Faith in Our Lives

an essay response to the novel Life of Pi, by Yann Martel

Water is rushing through the walls, fast, on all sides. The blue that once was so comforting now only fills you with the feeling of terror and shock. Even from up here it is obvious, everything you feared is reality, the ship is sinking. Everything and everyone you care about is missing. All signs point to death, but the small part is still hopeful that it will all turn out in the end. In the novel, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, the theme is quite easy to comprehend. With ever major point in the novel, the theme of faith relates to each in its own way.

With each chapter in the novel, Life of Pi, faith is important to every aspect , including the taboos that Pi, the main character, has to face. In the beginning of the novel, Pi showed his faith with one religion only; Hindu. Soon he is introduced other religion and believes in everything of all the religions. Before when Pi went to the other churches he was afraid of the trouble he would get into with his parents. Other religions were taboos, meaning that he was faced with taboos throughout the whole novel. Religions itself is a taboo and speaking of it was non-proper. Pi had to have faith in order to put the taboos aside and become what he really wanted to be, what he really wanted to have, which is freedom.

The way Martel shows a connection between animals and humans relates back to the theme of faith. In order to have animals and humans exist, there must be faith, the real connection between animals and humans. In this novel the animals and humans are the same but are not seen that way. With faith it is soon realized that God loves them both and they are in fact the same people, not two separate beings. Towards the end of the novel the problem of two very different sides of what happened on the life boat are explored. Each story could be a possibility, but the animals and people are in fact the same. When Pi sings Happy Birthday to his mother, although he believes she is not there, he subconsciously knew that she was really the orangutan, Orange Juice.

On the life boat in the middle of the ocean, Pi is stranded with a tiger which he calls Richard Parker, but Richard Parker was really created by Pi. The reason Pi made Richard Parker is due to him losing all his conventions and meaning to life itself. He created him as his alter ego to help him face what was hard for him to deal with otherwise. Pi turned almost into a true animal, an animal which relies only on instinct. We as people are animals, we build our own cages with conventions, so when all our conventions are gone we turn into everything that is wrong. His faith is the only way he could have survived that long, with or without Richard Parker. Without faith he would have given up right in the beginning and let the ocean take him.

Throughout the novel, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, there are many different aspects to ponder over. In each one the theme of faith is coherent. Faith is what keeps everything in balance. If you believe in nothing, what is it that you're really living for? Believing in nothing is the worst kind of… Nothing would be here on this Earth if the beings on it didn’t believe; what created this Earth if you don’t believe in any type of faith? Scientists are all about the facts, but they have faith in science to tell them the right answers. Surgeons rely on years of medical training to save lives, they have faith in their lessons to keep lives from falling through the cracks. Faith is all around us, without it life is meaningless.