Archetypes In Life Of Pi

Words: 1794
Pages: 8

Every year, thousands of people are rescued by the Coast Guard from being stranded at sea, while the number of those still floating adrift remains unknown. When a horrible tragedy strikes upon a cargo ship, Pi Patel is left as the only survivor on a lifeboat along with several wild animals. Life of Pi by Yann Martel entails the story of Pi Patel, and the obstacles he faces as he travels the waters with nowhere to go, and wild animals to accompany him only inches away. The message taken from Life of Pi when given the standards of the alternative story shown through amplification, unreliability, mistaken archetypes, and conflict; is that truth can be stranger than fiction.
After exposing the details behind the tragic and treacherous occurrence of events that Pi faced when on the ocean waters, a few men deny his story in opposition to the reality of it having occurred. When Pi finally reveals his story to the Japanese Ministry of Transport, one of the men declares that; “[they] don’t believe [his] story”(Martel 292). The experience that Pi claims to have had after the shipwreck he endured did not appear realistic to
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When a person is set out at sea, stranded on a boat with (at the given moment) no supplies, food, or water, and only giant, wild animals to keep them company; they may experience a sense of delusion. The details enclosed in Life of Pi only add to the unreliability of the narrator as Pi elaborates how; “[he] spent [one] night in a state of delirium” (Martel 132). When one faces the elements of starvation, dehydration, and paranoia; the experience of hallucinations can become present in a person’s system. Although the story he tells may be true, it is unknown whether Pi can be trusted or not when implementing the fact that he could have faced hallucinations and mirages due to his environment. Given the standards, Pi may have altered his story unknowingly; providing for unreliability on his