensure my own Survival no one's going to help me there was much I had to do I looked on the empty out on at the empty Horizon there was so much water and I was all alone all alone I burst into hot tears I buried my face in my crossed arms and sobbed my situation was patiently hopeless once again the humanness of Pi's character really allows us to connect with him with just one glance I discovered that the sea is a city just below me all around unsuspected by me were highways boulevards streets and roundabouts bustling with subin traffic and this is something really powerful about Pi is how he notices things and how he makes comments about them he's in a very sort of mature way and he comments here on how the ocean he's actually not alone this is this entire City Beneath him he just never realized it before and maybe human beings don't realize it because we just sort of go on the ocean just to get from A to B and he's saying wow it's actually incredible there's so many things going on there's so much Wildlife so many interest things beneath the water what delusion was I under that I thought I could outwit him several time times I started bringing the hatchet down but I couldn't copy the action okay sorry I skipped ahead there the first quote um this is when he sort of doubting um his stance on Richard Parker and when we get to discussing Richard Parker we'll chat about how he goes about training him and what his thoughts are in doing that um but he does second guess himself and and then the next few um quotes let's just read them through and these talk about um his first time fishing several times I started bringing the hatchet down but I couldn't complete the action tears flowing down my cheeks I egged myself on I wept heartily over this poor little deceased Soul it was the first sentent being I had ever killed I was now a killer I was as guilty as Cain I was 16 years old a harmless boy bookish and religious and now I had blood on my hands it's a terrible burden to carry all centered life is sacred I'll never forget to include this fish in my prayers now that it was dead the Flying Fish looked like fish I'd seen the Markus upon a cherry it was something else something outside the essential scheme of creation so for pie to kill this fish this first fish is a really big deal because he is vegetarian he hates he's a pacifist right so he hates any sort of violence and it's really difficult for him and the irony is that he takes so long to kill this fish that he actually prolongs the fish's trouble and suffering more than he has to um and the fact that he still thinks about it to this day really shows how sensitive he is and how um you know how committed he is to his values and even though he recognizes In This Moment he has to kill the fish because otherwise he will not survive even looking back on it he retains those values of vegetarianism and of you know like peace all the way when he's when he's done with his survival he keeps that he keeps those same values when he's older a person can get used to anything even to killing isn't that such a powerful statement I survived 227 days that's how long my trial lasted over 7 months I kept myself busy that was one key to my Survival on a Lifeboat even on a raft there's always something that needs doing mornings were usually better than the late afternoons when the emptiness of time tended to make itself felt so this is really insignificant well it is really significant because um this shows us how he survived as well and what he does is he creates a routine for himself he makes sure that he stays busy he makes sure that he has something to do and in that way he doesn't think about his trauma the whole time or think about all the terrible things and so this is also remember I spoke about reason and rationality being important and this is something that he realizes that he needs to keep busy in order to stay sane and to survive and that's what he does but there were more to my dealings with him than strictly necessary I also spent hours observing him because it was a distraction so here talk about Richard Parker and how he helps him not just um you know well he doesn't just threaten him he actually helps him he's a distraction pie watches him my story started on a calendar Day July 2nd 1977 and ended on a calendar day February 14th 1978 but in between there was no calendar I did not count the days or the weeks or the months time is an illusion that only makes us pent I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time this is so important because we're going to talk about how Pi transforms to become more like Savage as he goes longer and longer you know being away from civilized society and being on the ocean with a tiger and this is really interesting about about time itself um and time is is a construct right it's something that we humans have created to feel sort of in control but when you're out on the water with no hope of survival or of being rescued time sort of Falls away it's also significant because it points to like whether the story is actually true almost because it's all his Recollections but it's not like he actually knew the date so we don't actually know how far into the journey things happen or if it's exactly this and this day or how long it took before he realized this and this thing um because it is his memory what I remember are events and encounters and routines markers that emerged here and there from the ocean of time and imprinted the themselves on my memory my memories came come in a jumble so here talking about his memories and how the story that we're reading as much as we want to believe every word of it you know maybe he's focused too much on one thing and left out another thing because he's just it's just using his memories he didn't have any notion of time while he was alone in the middle of the Pacific my greatest wish other than salvation was to have a book a long book with a never- Ending Story one I could read again and again with new eyes and a fresh understanding each time so he was bored words scratch on a page trying to capture reality that overwhelmed me so he does find this notebook and he tries to write things down um but as he says it's like an indescribable experience so to trying to like put what he's feeling and put what he's doing and what his situation is down on paper is really difficult the rain chilled me to the Bone but I was smiling I remember that close encounter with electrocution and third degree burns as one of the few times during my ordeal where I found found gen felt genuine happiness so this is speaking about a moment of danger and it could talk about later um in the in the themes video about how he how he remarks how like death is something that actually keeps you going and keeps you um sort of excited about life and that's a really interesting idea because in that moment he feels the most alive cuz he's escaped death yet again at moments of Wonder it is easy to avoid small thinking to entertain thoughts that span the universe we perished away it happened slowly so that I didn't notice it all the time so now we're going into the sort of latter part when him and Richard Parker are really struggling this is when they going to encounter the blind Frenchman because at this point both Richard Parker and P have become extremely weakened by their ordeal and Pi does have have moments where he really does lose hope it's no use today I die I will die today I die this was the last entry I went on from there endured but with no without noting it do you see there invisible spirals on the martret of the page I thought I would run out of paper it was the pens that ran out such a such a powerful statement he's written down and he he kept thinking he's going to run out of space he's going to run out of pages so he's been writing in the margins but he something unexpected happens he ran out of his pen and isn't that like the story of his whole thing he thought he was going to Canada with his family landed up being a cast away for over 200 days on the Pacific Ocean by the next morning I'd lost all fear of death and I resolved to die so you can see the hopelessness the idea of he starts off with this Fierce will to love but this journey takes us toll on him and on his mental health as well and his sanity the rest of the story is nothing but grief ache and endurance so that's an understanding of the last part of the journey being extremely difficult and um you know as much as the first part of the journey was he was dealing with loss the second part of the journey is also difficult he is extremely weak and exhausted from this ordeal both physically and mentally okay so now let's talk about Richard Parker really important character the hunter whose name was Richard Parker so that's how Richard Parker got his name cuz it does sound like a like a human's name because it is there was a mixup on the paperwork he took up over a third of the length of the ship he was on so that really shows us what pie is dealing with a really really huge animal on this Lifeboat and a dangerous one at that and the reason why he hasn't been um but he didn't bug pie for the first 3 days is this combination of sedation and sick seasickness he was incredibly mascular incomparably incomparably beautiful so this is pi noticing him and sort of assessing the situation and then this is when pi has all these thoughts and he thinks to himself how is he going to get rid of Richard Parker what are the different ideas and he goes through all these different ideas of how he can possibly get rid of him and every time he tries one he comes with a comeback of like he has a like a conversation in his head it's like oh shoot no that won't work oh no this won't work um and then he eventually you will let's actually read it and then I'll tell you what he eventually um settles on push him off the Lifeboat then he thinks hold on tigers are accomplished swimmers kill him with a six more fiend syringes and then he's like hold on is that going to actually do anything to him or is he just going to knock him out for a little bit attack him with all available weaponry and then he's like hold on for if there's one thing that's more dangerous than a healthy animal it's an injured animal then he has these ideas to choke him poison him set him on fire electrocute him but he realizes that none of those are actually feasible he can't actually kill the tiger that way he doesn't have that those tools and it would be too dangerous and then he decides on waging a war of attrition all I had to do was let the unforgiving laws of nature run their course and I would be saved and this is his thoughts and he says he continues but no animal however Mighty can do without water for an extended period of time and then he realizes no hold on this sort of tiger they're known to drink sine water so that's not going to work and then Pi realizes the next day that the only thing he's going to do the plan he has to go on is plan number seven to keep him alive and he recognizes that he needs to train Richard Parker and the only way for um him to sort of be safe of Richard Parker is to actually keep him alive he backed off and dropped to the bottom of the boat the first training session was over it was a resounding success I stopped whistling and sat down heavily on the raft out of breath and exhausted and so it came to be plan number seven keep him alive what a stunning creature with feline speed he had leap across the lifeboard and struck me it was right I needed the sort of Rights they came with might it was time to impose myself and carve out my territory so now he's going to really make sure that he trains Rish Park properly and he uses all his knowledge that we discussed in part one to assist him obviously he's never done this before but he uses that sort of knowledge and um something to notice why he needs to carve our territory is because he's built this raft that attaches to the to the Lifeboat but the raft is a lot more flimsy and he recognizes that there's going to come a point when the weather's bad or something happens and he's going to have to go onto the Lifeboat where Richard Parker is and he needs to make sure that Richard Parker is obviously not going to attack him when that time comes that he will stay on his side of the Lifeboat so he needs to carve out his territory on the Lifeboat so when he needs to he can climb abroad be sure not to break eye contact once your animal has trespassed upon your territory be unflagging in your outrage treatment should be repeated until the association in the animal's mind between the sound of the Whistle the feeling of intense incapa nausea is fixed and totally unambiguous Tigers indeed or animals do not favor violence as a means of settling scores When Animals fighted with the intent to kill and with they understand that they might be killed a clash is costly so here he sort of presents it as though he's G giving an instruction manual on how to train an animal which is quite humorous and um he basically tells us how he's conditioning Richard Parker into um not going into Pi's territory into staying in his place and he says that tigers do not automatically want to engage in fights um but they do that sort of as a last result four times he struck me with his right pow and sent me overboard and four times I lost my shield eventually I learned to read the signals he was sending me my fifth Shield lasted me the rest of his training it was not good zookeeping I was up to but psychological bullying so this talks about how do you see how much of a distraction this um is for pi and how he's able to distract himself by training Richard Parker obviously it's incredibly dangerous but it still allows I mean I know we're talk about Richard Parker here and what happens to him but we have to F focus on Pi being the human um and having complex thoughts and how Richard Parker existence really helps him it was clear he was in a Crouch and he was making to attack me it was too late to get away too even too late even to blow my whistle so he conditions um he conditions Richard Parker when he hears the whistle to feel the sense of noisia and seasickness in a moment of his sanity brought on by hunger because I was more set on eating than I was staying alive I looked Richard Parker dead in the ey suddenly his brute strength meant only moral weakness it was nothing compared to the strength of my mind I st into his eyes wide eyed into mind and we faced off any zookeeper will tell you that a tiger indeed any catch will not attack in the face of direct stare but will wait until the deal of the antelope or wild ox has turned its eyes so here once again we see Pi's knowledge of the animal world helping him out but also how he has this moment where he has it's almost testing to see whether Richard Parker has actually like taken to the training and he stares him down for two perhaps 3 seconds a terrific Battle of Minds for for status and Authority was waged between a boy and a tiger he needed to make only the shortest of lunges to be on top of me but I held my stare I had w i gasp with disbelief so Richard Parker you know is really physically strong right but Pi is mentally strong and you know being you know having rationality and being able to train Richard Parker and um and like win the sort of situation where he is in inverto commas trespassed on his territory um this is you know a really significant moment for pie he feels a great sense of relief and a sense that there is hope I was still from that day onwards I felt my master was no longer in question and I began to spend progressively more time on the life foood I was still scared of Richard Parker but only when it was necessary his simple presence no longer strained me you can get used to anything haven't I already said that isn't that what all survivors say now Richard Parker also respects pie because he was the source of food and water my agent was pure and miraculous it conferred power upon me proof I remained alive day after day week after week proof he did not attack me even when I was asleep on the Tarpin proof I am here to tell you the story I had to give quickly and generous generously this is talking after he catches fish he has to feed Rich Parker very quickly very generously my eyes expressed longing hurt anguish loneliness all he was aware of that something stressful and momentous had happened something beyond the outer limits of his understanding he did not see that it was salvation barely missed he only saw the Alpha here this odd unpredictable tiger had been very excited so here we talk about a moment of disappointment P has and he tries to share that with Richard Parker and he knows that Richard Parker is an animal he doesn't understand exactly what has happened but still um there's a sense of connection that Richard Parker has understood some aspect of what piie is going through I love you the words burst out pure and unfettered infinite the feeling flooded my chest truly I do I love you Richard Parker if I didn't have you now I don't know what I would do I don't think I would make it no I wouldn't I would die of hopelessness don't give up Richard Parker don't give up I'll get you to land I promise I promise I mean there's your proof for how Richard Parker kept him alive and how much Richard Parker meant to pie I began to imitate Richard Parker in sleeping an incredible number of hours it wasn't proper sleep but a state of semi-consciousness in which day dreams and reality were nearly indistinguishable I made much use of my dream rag so this is speaking about how Richard Parker you know takes takes all these long breaks because or like long rests because um there's nothing ready to do um on the life foot and Pi starts to mimic that remember beforehand he was very much in his routine but then he gets weaker and Tighter and he starts mimicking Richard Parky in this way and he uses his dream rag remember the dream rag is like this his way to sort of hallucinate and have sort of dreams to pass the time weak and ill-tempered I'm so weak if he attacks I won't be able to defend myself simply do not not have the energy to blow whistle um so we can see here Pi's P State and how he becomes weaker and weaker and it gets to a point where they're so weak that um that P is able to even touch Richard Parker and there's no sort of repercussions we were slow eaters now so do you see how as it goes from earlier it's very much like pie is different to Richard Parker and then as it goes as they become weaker and weaker in the last in the last few chapters if they become together so now we were slow eaters before they used to eat their food quickly now they both eat slowly so it's the sense of togetherness they've sort of grown this connection and they're both struggling together I came to the sad conclusion that I could no longer take care of Richard Parker I had failed as a zookeeper I was more affected by his imminent demise than I was by my own but truly broken down and wasted away as I was I could do no more for him I closed my eyes and waited for bre my breath to leave my body I mattered goodbye Richard Parker I'm sorry for I failed you I did my best farewell dear father Dear Mother Dear Ravi greetings your loving son and brother is coming to meet you not an hour has gone by I haven't thought of you the moment I see you will be the happiest of my life and now I leave matters in the hands of God who is love and whom I love I laughed I knew it I wasn't hearing voices I hadn't gone mat it was Richard Parker who was speaking to me the carnivorous Rascal all this time together he had chosen an hour before we were going to die to pipe up I was elated to be on speaking terms with the tiger I was certain he would turn away he would look at me he would flatten his ears he would growl and some in some such way he would conclude our relationship he did nothing of the sort he only looked fixedly into the jungle then Richard Parker companion of my torment awful Fierce thing that kept me alive moved forward and disappeared forever from my life I struggled to Shore and fell upon the sand I looked about I was truly alone orphan not only of my family but now of Richard Parker and nearly I thought of God this last quote is incredibly powerful because Richard Parker's con connection and with pi is very clear and we can see that Pi is absolutely traumatized by the fact that Richard Parker doesn't even sort of acknowledge their ordeal together and he just goes away into the jungle when they arrive in Mexico and this is really significant because um you know what we said right at the beginning in in the in the part one video about um how Pi learns not to anthropomorphize animals right to see them as animals and he recognizes this but after spending all this time with Richard Parker and building that connection having gone through so many things together he sort of in his head he's made Richard Parker out you know he talks to him he has conversations with him to be more human than perhaps was was healthy but at the same time it was really important to to have to have had Richard Parker but um p in the um you know when he's in Canada and talking to the the author he's still traumatized and tormented by the fact that Richard Park didn't even even say goodbye it's this really deep connection that he had with the tiger and because he was the only one to really understand what he was going through so even though Pi recognizes that Richard Parker is an animal and that he can't possibly give him the same sort of empathy and the same sort of connection or um reaction that you would expect from a human connection he still feels really deeply for him and is very traumatized by this send off and lastly let's talk about about the blind Frenchmen so let's go through it sort of literally in terms of what the blind Frenchman what the interaction is all about um so the blind Frenchmen they meet in the middle of the ocean this is at the time where pie is also blind from sort of being weak and starving please ask me what is it I'm blind and we have no food and water but we have each other that is something something precious so what is it my dear brother I am too blind he wailed again I was struck dumb I had met another BL blind man on another Lifeboat in the Pacific he was close by he was far away he was to my left he was to my right he was ahead of me he was behind me this was a terrible cost of Richard Parker he gave me a life my own but the ex at the expense of taking one he ripped the flesh off the man's frame and cracked his bones the smell of blood filled my nose something in me died then that has never come back to life so this talks about how they meet this um blind Frenchman on raft he comes abroad pie ship and he tries to to kill pie cuz he's starving and Richard Parker steps in and kills him and um pie is traumatized by this I found he had lied to me because the Frenchman had said that he didn't have any um any food he had a little turtle meat a Dorado head and even a supreme treat some Biscuit Crumbs and he had water it all went into my mouth I returned to my boat and released his crying as I done did as I had done my eyes some good crying had done my eyes some good the small window at the top left of my vision opened a crack I rinsed my eyes with the sea water with every rinsing the window opened further my vision came back within 2 days I will confess that I caught one of his arms with a gaff and used his flesh as bait I will further confess that dur by the extremity of my need and the madness which had pushed me I ate some of his flesh I mean small pieces little strips that I meant with the gap's hook that when dried by the sun looked like ordinary animal flesh they slipped into my mouth nearly unnoticed you must understand my suffering was unremitting and he was already dead I stopped as soon as I caught a fish I pray for his soul every day so here we can see Pi's descent into SA so this is a good example if you want to show that he does sort of become more animalistic and he even eats a little bit of this man's flesh he obviously didn't kill him but he does eat some of the flesh um and he is able to actually see again after a couple of days now this is a very sort of literal thing so if you're answering questions on the blind Frenchman story then that gives you an indication of the story but in terms of figurative to me it seems very unrealistic for him to have met an actual blind Frenchman I feel like in my opinion this is a representation of something within P dying and he says there's something in me die that has never come back to life he had to give up on something in that moment like he'd reach the lowest of all lows he blind in the middle of the ocean and he had to let go of some aspect of himself in order to in order to survive so to me I see this in a very figurative manner but obviously you need to be aware of the literal as well so it's like P giving up in a figurative sense he's giving up his almost a sense of his humanity and he's leaning into the this sort of animalistic part of himself because he going to need that for the last push in his survival thank you so much for watching I hope that you found the video helpful please remember to like the video and subscribe to the channel and I'll see you in the next video hello and welcome to another Trias video um in today's video we're going to be looking at the second part of um what I've termed as Pi's time as a cast way we're going to be looking at the themes that are apparent in this section of the book so please remember to read the novel first this is an analysis of some of the key themes through some of the important quotes So the First theme that is really really significant is survival and I did talk a little bit about this um in the previous video but one of the keys to piie survival is the fact that he balances reason with faith so he is really religious as we spoke about in the first video in part one and his faith in God or in all the different religions that he believes in really keeps him going because it allows him to stay sane in sort of his in his mental state it gives him a routine in terms of his praying times um and it allows him to have hope but at the same time he would not have survived if he had just sat there and prayed he also has reason to back up his survival and so he needed reason in terms of figuring out how to train Richard Parker right otherwise he would have died very much sooner um he also needed to figure out how to fish he needed to figure out how to filter water um he needed to figure out all these different things that involved reason and rationality to live so in that very first part we spoke about the two Mr kumaras and we can see that come through in his survival is that he needs these two aspects in his life he needs the faith and the hope but he also needs reason and rationality and action so notice that as we go through in terms of this theme of survival this net would become one of my most precious possessions so right at the beginning this net comes comes onto or near the life vat at the time he doesn't recognize its importance but um in in due course when he is stuck there for so long for 227 days it becomes very useful the idea of orange juice stirring was too much for my nerves to bear so I did not consider it so sometimes in order to survive you just have to ignore certain things the night passed minute by slow minute with every with the very first rays of light it came alive in me hope as things emerged in Outland and filled with color hope increased until it was like a song in my heart oh what it was to bask in it things would work out yet the worst was over I had survived the night today I would be rescued to think that to string those words together my mind was itself a source of hope hope fed on hope so remember that the first few days he survives because he thinks he's going to be rescued and so once he gets through the first night he just is he sort of like clammers down and just tries to Rive the night because he thinks he's going to be rescued the next day and then over time in the like over the next few days when he realizes that's not the case that's when he finally actually gets up and figures okay if I'm going to survive I have to find some water I have to find some food I have to get figure out this tiger situation so for the first few days he's very passive actually he's sitting there he's just trying to get through the time past the time because he thinks he's going to be saved and that's important to his survival in those first few days because he has this hope but then later later on he has to change years in order to continue to survive I raised my hands to the level of my chest the weapons I had against the H so he is so um thirsty and so desperate that he has to like walk past the Hena he can't just sit there and wait for someone to rescue him he realizes this so he raises his fist which is sort of a humorous image to raise your fist against sahena but he's really um you know to focus on his survival he needs to go after water of hunger and thirst thirst is the greater imperative I did not grasp all these details and many more right away they came to my notice with time and as a result of necessity when some small thing some detail would transform itself and appear in my mind in a new light how true it is that the necessity is the that no sorry that necessity is the mother of invention how very true so this is when he actually sees the water and sees the food and he and all the supplies he doesn't notice everything um and what it's going to be used for as as he continues in his in his survival Journey he uses different things at different times and he recognizes their value in different ways so this really shows also pie sort of humanity remember he's a 16-year-old boy he's not trained in any sort of survival techniques or you know even ocean like navigating or anything like that so everything sort of comes to him he's sort of like doing this he's figuring it out as he goes as the lid opened it became a barrier that closed off 12 Ines of open space between Tarpin and bench through which Richard Parker could get to me after pushing aside the life jackets such a push would both warn me and help me fall backwards into the water with a life boy the Delight of the manufactured good the manm made device the created thing so as he opens the locker door he realizes that the it creates a barrier so he's actually protected from Richard Parker and he'll be warned if Richard Parker comes um so he thinks of all these things as he's trying to get food and water he thinks of all these potential dangers because he's not just surviving on the ocean but he's also trying to survive from a tiger and he finds these manufactured goods these ration aching expectation has run as fruitable course I had to drink now or I would die and he calls water liquid life everything in me right down to the pores of my skin was expressing Joy so now he is he's had water and he feels like a new person my right hand started twitching it reached and nearly touched the delicious flattened balls of Po World rice in my imagination it sank its fingers in the steaming hot flesh it Formed ball soak with sauce it BR I it brought it to my mouth I chewed oh it was exquisitly painful this is when he's Imagining the food that he would like to eat given the exceptional circumstances the vegetarian part of me would simply pinch its nose and bear it and so this is what I'm talking about with reason right is that he realizes that he can't stay a vegetarian while on this Lifeboat he has to actually make some compromises in order to survive so I had water rations to last me 124 days I was so sorely in need of company and comfort that the attention brought to making each one of these mass produced Goods felt like a special attention paid to me I repeatedly mumbled thank you thank you thank you so these are the early days of your surviv IAL where he's still getting accustomed to this isolation this loneliness after thorough investigation I made a complete list so you see his rationality his reason coming through it's going to be responsible for his survival I built a raft it is for some if for some reason it did not float I was as good as dead the fish scattered except for the sharks so um when he builds his raft because he realizes he can't stay on the lifeboats or the toplin with Richard Parker he needs to have somewhere else with which to view him and he builds this draft but he's no Builder or anything he doesn't have any experience and he realizes that if it fails then you know he's as good as dead also the mention of the Sharks just shows like he really can't catch a break from anything um he's got sharks underneath them a tiger on board he's in the middle of nowhere heavy drops of fresh water plop loudly and wastefully into the sea so that's just a note on perspective and perception to him now who's like has these water RS the rain seems very wasteful but to us we wouldn't maybe consider it we would just think oh it's raining so so just noting how different situations that you're in produce different sort of perceptions of the world I had to tame him it was at that moment that I realized 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 fum human Frailty only if I tamed him could I possibly trick him into dying first if we had to come to that sorry business so this is when he makes the decision that he needs to train Richard Parker in order for them both to survive I had to devise a training program for Richard Parker I had to make him understand that I was top tiger and that his territory was limited to the floor of the boat the stern bench and the side benches as far as the middle crossbench so he does this because he knows that at some point he's going to have to leave the raft and come into the Lifeboat and when he does he needs to make sure that R Parker understands where his place is and that he will not try and attack him I had to start fishing very soon it would not take long for Richard Parker to finish the animal carcasses at the zoo the adult lions and tigers ate on average 10 PBS of meat a day I noticed that with the raft next to it the Lifeboat had changed directions it was no longer perpendicular to the waves but broadside to them and it was beginning to roll from side to side that rolling was so unsettling for the stomach what may seem like a detail to you was something which would save my life and which Richard Parker would come to regret so these little details that he's noticing as says they may not seem important but they're actually really important because this allows him to train Richard Parker allows him to make sure that he has a place on the lifeboard when he needs it and he is going to need it and just notice how his survival also comes from the fact that he has something to do he has Richard Parker to keep him focused and to sort of distract him from his trauma otherwise he could be sitting there and you know completely just spiral out of control where par gives him something to do with some in definely green and Queasy in its turn this is when he makes Richard P feel seick seasick to condition him to train him a solar still is a device to produce fresh water from Salt Water work was slow but satisfying it kept my mind busy it took me a good part of the day to fix up the raft there were many details to look after the main rope temped with the security rope which I deliberately measured out longer hung limply it was a fine day I decided to try my hand at fishing for the first time in my life the sea moved in a lethargic way as if it was exhausted from the oncoming heat I think that's significant because the sea is almost like a character in the sense that it changes so In This Moment it's lethargic but later on we'll see how it this storm comes and it's completely um you know the the water goes crazy the storm makes the waves rise really high and so Pi is dealing he's not just like on a on a sort of nice and easy straight of water the sea the ocean is incredibly powerful and unpredictable I set against the m i set against the M I thought of our problem instantly these technological Contraptions became as pre to me as cattle are to a farmer talking about how he gets water like his solar stills it occurred to me that with every passing day the lifeo was resembling a zoo enclosure more and more Richard Parker had his sheltered area for sleeping and resting his food stash his Lookout and now his water hole my clothes disintegrated victims of the Sun and salt salt water boils red angry disfiguring were a leprosy of the high seas transmitted by the water that soaked me and then he looks at the manual that has been left on the Lifeboat but a basic knowledge of seafaring was assumed by the the author of the manual I hadn't the faintest idea how to the night sky might serve as a road map I had no means of controlling where I was going and he figures out afterwards when he talks to people that the reason why he was sort of tending in that direction was because of the Pacific equatorial countercurrent but obviously 16-year-old boy he's he didn't know that he was unaware of that the effort seemed out of proportion to the reward so I just want you to note how in all these different quotes it's really just shows Pi's you know you know he doesn't just sit there and do nothing he's really acting the whole time he's trying to figure out how to survive even though he has no sort of training or understanding of what he's doing he's constantly trying even though he you keep it's would be very easy for him to feel helpless right he doesn't know how to navigate with the Stars he doesn't know what the currents are but he's tries to read this manual he tries to figure it out so now he's going to try and fish as well I stuck fingers into eyes jammed hands into gills crushed soft stomach with knees B tails with my teeth I did whatever was necessary to hold a fish down until I could reach for the hasher and chop its head off with experience with time and experience I became a better Hunter I grew Bolder and more agile I developed an instinct to feel for what to do so remember he abandons his vegetarianism and actually abandons a bit of pretty pretty strong word he almost like put presses paes on it because he still lives by his values as much as he can but um he recognizes that he has to kill animals in order to survive I wore those spots of shine and silver like tiux the marks of the marks of color that we Hindus wear on our foreheads as a symbol of the Divine so this is talking about when there was lots of fish and where there was moments of abundance and just notice how you know when you are in survival mode the small moments really do stand out and they really are powerful and so he says as you say as he says these are the good days they were rare they didn't happen often but when they did he really basked in that I descended to a level of savagery I never imagined possible so in his quest to survive has to give up a lot of his humanity and become more animalistic they provided distraction what I saw was an upside down town small quiet and peaceful whose citizens went about the sweet civility of Angels the site was a welcome relief for my Freight nerves so this is another form of distraction he looks beneath the ocean beneath um and he sees this sort of City Beneath it with all these animals and plants though I rested all the time I rarely slept longer than an hour or so at a stretch even at night so thinking about that as well just like Counting how many things he has to contend with is insane but that anxiety and that you know you can never properly steep when you're in a situation like that it was apprehension and anxiety that roused me on many nights I was convinced I saw a light in the distance each Li each time I set off a flare however in time I gave up entirely on being saved by a ship and he realizes that it's only going to be his actions that are going to save him no humanity and its unreliable ways could not be counted on from a single smell a whole town of Rose so this is also a matter a matter of survival or a tool he uses for survival is I think we're going to talk about later the dream rag which I briefly discussed in the last video as well like to have these sort of hallucinations of to think of your favorite food or your favorite moment that's how he gets by I drank the blood to the last drop so there we have that sort of level of savagery again either I tamed him made him see he was number one and who was number two or I died the day I wanted to climb abroad the Lifeboat during rough weather and he objected I was continuously hungry I thought about food obsessively whereas at first I gut the fish and peeled their skin fuly soon I know more than rinsed off their slimy slipperiness before biting into them delighted to have such a treat between my teeth by the end of my journey I was eating everything a turtle had to offer I was at the mercy of turtle meat for Smiles so remember that this is a really good example to prove his sort of descent into savagery or how he changes when he's on the when he's on the sea and how he you know as he says he used to like fish very carefully and he used to clean the fish and now he just eats the fish because he's he's become transformed my body developed a revulsion for salt that I still experience to this day so that shows the effect of it's one of the examples of the effect of this Venture and this ordeal on him in his later life after just a few weeks my body began to deteriorate my feet and ankles started to swell and I was finding it very tiring to stand there were many Skies there were many seas I really this this um there's a there's a wonderful like page of writing at the start of the chapter where it's talking about there were many skies there were many seas and it really just emphasizes how long he's on the water for and how you know day in and day out he only tells us like sort of the highlights or the low lights but there's a lot of like middle time that we don't really get to know there's lots of Skies lots of seas lots of different days where he is struggling to survive and his survival is Amplified by this you know because he's able to survive not just good times and bad times but middle medium times as well which perhaps is even more difficult otherwise I grew quite fond of sharks they were like caginally old friends who would never admit that they liked me yet came around to see me all the time at least the flesh was tasty and un fishy and the crunchiness of cartilage was a welcome respite from so much soft food I know my survival is hard to believe when I think back I can hardly believe it myself those plastic bags wouldn't have been more precious to me had they contained gold sapphires rubies and diamonds I worried incessantly about them my worst nightmare was that I would open the locker one morning and find that all three had spilled or were still had split so this is all about how water is absolutely gold um when he's on when he's on the Lifeboat when he's in the situation and his deepest worry is that the water is going to Spill and that his he's not going to have any bags to refill with more water from the solar STS it becomes his primary Obsession and his he gets paranoid about it which is understandable this and once again it shows us perception right and how in this moment in his life in this situation that water is so significant to him the empty cans of water which are now preciously kept so remember right at the beginning when he finds the water he like throws the can over over the boat now he keeps the cans because he's so paranoid about getting water that he needs to make sure the cans are always full the scarcity of fresh water was the single most constant source of anxiety and suffering throughout Journey because right at the beginning he didn't know he was going to be on the boat for so long he still thought he was going to be rescued I noticed with the pinching of the heart that I ate like an animal that this noisy frantic un cheering wolfing down of mine was exactly the way Richard Parker ate the bow vanished under the underwater I was shocked and chilled and scared witless but before we reached the next Valley I was half drowned for the rest of the day into the night we went up and down up and down up and down until Terror became a naous and was replaced by numbness and a complete giving up I held onto the tarplin robe with one hand and the edge of the bow bench on with the other while my body lay flat against the side bench in this position water pouring in water pouring out the toplin beat me to a pulp I was soaked and chilled and I was bruised and cut by bones and turtle shells the noise of the storm was constant as with Richard Parker snarling I was sore all over and had a bad cut on my thigh the wound was swollen and white I was nearly too afraid to check the contents of the locker I took out needle and thread and went about mending the tears the tears in the Tarpin so um this is talking about that really terrible night of of the storm and how um that experience was he goes back to the Lifeboat but there he gets injured and he's going to see now like he experiences loss as well and it's really traumatizing um for him another sort just a very like particular example you could use in an essay to show his struggle is the night of the storm and do you see how he tries to rebuild though he takes out needle and thread he he's like trying to um figure out what to do next he's always acting one hole bought me something I'd lost I considered it cradle in the palm of my hand was all that remained between me and death the last of the orange whistle so he loses a lot in this time and he loses the raft and we're going to talk about that in the next theme which is the theme of loss and what that mean that the the loss of the raft is extremely heartbreaking for him and he has one loss orange whistle and this is like really a crazy idea but this is literally between him and death because if he can't control Richard Parker and he's trained with the whistle then Richard par T has no reason to to obey him I broke his neck by leveraging his head backwards one hand pushing up the beak the other holding the neck so you can see how much more Savage he becomes 10,000 trumpets and 20,000 drums could not have made as much noise as that bolt of lightning it was positively deafening but the dream rag gave a special quality to my days it must have been the way restricted my air intake I would be visited by the most extraordinary dreams transes Visions thoughts Sensations remembrances and time would be gobbled up with a twitch or gasp Disturbed me and the rag fell away I'd come to full ious delighted to find the time had slipped by the dryness of the rag was part proof but more than that was the feeling that things were different that the present moment was different from the previous present moment so the dream rag helps him to pass the time he can sort of hallucinate a bit think of other things and not his situation once again another form of action I put a message in a bottle Japanese owned cargo ship sit flying pan flying Panamanian Flag sank July 2nd 1977 in Pacific 4 days out of of Manila am in lifebo Piper tells my name have some food some water but Bengal tiger serious problem please advise family Winnipeg Canada any help would much appreciated thank you I C the bottle and covered the cor with a piece of plastic I tied the plastic to the neck of the bottle with Nyon string knotting it tightly I launched the bottle into the water notice here he does still have a little bit of Hope for his family being alive everything suffered everything became Sun bleach and weather beaten the Lifeboat the raft until it was lost the top and the STS the rain catches the plastic bags the lines the blankets of net all became worn stretched slack cracked dried rotted torn discolored what was orange became whitish orange what was smooth became rough what was rough became smooth what was sharp became blunt what was whole became tattered the sun took care of all the smells so this is significant because this is a physical indication or physical manifestation of Decay and this is what's happening to Pi as well is he's becoming weaker and weaker just like all these objects around him are becoming weaker and weaker almost my eyes started my eyes started to O past then Darkness came blink as I might at first it was right in front of me a black spot at the center of everything it spread into a blot that reached the edges of my vision all I saw of the Sun the next morning was a crack of light at the top of my left eye like a small window too high up by noon everything was Pitch Black I clung to life I was weakly frantic the heat was infernal I had so little strength I could no longer stand my lips were hard and cracked my mouth was dry and pasty coated with a glutenous saliva as fou to taste it as was to smell my skin was burnt my shriveled muscles achd my limbs ESP my feet were swollen and a constant sort of pain source of pain I was hungry and once again there was no food as for water Richard Parker was taking so much I was down to five spoonfuls a day but this physical suffering was nothing compared to the moral torture I was about to endure I would rate the day I went blind as the day of my extreme suffering began I could not tell you when exactly in the journey had happened time as I said before became irrelevant it must have been suff sometime between the 100th and 200th day I was certain I would not lost another one so this is significant in terms of of just showing us the extent of his survival like you can think about survival in terms of the general thing of him surviving all this time on the sea but also all these individual instances um if you include these in your essay it's going to show off that you really do understand and that you've read the text obviously remember you don't tell the story in a literature essay definitely watch my video on how to write a literature essay um but you're not trying to tell the story but rather you um use them as examples oh and by the way I forgot to mention earlier but I have a video on literature essays on how to write them and also a video on how to integrate quotes into a literature essay so if you're watching this and taking down quotes that you know you want to use definitely have a have a watch of that video so you understand which quotes in particular you should be studying because obviously you can't study all of these quotes when he finally arrives in Mexico he describes the people they came up to me with their hands covering their noses and mouths because you can just imagine being on onestly um for 227 days living like P was he must have completely looked um emanated and terrible but smelted really bad as well okay moving on to the theme of loss um obviously P experiences a lot of loss so here are just a couple of quotes that can um show us the different kinds of loss he experiences mother my tender guardian angel of wisdom where are you and you father my loving warry wart and you Robie dazzling hero of my childhood every single thing I value in life has been destroyed they were dead I could no longer deny it what if thing to acknowledge in your heart to lose a Brothers to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old who is supposed to bring you a sister-in-law and nieces and nephews creatures to the people of the tree of life and give it new branches to lose your father is to lose the one whose guidance and help you seek who supports you like a tree trunk supports its branches to lose your mother well that is like losing the sun above you is like losing I'm sorry I would rather not go on I get te eyed every time I read that sentence because it really is such an ordeal that p goes through and this is right the beginning before even his survival just think about this the cargo ship sinking he's already lost so much I thought of my family of how they were spared this terrible Agony On the day when I estimated it was my mother's birthday I sang Happy Birthday to her out loud and so this is the first really big instance of loss is the loss of his family of everything that he knew and another incidence of losses After the Storm when he loses the raft because the raft it was like a a home to him yes it was it was in a symbol of his accomplishment he was able to build the raft himself to keep himself alive um it was sort of a safe space for him it had kept him alive for so long there was all this um marine life that had grown around it and with the storm when it vanishes he feels this in intense sense of loss my little Marine Town had vanished the loss of the rft was perhaps not fatal to my body but it felt fatal to my spirits so whenever we analy as a text we usually talk about the theme of fate and versus Free Will so I think there's certain elements of fate and luck that come into Pi's story and then a lot of free will as well I always tend to lean towards Free Will U but we do have to acknowledge fate so some luck that he that he experiences that allows him to survive it was a miracle I didn't hurt myself so when he actually first gets into lifeboard he's thrown overboard um it's a miracle he didn't break his leg or anything if they hadn't been the life boy I wouldn't have lasted a minute if weren't for the sahena the Sailor was Sailors wouldn't have thrown me into the Lifeboat so I mean that's all pretty lucky stuff if you think about it the fact that he was even on the Lifeboat and then lastly when he is training Richard Parker and he gets thrown back into the into the into the sea luckily there were no sharks because there were lots of sharks throughout his ordeal but luckily in that moment when he's pushed off the boat um there are no sharks and he is able to pull him pull pull himself up and love Faith and Hope This links to religion and remember we spoke about this is a really key part of his survival is having faith and having hope Vishnu preserve me Allah protect me Christ save me I was alone and orphaned in the middle of the Pacific hanging on to an a an adult tiger in front of me sharks beneath me a storm raging above me had I considered my prospects in the light of reason I surely would have given up and let go of the O hoping that I might drown before being eaten but I don't recall that I had a single thought during those first few minutes of relative safety I didn't even no to day break I held on to the awe I just held on God Only Knows Why So once again you can see there how it's this combination of reason and faith that allows him to survive and in that particular moment it was faith if he had thought about this reasonably he really would not have wanted to live or he would not have persevered once you saved the World by taking the form of fish now you have saved me by taking the form of a fish thank you thank you I practiced religious rituals that I adapted to my circumstances they brought me Comfort that is certain but it was hard oh it was hard faith in God is an opening up a Letting Go a deep trust a free Act of love but sometimes it was so hard to love sometimes my heart was sinking so fast with anger desolation and weariness I was afraid it would sink to the very bottom of the Pacific and I would not be able to lift it back up so talking about the Troubles of faith and once again I feel like this really shows pi as a as a real sort of human figure that we can connect to because he does struggle he under go struggle even with his faith right even though he's probably one of the most like you know Faith obsessed people he still he does struggle being in this position to believe in God but he also says that his belief in God allows him to live and in this way I would remind myself of creation and of my place in it God's ear didn't seem to be listening despair was like heavy Blackness that let no light in or out it was a hell Beyond expression I thank God had always passed this is an outbreak of divinity the lower you are the higher your mind will want to S it was a natural that bereft and desperate as I was was in the throws of unremitting suffering I should turn to God there's a really wonderful line I'm not sure why I didn't include it here I must have included it somewhere else where he talks about how he understands his suffering within the Hindu religion and he puts a suffering into perspective so when he was feeling sort of overwhelmed by his suffering and feeling really pessimistic he then actually reframes his suffering as being just tiny in the scope of the entire universe and that completely reframes his perspective and allows him to see is suffering for what it is that it's finite that it will end and he's able to then sort of move on in a more optimistic manner so I mean it's a really powerful thing to be able to do and that's what Faith and Hope allows him to do we then have free will so Pi's actions and how that ensures his survival didn't I have the perfect circus ring inescapably round wasn't this an ideal source of treats with which to condition him to obey whistle I had all the time in the world my Panic was gone my fear was dominated survival was at hand the pipel indoc Canadian trans-pacific floating circus so his entire all of his actions so we spoke about in survival of how he rations the food in the water how he trains Richard Parker all of these show his Free Will and that Pi survival is because of his actions that he is responsible for his for his success so we can see the combination of the fate and the free will but to me I always lean towards free will and you have wonderful examples to prove that another important theme is the suffering both phys physical and mental suffering that P endures I was not wounded in any part of my body but I never experienced such intense pain so when he actually is um he realizes his fate and he's on the Lifeboat um he is not physically wounded but he realizes that he's lost I mean he doesn't realize the extent of what he's lost but he's feeling a lot of suffering it's just mental it's not perhaps physical he doesn't know where his family is there's lots of uncertainty he's worried he's got all these animals on board different from the Frozen anxiety of the first night and being a more conventional sort of suffering so remember the first night of his ordeal he thinks that he's going to be saved so he's just sort of like trying to hunker down and get through it but afterwards it becomes a more conventional sort of suffering because he realizes there might not be any salvation the broken down kind of consisting of weeping and sadness and spiritual pain and different from later ones in which I saw had the strength to appreciate fully what I felt it was a sight horrible to the eyes and killing to the spirit this is when he sees the zebra um being eaten from the inside out and this is what's really insignificant is when he realizes his own suffering he says I suff I saw my suffering for what it was finite and significant and insignificant which I think is such a powerful thing to be able to say about suffering that much and this is how he sort of even goes on Surviving is because he recognizes that his suffering is going to come to an end and in the broad a span of the universe that is really insignificant when we reached land Mexico to be exact I was so weak I barely had the strength to be happy about it we had great difficulty Landing I wept like a child it was not because I was overcome at having survived my my ordeal though I was nor was it the presence of my brothers and sisters though that too was very moving I was weeping because Richard Parker had left me so unceremoniously so remember that even after you know experiencing such a terrible ordeal the ordeal itself is terrible but the aftermath can also be terrible and the fact that he's left without um Richard Parker and Richard Parker doesn't actually say goodbye to him properly um really really haunts him and then reason and rationality so remember we said reason and rationality Faith and Hope work together to ensure his survival one Terror at a time Pacific before tiger so he's thinking reasonably he's thinking rationally okay let me attack each of these separately fear and reason fought over the answer there was not a Shadow of Doubt about the matter to leave the Lifeboat meant certain death thank you so much for watching I hope that you found this video helpful please remember to like the video and subscribe to the channel and I'll see you in the next one hello and welcome to another Chas video in today's video we're going to be having a look at 2.3 what I've labeled as 2.3 here which is regarding part two of the novel and it's specifically focusing on Pi's Reflections about life as he is a cast away on the Pacific and a few of what he thinks about when he reflects on this time in his life this is an important thing to consider because you could be asked a contextual question on this about what pi learns from his experience or what he learns about life and what you could also get asked is you could be asked a whole essay question about Pi's transformation about what he learns about his experience things like that so understanding certain Reflections and quite of them are but quite a few of them my philosophical I always feel like this novel um as you're reading It's a combination of a of a novel and a sort of philosophical um discussion at the same time because there's lots of um interesting and complex ideas that P that P reflects on why can we throw a question further we can put in an answer why such a vast net if there's so little fish to catch so he asks this um and it just this just shows this just emphasizes how sort of Lusty feels in that moment how there's so many questions and sometimes how in life we have so many questions but we don't have answers isn't it ironic Richard Parker we're in Hell yet we're still afraid of immortality so here he talks about how um you would expect that when you're in such a terrible situation you would you would really want to die but in this case he and Richard Parker he remarks to Richard Parker how yet even though they're despite they're in this terrible situation how they still have this desire to live when you own life is threatened your sense of empathy is blunted by terrible selfish hunger for survival so this is when he talks about seeing the zebra and he is traumatized by seeing the zebra being eaten by the from the inside out but he recognizes that he would probably feel would be feeling much worse about this if it if he himself was not you know threatened at the moment and um struggling to survive so he has to see it sort of in perspective I know idea a living being could sustain so much injury and go on living in the face of a such a superior predator all of us would pray and normal ways of praying were effective it seemed that the presence of the tiger had saved me from the hyena surely a textbook example of jumping from the frying pan into the fire so remember he's incredibly afraid of theen at first but then when he realizes there's a tiger on board and suddenly his entire perspective changes as do all the other animals and they realize oh okay we're actually even the H himself realizes that he's not the alpha here that there's actually a tiger which is going to threaten them all so once again that message of like perception and perspective never go up we fight and fight and fight we fight no matter the cost of battle the losses we take the improbability of success we fight to the very end it's not a question of Courage it's something constitutional an inability to let go it may be nothing more than life hungry stupidity I must say a word about fear it is life's only true opponent only Fear Can defeat life it is a clever treacherous adversary how well I know I think this is such a powerful statement and he has another a couple of quotes about fear and this what makes Pi really human and really sort of we can empathize with him because he's this human going through this very Human Experience um and he's not someone who's completely confident right he's a 16-year-old boy in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and he feels fear and he explains that fear but he also goes above that fear and he's able to um he's able to rise above it and to actually act and to survive which is really incredibly admirable which I don't think most people can do right I don't think that every single person has that ability to rise above fear but here high is recognizing fear and how dangerous fear can be to your survival one moment you are feeling calm self-possessed happy then fear disguised in the Garb of mild manate doubt slips into your mind like a spy doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out quickly you make rash decisions you dismiss your last allies hope and trust there you've defeated yourself fear which is but an impression has triumphed over you Nestles in your memory like Gang Green it seeks to rot everything you must fight higher to shine the light of words upon it because if you don't if your fear becomes wordless darkness that you avoid perhaps you may manag to forget you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you so here is when he talks about how it's important to actually put your fears into words because then it's something finite that you can conquer but if you let fear become wordless in the sort of pit of Darkness then you haven't defin it and therefore you cannot overcome it be daunted but not defeated if you have the will to live you will the pain was so severe I felt nothing that's an example of a paradox time became distance for me and the way that it is for all Mortals to be a cast away is to be a point perpetually at the center of a circle to be a cast away is to be be caught in a Haring ballet of circles you're at the center of one Circle while above you two opposing circles spin about so this is like just imagine put yourself in pie shoes he's in the middle of the Pacific Ocean it's just water from to end and it's almost like the circle cuz this is never ending cycle and he can't see anything beyond it in terms of the feet literally but also figuratively when it is light the openness of the sea is blinding and frightening when it is dark the darkness is claustrophobic when it is day you are hot and wish to be cool and dream of ice cream and pour sea water on yourself when it is night you are cold and wish to be warm and dream of hot curries and wrap yourself in blankets when it is hot you are parched and wish to be wet when it rains you are nearly drowned and wish to be dry when there is food there is too much of it and you must Feast when there is none there is truly none and you starve when the sea is flat and motionless You Wish It Would stir when it rises up in circles the Rises up and the circle that imprisons you is broken by heels of water you suffer that peculiarity of the high seas Suffocation in open spaces and you wish the sea would be flat again the Opposites often take place at the same moment so when the sun is scorching you till you are stricken down you are also aware that it's drying the strips of Flesh and fish and meat that are hanging from your l and that it is blessing your solar stills conversely when a rain squirr is replenishing your fresh water supplies you also know that the harid the humidity will affect your cured provisions and that some will probably go bad turning pasty and green when rough weather abates it becomes clear that you have survived and the sky attack and the Sea's treachery your Jubilation is tempered by The Rage that so much fresh water should fall directly into the sea and by the worry that is the last rain you will ever see that you will drive thirst before the next one drops the next Drops Fall this is such a powerful um paragraph where he just talks about all these opposites and all these contradictions and how when you're in one place you wish for something else but when you're in that place you wish for the opposite and as much as it's talking about sort of being in the ocean it's also an incredible life lesson the worst pair of opposites is boredom and Terror obviously Pi experienced both of these a lot when he is a cast away on the Pacific only death consistently excites your emotions whether contemplating it when life is safe and stale or fleeing it when life is threatened and pressure life on a Lifeboat isn't much of a life it's like an end game in chess a game with few pieces the elements couldn't be more simple nor the stakes higher physically it is extraordinarily arduous and morally it is killing you make must make adjustments if you want to survive much becomes Expendable you get your happiness where you can you reach a point where you're at the bottom of Hell yet you have your arms crossed and a smile on your face and you feel you're the luckiest person on Earth why because at your feet you have a tiny dead fish this I think I spoke about this line um in one of the earlier videos and how he talks about how one of the ways to survive is to constantly feel like you are evading death because it excites your emotions otherwise it's just sort of this monotonous um sort of boring and arduous Journey so having those moments of like escaping death becomes actually important for your survival which is an interesting I think a lot of these are they seem paradoxical in nature but really interesting Reflections about life um he gets from his journey that we can also think about in our own lives thank you so much for watching I hope that you found this video helpful please remember to like the video and subscribe to the channel and I'll see you in the next video hello and welcome to another chai cheers video today's video we're looking at part 2.4 of P's time as a cast away so we're looking at the island that he stumbles across and his arrival in Mexico the end of his journey essentially so as in the pr previous videos we're going to use the quotes to go off and we're going to use the quotes to get an understanding of the plotline of what happens when he's on the island how he feels um what his um emotions and thoughts are and then the same of Mexico I feel like these two parts are a lot more plot-based than perhaps you know when p is you know um on the on the Pacific itself and he's trying to survive there's a lot of analysis we can do about his character about themes Etc but the island in Mexico to me more represents the plotline that you could be asked in contextual questions so you need to be aware of what goes on and what the order of events are I made an exceptional Botanical Discovery but there will be many Who disbelieve The Following episode still I give it to you now because it's part of the story and it happened to me so this is a very like interesting line to sort of start off with this Venture with um and it does point to the fact of in my head I'm I always like struggled to believe that this is a literal thing that actually happen happened but perhaps it could be something figurative something that P perhaps hallucinates um obviously he presents it as though this is something that actually happened but um I'll maybe speak a little bit of the end on sort of my opinion of it but in terms of contextual questions you would have to answer this as though it did really happen even though it's difficult to believe a diluted sleep that had brought no rest and no dreams so that just speaks about his suffering and how we spoke about this in other video about how you know when you're in that situation like a Cast Away you're not going to see very well I blinked deliberately expecting my eyelids to act like Lumberjacks but the trees would not fall so he sees the trees he thinks it's some sort of joke or hallucination um but he keeps blinking and they're still there who had ever heard of land with no soil with trees growing out of pure vegetation I felt satisfaction because such a geology confirmed that I was right that the island was a chimera a play of the Mind by the same token I felt disappointed because an island any Island however strange would have been very good to come upon to take in green after so much blue was like music to my eyes green is a lovely color it is the color of Islam it is my favorite color the current gently pushed the Lifeboat closer to the illusion chloral Heaven I expected the bubble of Illusion to burst at any second it was my nose that was the judge of land my legs began to shake so he's noticing some sort of difference and just the fact by virtue that it's different just being on the open water is something of note and is something important to him and gives him sort of this new lease on life the Elie had a sweet had a light sweetness that outdid in Delight even the sap of our maple trees here in Canada but it was a tree and a tree is blessedly good thing to behold when you've been lost at sea for a long long time oh that I could be like it rooted in the to the ground but with every hand raised up to God In Praise I wept so he's sort of mimicking the trees and thinks of how he should he wishes that he could be like the tree a tree is like rooted on land cuz he misses land so much and he's sort of just like trees have their branches pointing up to the heavens he wish he could put his arms to the Heavens to to to praise and thank God reluctantly strictly for safety's sake I crawled back into the Lifeboat so he's like not believing that this place is actually safe that he can be there it was very painful but afterwards I fell into the deepest most refreshing sleep I had had since the night before the sitzman sunk when I woke up in the morning I felt much stronger I've read that there are two fears that cannot be trained out of us the startle reaction upon hearing an unexpected noise and vertigo I would like to add a third to wit the rapid the direct approach of a known killer I fear the defensive wall of my whistle blows was about to crumble and that he would attack me I calmed down I reminded myself forcefully that this had been my situation for the last long while to be living with a live tiger hot beneath me at every fall I had a full meal of full full meal of Alie so as he's exploring he just keeps on eating this algae that's growing he is totally sort of in heaven in the sense of it's something completely different from his life on the Lifeboat and he's finally able to eat and feel full and have his feet on land I would conservatively estimate to be hundreds of thousands of meia cats the landscape was covered in meats and then he notices that it's not just these trees and this algae that's growing with no soil that there's all of these meia cats around and then you notice there something even stranger the meia cats will bring a sure dead fish they had not killed but what were sea fairing fish doing in a freshwater Pond how had they got there the AL naturally and continuously desalinated sea water the effect of bathing in Pure Clean salt-free Water was more than I could put into words once again that idea of perspective right something maybe we take for granted in our everyday life of bathing not in seawater something that is really important and groundbreaking to pie at this point in his journey he killed Beyond his need he killed mere cats that he did not eat in animals the urge to kill is separate from the urge to eat to go for so long without prey and suddenly to have so many his pent up hunting Instinct was lashing out with a Vengeance so this is a significant point because throughout this journey p and rishop parka and we spoke about this in a previous video about how they sort of come together and um they unite and they sort of become one aspect or aspects of each other in this shared journey and shared experience but as soon as there's a change as soon as now they're not stuck on this life Bo together they're exploring this island iMed they both turn to their individual ways so Pi goes towards the human side right he's going to eat he's going to bathe he's going to engage with that aspect of himself and Richard Parker delves into sort of animalistic urges to kill for the sake of killing so just notice how when they're in in the same vote literally and figuratively then they um they sort of started becoming alike but as soon as there's a you know there's some sort of normality in terms of land then there's a shift and we're going to see that in mexic go as well when Richard Parker leaves um leaves pie very unceremoniously the next morning after he had gone I cleared clean the Lifeboat so it this like a new start a new perspective and this is sort of links to what I think this island Venture is really about it's about sort of this new slate or this reset that piie has that allows him to keep going and allows him to persevere and survive in s Mexico put simply I returned to life I lived through a major storm while on the island and after the experience I would have trusted staying on it during the worst hurricane it was an all inspiring spectacle to sit in a tree and see giant waves charging the island in this respect the island was gundian it resisted by not resisting every wave vanished into the island with a clash with only a little frothing and foaming so there's a little bit of like Mystique here it's very mysterious and almost magical how can this island be like this harder to understand was the Island's complete desolation I never saw such a strip down mology the air of the place carried no flies No butterflies no Bees No insects of any kind the tree sheltered no birds the plains hid no rodents no grubs no worms no snakes no scorpions they gave rise to no other trees no shrubs no grasses no flowers the ponds harbored no freshwater fish the seashore teamed with no weeds no crabs no crayfish no Coral no pebbles no rocks with the single notable exception of the Mia cats there was not the least foreign matter on the island organic or inorganic it was nothing but shining green algae and shining green trees so if you get a contextual question about what makes this island different or weird or strange you have lots of answers from this quote which meant that the trees these trees either lived in a symbiotic relationship with the algae in a giving and taking that was to their Mutual advantage or simpler still were an integral part of the ele was rather a free flowing organism a ball of Elie of Le Leviathan proportions it would all bear much further study but unfortunately I lost the Alie that I took away just as I returned to life so did Richard Parker so he even claims that he took some of the Alie and kept in the Lifeboat to study when he arrived on land but unfortunately it got lost and he says that he and Richard Parker both had this reset they both Return To Life his weight went up his fur began to glisten again and he returned to his Healthy Look of old he kept up his habit of returning to the life but at the end of every day I always made sure I was there before him copiously marking my territory with urine so that he didn't forget who I was and and what was whose so remember that this is not just a complete break he still has the Lifeboat and obviously the Lifeboat he's still going to get back on it obviously not in the way that he expects at this point um but he makes sure to keep up sort of Richard Parker's training to keep that distance between them so he really has this rational reasonable head space that night as he was resting 2 feet beneath me I came to the conclusion that I had to step into the circus ring again the major difficulty in training animals is that they operate either by instinct or by root but he remained tense I knew him well enough to sense it eventually I quit the boat to survive for so long in a Lifeboat with a 450 Bengal tiger only to die in the tree in the hands of two pound meia cats struck me as tra as a tragedy too unfair and too ridiculous to Bear not a square inch of space was left free so um he decides that he's going to now sleep on the island sleep in the tree why not and um he does this and leaves Richard Park to the Lifeboat um but he when he's up there one night all these Mir cats come crowding around him and he has this little like statement where he's like this would be a real tragedy if I died from all these me cats in a tree when I've been surviving for days and days on end with a 450b tiger on a tiny Lifeboat so I began to sleep in the tree every night I emptied the Lifeboat of its useful items and made myself a nice Treet toop bedroom the answer to the mystery came somewhere later from deep within the forest I noticed the tree because it seemed to have fruit each was at its Center a number of twigs that were tightly cold around it to protect I suppose so now this is when he's going to find out the truth of the island and he he wishes that he hadn't figured out the truth of the island but he does ah how I wish that Mo moment had never been but for it I might have lived for years why the rest for the rest of my life on that island nothing I thought could ever push me to return to the Lifeboat and to the suffering and deprivation I had endured on it nothing what reason could I have to leave the island where my physical needs not met here were there not more fresh water than I could drink in all my lifetime more Aly than I could eat and when I yearned for variety more me cats and fish than I could ever desire if the island floated and moved might it not move in the right direction might it not turn out to be a vegetable ship that brought me to land in the meantime did I not have these delightful meia cuts to keep me company and wasn't Richard Parker still in need of improving his fourth jump the thought of leaving the island had not crossed my mind once since I had arrived it had been weeks many weeks now I couldn't say EX exactly couldn't say how many exactly and they would stretch on I was certain about that how wrong I was and then it came to light an unspeakable pear the heart of the green oyster a human tooth 32 teeth a complete human set not one tooth missing understanding dawned upon me I did not scream I think only in movies is horror vocal I simply shuted and left the tree I think that's such an such a wonderful um way that he's put that and is once again makes it really realistic and his reaction that he doesn't scream he's just completely he he has this understanding and he runs to Lifeboat he knows he has to get away from this island and so he sees that this island is this carnivorous Island that is sort of absorbing people or absorbing living things still my feet burned they burned all night I couldn't sleep for it and from the anxiety the island was carnivorous this was why Richard Parker returned to the boat every night this was why the meia cat slept in the trees this was why i' never seen anything but Elie on the island how long does it take for a broken Spirit to kill a body that has food water and shelter I prefer to set off and perish in search of my own kind than to live a lonely half life of physical comfort and spiritual death on this murderous Island I filled my stores with fresh water and drank like a camel I ate alue throughout the day until my stomach could take no more I killed and skinned as many me cats as would fit in the locker and on the floor of the Lifeboat I reaped dead fish from the ponds with the hatchet I hacked off a large mass of algae and worked a rope through it which I tied to the boat I could not abandon Richard Parker to leave him would mean to kill him he would not survive the first night a load of my life buted Suns said I would know that he was burning alive or that he had thrown himself in the sea where he would drown I waited for his return I knew he would not be late so he makes preparations to leave the island um and as you can see it's almost like this literal well to him it's literal to me I would think it's more figurative but either way it's this reset that he has and he will refuses to leave Richard Parker behind um this this really emphasizes their connection as well um but yeah so you can you definitely have to be writing in your contextual questions about the island being literal as P seesar that this was something that actually happened um but yeah in my mind this is more of a reset or some sort of hallucination that gives them the energy and the power to continue to to go that's my opinion okay then when he arrives in Mexico um remember he is taken to the hospital and this um the quotes that I've brought here this is when he is telling his story to the um Japanese investigators who come to investigate the sh the sinking of the ship they trying to find out answers about it and they're completely taken back with P story they don't really believe him and then he changes the story and this is where it really if you thought the Nova was complicated up to this point then now it gets even more complex and more detailed and more makes you think about different things and the more we're going to have all different interpretations Anyone who reads this I think has a different interpretation he and Mr chuba spoke with Mr p m Patel Patel in English for close to 3 hours taping the conversation February 19th 1978 i' like another cookie yes of course Mr Chiba he's already had plenty and most he hasn't even eaten they're right there beneath his bed sheet so P immediately asks for um for more food and he doesn't actually eat it he just hides it and this shows the impact of the Pacific on him obviously he's still recovering it's just been a couple weeks since since he was um since he found land um and so he's like hoarding food at this point Mr Patel we don't believe your story these things don't exist to which P responds only because you've never seen them not plants that contradict the laws of nature what you don't realize is that we are all strange and forbidding species to wild animals we fill them with fear they avoid us as much as possible it took centuries to steal the fear in some pliable animals domestication it's called but most cannot get over their fear and I doubt they ever will when wild animals fight us it is out of sheer desperation they fight when they feel like they have no other way it's a very last resort inner life vote come on Mr Patel it's just too hard to believe if you stumble at May believ what are you living for isn't love hard to believe Mr Patel don't you bully me with your politeness love is hard to believe ask any lover life is hard to believe ask any scientist God is hard to believe ask any believer what is your problem with hard to believe we're just being reasonable so am I I applied by reason at every moment reason is excellent for getting food water sorry food clothing and shelter reason is the very best toolkit nothing beats reason for keeping Tigers away but being excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bath water so they have a lot of back and forth as you can see here lots of inverted commas going everywhere um between pi and these investigators and they're just coming to ask him a very simple questions they want to know how the shim sank how he survived and and he is telling his story but because he's pie and because we know all the history about him and his beliefs and how he survived and how he combined reason and faith and everything um he's providing them a story but they don't believe the story specifically the part about the island because they don't think it's reasonable and Pi is questioning that and he's actually making a really good point here if you read it carefully and so he challenges them and he challenges the reader to to think about belief and reason in different ways so this idea that um we spoke in the previous video about themes reason is excellent for getting food clothing and shelter reason is the best toolkit and this really shows us how he does employ reason but he also employs Faith as he says and hope because he says if you're just reasonable excessively so you risk throwing out the universe with bath water we are not seeking to lay criminal charges you are an innocent victim of a tragedy at to seea we are only trying to determine how the tisman sank we thought you might help us Mr Patel Tigers exist life for exist oceans exist because the three have never come together in your narrow limited experience you refuse to believe that they might yet the plain fact is that the cman brought them together and then sank so he's saying the the investigators are like this is crazy how can you how can you have this scenario of you on a Lifeboat with a tiger and Pi just puts it to them in very plain terms and says well you've seen all these separate things you know that they exist now why is it so difficult to believe that they come together they also find trouble with the blind um Frenchman story two blind people in two separate life boats meeting up in the Pacific The Coincidence seems a little farfetch no it certainly does we find it very unlikely some is winning the lottery yet someone always wins we find it extremely hard to believe so did I and then pie says Okay um oh sorry not there yet the cook on the syman was a Frenchman they could be Bones from another small animal they were mirat so they keep questioning every single aspect ECT of Pi's story and they say oh did the Frenchman do you mean because you know the cook on the on the ship he was a Frenchman and he says well no and they said oh the bones that because P says he has bones from the me cuts on the on the boat to prove the existence of this island and they were like well it could be from another small animal and Pi keeps saying no believe my version of the story and then he brings up something I never forgot not for a minute I lost my whole family and then when the investigators still don't believe him he says Okay so you want another story and they say uh no we would like to know what really happened doesn't the telling of something always become a story isn't it just looking upon this world already something of an in of an invention I know what you want you want a story that won't surprise you that will confirm what you already know that won't make you see higher or further or differently you want a flat story an immobile story you want dry useless factuality isn't that such a wonderful use of words in the way that he um in the way that this WR has written it's just such beautiful writing um and he basically says here he understands what they want they don't want any sort of what actually happened what they actually want is a sort of flat believable story that fits into what they've already decided happened with this story so it's a really interesting to think of to think about as the reader and this is a really philosophical book that really makes the reader think about all these these big questions in life so I'm right you want a story without animals we want a story without animals that will explain the sinking and then pie says here's another story so now he's going to provide an alternative version of events and for us as the readers we need to analyze this and we need to see which version do we believe and I'll leave that up to you to decide um which version you would believe but Pi presents this whole another story now without the animals in order to make these investigators believe him this flat story which would fit into their version of events that they've sort of made up in their head four of us survived mother held on to some bananas and made us the Lifeboat the cook was already abroad as was the Sailor so you can see how he's equated each of the animals to a human being I couldn't believe a human being could survive so much pain so much Butchery it was unbearable to have that beautiful face so Noble and Serene connected to such a site below I held my mother's head in my hands and this part of the story goes really quickly it goes through because we've obviously heard the whole story with the animals and now it compares the mother to the orangutang um the cook to the hen and the Sailor to the zebra and very quickly the Sailor dies a terrible death and then the mother is brutally murdered by the cook he knew it had gone too far even by his beastial standards Solitude began I turned to God and survived and turned to God I survived so that's when he then gets revenge on the cook and he kills the cook something that I find really strange about this story and why I I am personally inclined to believe the story with the animals is that the cook becomes extremely violent very quickly like just is they're on the boat he immediately starts worrying about food and becoming sort of having these um thoughts about cannibalism and things like that it's just it's almost too quick in my opinion um so to me the animal story makes more sense but obviously you are welcome to have your to have your own opinion um and then now he's by himself in the ocean Solitude began is that better are there any parts you find hard to believe anything you'd like me to change so now he he asks them and it's quite humorous to think about um how these sort of serious investigators are trying to get a story and P telling them a story like this doesn't make sense it's hard to believe and he's like okay let me change the story for you and then at the end he's like anything else you'd like me to change and if it had in my experience when a dingy Third Rate rust back at sinks unless it has the lack of carrying oil lots of oil enough to kill the entire ecosystem no one cares and no one hears about it you're on your own you have doubts about the fitness of the crew so the ship sank um Stone first did it appear to you that the ship was properly loaded and this is P's response because the investigators want a reason for why the ship sank and he has no idea he says it was my first time on a ship I don't know what a properly loaded ship should look like high 25 30 ft he's trying to describe the waves and they say that's quite modest actually and he replies not when you're in a life boat and they say yes of course but for a cargo ship so he really like it just shows us once again that P is a 16-year-old boy well now he's probably like 17 when he arrives back um he arrives in Mexico and he um is you know he doesn't know the specifics and so the investigators are trying to get a story out of him that they're never going to get because he doesn't know all the specifics but it's also what he says here about the waves and they're like oh that's not too high and he's like well it depends what perspective you're coming from that tells you whether that's actually high and dangerous or not in both Story the ship sinks my entire family dies and I suffer that's true right so um this is p being very realistic and very sort of blatant and Brazen he says well in both of the stories I'm struggling and I lose and I suffer so tell me since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't Pro prove the question either way which story do you prefer which is the better story the story with animals or the story without animals um I think that this is such such an interesting question like which story do you prefer because I say which one do you believe is true he says okay nether of them are ask neither of them are answering your question which do you prefer and I think it makes us think about novels in general and it's one of those awesome moments I find when you read a novel and it makes you think about the writing itself very thin very tough very bright Soul Survivor could shed no light on reasons for sinking of sitzman as an aside story of Soul Survivor Mr pisy molto Patel Indian CI Cen is an astounding story of courage and endurance in the face of extraordinarily difficult and tragic circumstances in the experience of this investigator his story is unparalleled in the history of shipwrecks very few Castaways can claim to have survived for so long as see as Mr Patel and none in the company of an adult Bengal tiger so the last few lines these are from the report that was generated by the investigators and they comment that obviously the ship syncing could not be solved but that's not the um and that's not what our Focus has been on for this entire story but he says something to note is the incredible nature of pie and how um you know whether it is true or not what he claimed to surviv so long at SE with a tiger is absolutely sort of exceptional and miraculous thank you so much for watching I hope that you found that video helpful please remember to like the video and subscribe to the channel and I'll see you in the next video hello and welcome to another Tres video in today's video this is the last video in the life of Pi series we're going to be discussing Pi's life in Toronto in three ways we're going to talk about what the author notices about Pi we're going to notice what the author remarks about life in general um that's just a really quick point and then we're going to talk about Pi's reflections of his life now that he is in Canada years later talking to the author so what the author notices about Pi he notices um a couple of things which I've written out here and then I've shown you the quotes which prove that food insecurity he's a vegetarian he still practices three religions he's married with a son and a daughter he has completely rebuilt his life but Richard Parker still haunts him he has Vivid memories of some events but struggles to recall aspects such as his mother's appearance which deeply upsets him he has only a few blurry photographs sent to him from India after he arrived in Canada as remnants of his family so here are the quotes that prove that his cupboards are jam-packed a reserve of food to last the siege of lat memor is an ocean and he Bobs on its surface but he wants to tell me his story after all these years Richard Parker still prays on his mind he is a sweet man every time I visit he prepares a South Indian vegetarian Feast his house is a temple upstairs in his office there is a brass Ganesha sitting cross Leed next to his computer and a wooden Christ on the cross from Brazil on a wall and a green prayer rag in the corner an intellect confounded yet a trusting sense of presence and of course ultimate purpose a smile every time but his eyes tell another story it's very sad not to remember what your mother looks like this story has an happy ending please pardon my um typing era he is a sweet man not has a sweet man so as you can see here we notice how P has transformed or how he's changed since his experience but also I'm always struck by how little he is has changed he's still practices three religions he's gone back to vegetarianism after he um goes through the survivalist ordeal where he has to give that up he's still optimistic about life um and that he has these moments of sadness obviously where he doesn't remember certain details or he he doesn't have a lot to connect him to his family but he's created a new family for himself he's adapted and um into into Canadian culture um and he seems to be living a good life um and what the author when the author comes to ask him about these questions and ask him to tell his story he's happy to share the information um and it's just it's very comforting I suppose to see after all he's been through that he does have this beautiful life that he's created um and it shows you once again that the power of Free Will and about Pi's actions cementing his survival but also his transformation and also his ability to live this life that he has created for himself and I think that that's something that you know we shouldn't take well we shouldn't take lightly because I do feel like this is definitely an example of Free Will triumphing over fate just a quick comment that the author remarks about life which I thought was quite interesting they were there all along but I hadn't seen them because I wasn't looking for them um so here he's talking about like the fact that P has children and a wife like he didn't notice in the house but once he knew of their existence he couldn't help but see all these signs linking to them and I think that's really significant also in terms of Pi's relationship with God and faith and it's about you know how if you don't look for something then you're never going to find it and so P looks for things whether it's in faith whether it's in his reason reasonable mind you know looking for survival and therefore he finds things so that teaches us I think a really important lesson about life itself these are Pi's reflections of about his survival and his journey he asks the author could you tell my jumbled story in exactly 100 chapters not one more not one less I'll tell you that's one thing I hate about my nickname the way that number runs on forever it's important in life to conclude things properly only then can you let go otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did and your heart is heavy with remorse that bungled goodbye hurts me to this day I wish so much that I had one last look at him in the lifebo that I'd provoked him a little so that I was on his mind I wish I had said to them him then yes I know to a tiger but still I wish I had said Richard Parker it's over we have survived can you believe it I owe you more gratitude than I can express I couldn't have done it without you I would like to say it formally Richard Parker thank you thank you for saving my life and now go where you must you have known the confined freedom of iso for most of your life now you will know the free confinement of a jungle I wish you all the best with it watch out man he is not your friend but I hope you remember me as a friend I will never forget you that is certain you will always be with me in my heart what is that his ah our boat has touched sand so farewell Richard Parker farewell God be with you I think this is really interesting because it tells us of Pi's maybe sort of level of a bit of OCD or his trauma from the past and the fact that he wants the story to be told in 100 chapters and he's very very much um he gets upset by his name because Pi obviously is a number that goes on forever and ever and this shows us well this is indicative of the trauma that he went through where he didn't know when it was going to end he didn't know when he was going to be rescued when he was going to find Salvation if he was going to survive and so now in his life the effect of that is he tries to find certainty and this thing of not saying goodbye we can also see that runs deeply obviously he wasn't able to say goodbye to his family but he wasn't able to say goodbye to Richard Parker Richard Parker just left him and that feeling of Abandonment stays with him years and years later I was overwhelmed by the generosity of those who rescued me poor people gave me clothes and food doctors and nurses cared for me as if I were a premature baby there was only one long easy Corridor I had to walk down to all these people I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks pie is extremely optimistic and such a such an admirable figure I mean he could have come off this experience and been totally depressed and traumatized and would he he would have had every excuse to be like that but what he's done and what we can see from the last bits of the book or when actually it's not really the last bits but it's more when the when the writer switches to italics and we see the author's perspective um is that Pi is extremely grateful for surviving but also he's extremely optimistic so he sees his life he sees what he's done that his ordeal but he notices its suffering in its finite form and he's able to rise above that and create this entirely new life for himself he is so thankful the generosity he and and he even says which I think is a bit of a crazy thing to say he says that he's had one long passage where he's just had to easily walk through to get where he where he is in life you know to have studied at University to be living this married life in Canada and um I mean he says from the point where he got off the ship in Mexico people have been so good to him and he's grateful for that and it's all been like you know easy from there so I don't know if that's um you know maybe a bit of an overstatement of things being super easy but it just shows us Pi's um gratitude and his optimism and I think these things are so important and so integral in his survival process thank you so much for watching I hope that you found this video helpful please remember to like the video and to subscribe to the channel thank you