Accidental Cannibalism In Yann Martel's Life Of Pi

There is a certain method humans deal with stress-inducing situations. Pi created a fictitious mask that saw the horrendous acts of man in a better light in order to carry on with his day-to-day life. A cover-up of good faith to preserve the bits of good humanity that left in Pi’s life. In Pi’s alternate story, the one without the animals, there was a malevolent chef that operated in unconventional ways. The chef was pure evil, murdering a Chinese sailor to settle his hunger. These violent actions are parallel to the work of the hyena in Pi’s main story, the one with animals. The hyena eventually ate and killed the zebra, a fellow animal, for its hunger got the better of him. For the hyena, indigestion of one’s own species does not invokes
the hyena feels no disgust at this mistake” (Martel 146). Animals kill. It is in their nature to do so, it is their basic instincts. The hyena fed on the zebra and Pi understood that it was a necessity. This is the natural order of life, it must kill for survival. As for the chef, the Chinese sailor became a source of food. This was cannibalism. Just as the hyena ate the zebra, the chef maliciously munched the Chinese sailor. He was met with disgust and indignation. A scene Pi beholded with his own eyes, a deep-seeded hatred was planted. A painful blow at Pi’s spirit, a disintegration of innocence. At this point, Pi’s would have lost all hope in humanity if it was not for his anthropomorphization of the hyena. The hyena was chosen to impersonated the chef for its similar traits of cruelty, vileness, and savagery. Pi creates this illusion maintain his spirit in times of darkness. This new reality is his coping mechanism, a way to accept the partial truth of everything. It allows Pi to go forth without the thought of how low a human can become. The reality is that man can do the worst things in order to carry on