Narrative Threads Essay

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Tracing Narrative Threads The Name Pi: At the beginning of Life of Pi, we are told that Piscine’s name is derived from a French root, and that he is named after a popular pool in Paris. Pi is the only one in his family to fully allow Mr. Adirubasamy to teach him how to swim; this ties in with the theme of survival, in that Pi is the only one in his family who survives, thanks to his swimming abilities and lack of fear of water. Also, Pi’s name is made fun of and made to be ‘Pissing,’ which is ironic because when he is stranded, he is almost tempted to drink his own urine. ‘Pi’ is also a Greek symbol, which in Math, stands for 3.1415..., etc. Pi, tired of being made fun of for his name, narrates how he wrote his new nickname on the board; “for good measure I added Π = 3.14 and I drew a large circle, which I then sliced in two with a diameter, to evoke that basic lesson of geometry.” There is a great repetition of numbers after the point, which is symbolic of the daily repetitive routine which Pi inherited after the climax, being the ‘point.’ This ties in with the theme of existence, in that, as humans, we live our lives to a mundane, similar routine almost every day; Pi forgets about the essence of time during his struggle to survive, and eventually survival becomes so routine, that it simply just becomes part of his daily existence. The many numbers also represent the theme of Belief; there is a Suspension of Disbelief on how true Pi’s story is, and the author has created layers of storytelling to mask the true reality of Pi’s story so that people can still be able to read about it, but at the same time understand it. The ‘Pi’ symbol also can be an approximate fraction of 22/7, which symbolizes the 227 days which Pi survived in the Pacific Ocean. Furthermore, the ‘Pi’ symbol is used to measure the circumference of a circle, which represents that although Pi

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