Religion life of pi influence

Themes The Will to Live Life of Pi is a story about struggling to survive through seemingly insurmountable odds. Pi abandons his lifelong vegetarianism and eats fish to sustain himself.

We all thought it was mostly wonderful, and certainly one of the most visually stunning films any of us had ever seen. The title character, Pi Patel, is a native of India who tells the story in flashback to a journalist in Canada, where he lives in the present day.

We see young Pi growing up in Pondicherry as a religiously engaged child. He is raised as Hindu, but with no particular piety; his father is a rationalist and a zookeeper, and his mother holds on to her religion as a link to her estranged family.

Later, young Pi encounters a Catholic priest, who teaches him about Jesus. Pi comes to accept Jesus and ask for baptism, but he sees no reason why he should give up Hinduism.

Then he begins to practice as a Muslim, yet still considers himself Religion life of pi influence Hindu and a Christian. The father also tells him that he ought to trust science, not religion — but his mother counters by saying that science tells us about the world, but religion tells us about the heart.

The family sets out to emigrate to Canada with their menagerie of wild animals, which the father is planning to sell in North America. A terrible storm blows up at sea off the Philippines, sinking their freighter.

Pi and four animals, including a Bengal tiger, are the only survivors. Soon enough, only Pi and the tiger are left.

They drift together across the Pacific for most of a year, encountering at one point a floating island of carnivorous algae, before at last washing ashore on a Mexican beach. The emaciated tiger wanders into the jungle, leaving exhausted Pi to be discovered on the beach, and taken to the hospital.

Two Japanese investigators from the shipping company arrive at the hospital to interview Pi, for the sake of finding out why the freighter sank. After hearing his fantastical tale, they tell him they do not and cannot believe him. Pi kills the evil cook, who is disgusted by what he has done. But Pi himself is horrified by his deed, even though it was necessary to save his own life.

The story of the lifeboat with the tiger inside and the boy floating on a raft tethered to it, because he the boy was afraid of being consumed by the tiger, is, in this reading, a metaphor for the human condition.

In the present day, the journalist asks the older Pi which of the stories is true.

Islam and Life of Pi by Madison Gordon on Prezi

Pi turns the question back at him by asking which one he prefers to believe. The tiger story, the journalist says. When the boy Pi begins meeting with the Catholic priest, he tells the priest that it makes no sense that a loving God would send his only Son, an innocent man to die for the sins of others.

The priest gently tells Pi that God so loved the world that He did exactly that, and that the important thing is not to try to make logical sense of the story, but to focus on the sacrificial divine love at the heart of it.

If I remember correctly from the film, the priest explains to Pi that some things are beyond our ability to grasp intellectually, but God comes to us in ways that we, in our limited state, can relate to.

The implication, clearly, is that God is beyond all our categories, and our way of talking and thinking about Him and His ways is not the same thing as God. I took the priest to be telling Pi that God desires not to be understood but to be loved, and to show us His love.

The world, then, is filled with sacramental mystery, and must be known through the heart.

It is easy to believe that Pi, a sensitive boy with a religious imagination, had to invent this myth to bear, psychologically, the pain of his trials, and to find transcendent meaning in them.

The Japanese visitors could not accept the near-miraculous story to which Pi bore witness. It did not make sense to them. They commanded him to tell them a version of events that they could believe. The older man Pi says he believes God is real and brought him through this ordeal — and even that God sent him that tiger to give him something to care for, to keep his hope alive.

I see four possibilities here: Pi is telling the literal truth about what happened, but told the Japanese a conscious lie as an act of mercy when he saw that they could not bear the weight of the miraculous tiger tale, or maybe as an act of self-deliverance that is, to give them what they want to get them out of his hospital room so he could get some rest.

Pi unconsciously created the tiger myth to hide the unbearable truth of what happened on the lifeboat from himself, but told the truthful horror story to the Japanese as a disburdening confession.Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam in Life of Pi Hinduism was the first religion that Pi grew up with, and because of that, Pi knows the religion very well.

Throughout the story, he references simple facts or stories that Hindus know well. Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam in Life of Pi Hinduism was the first religion that Pi grew up with, and because of that, Pi knows the religion very well. Throughout the story, he references simple facts or stories that Hindus know well.

One example of this is when Pi talks about how he wishes he had as many arms as one of the gods in Hinduism. Pi is also a vegetarian.

Religion in Life of Pi. by Adrian Fernandez Avendaño on Prezi

Pi enjoys the wealth of stories, but he also senses that, as Father Martin assured him was true of Christianity, each of these stories might simply be aspects of a greater, universal story about love.

Stories and religious beliefs are also linked in Life of Pi because Pi asserts that both require faith on the part of the listener or devotee. Surprisingly for such a religious boy, Pi admires atheists.

Life of Pi's protagonist believes passionately in both zoology and religion. Wait—what? Science and religion, together? What about the fact of multiple faiths?

Don't these faiths contradict each other, cause wars, and other problems? Not for Pi, who's Muslim, Christian, and Hindu – all at the. Feb 28,  · Yann Martel: 'Life of Pi' a window into our beliefs.

The book "Life of Pi" came out in , and it got new life late last year when movie director Ang Lee released the film version. Pi’s life is a long journey, filled with pain, isolation, danger, and uncertainty, but it is also a great exploration of his faith.

Religion plays a largely important and positive part in his life, and without it, Pi Patel would be a very different character.