Life of Pi: the Greater Truth Versus the Truth: Humans Are Also Animals

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The animal-like characteristics and instincts of humans are often masked by civilization. Humans demonstrate this animal side of them during a survival of the fittest situation. In Yann Martel`s Life of Pi, an Indian boy travelling to Canada named Pi Patel becomes a castaway on a boat with three others. As a result of the tragedy, Pi imagines an alternate story as the “greater truth” opposed to reality, with animals portraying his mother, a chef and a Chinese boy. The two stories are very similar in violence. Although, the animal story is easier to understand due to the way the characters strive to survive and by doing so, acquiring animal attributes. The story of the “greater truth” reveals that the characters killing for food, having deteriorating physical features and becoming selfish to live makes it evident that humans are mammals at the end of the day. In Maslow’s Hierarchy, it is stated on the bottom of the pyramid that physiological needs must be met first in order to survive. Humans will do everything they can for food to survive, similarly to animals. On the lifeboat, the chef eats the injured Chinese boy’s leg as he starves. Pi describes the Hyena brutally eating the Zebra in the animal story saying, “It (Hyena) started pulling out coils of intestines and other viscera... It bit here, swallowed there... After devouring half the liver...” (Martel 157). The chef as the hyena ultimately needs something to fill his stomach, not being ashamed of eating his own kind. After sixteen years of being a vegetarian, Pi chooses to become carnivorous to survive. He states, “It (flying fish) was split open and bloody on one side of its head... I was now a killer. I was now as guilty as Cain.” (231). Pi feels sinful over breaking his religious practice as he hunts prey to satisfy his hunger. He compares his deeds to the story of Cain and Abel, where Cain sins and kills

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