1 27 October 2014 Transforming Pi My passage is taken from Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, chapter 59, beginning with the line “A smell came to my nose” on page 189 to “...over the locker lid to stake my claim” on page 191. In this passage, Pi finds out that Richard Parker had already marked his boundary by urinating below the tarpaulin. Pi then drinks the dirty rain water to quench his thirst. Right after this, Pi urinates in the same beaker and foresees himself drinking it but ends up splashing his urine all over the tarpaulin to “stake his claim”. The level of desperation reached when the will of survival is high is displayed by the recurring motif of hunger and thirst. Being stranded on a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, as Pi is, doesn’t leave one fully stocked with all of supplies that are needed; as illustrated by my passage, the lack of human comforts causes Pi to resort to animal-like instincts and beastly actions. In desperation, humans are willing to try things that they normally wouldn’t in hopes of satisfying their needs of hunger and thirst. Martel displayed the transforming Pi with the use of motif, characterisation, simile, pun, setting and theme in this passage. Throughout this passage, the reader observes the gradual but nonetheless drastic changes in Pi’s character and his perceptions. Unlike those cockroaches seen right before my passage whom Pi describes as the last living things on the boat other than Pi himself and Richard Parker, they just jump into the water rather than trying to survive, but Pi wants to live. This
