How Did Richard Parker Survive In Life Of Pi

Life of Pi
“Life of Pi” written by Yann Martel is an incredibly philosophical novel that tells the story of survival. Pi Patel, a young Indian boy, is faced against the impossible when his family’s boat is shipwrecked and he is left stranded in a lifeboat with an interesting and potentially harmful group of animals: a zebra, an orangutan, a vicious hyena, and the magnificent Richard Parker, a Bengal tiger with a human like name. Throughout the novel, due to his situation of being stranded, Pi had to take drastic measures in order to survive. Part of his need to survive resulted in Pi giving up his vegetarian ways. Slowly throughout the book, readers witness the transformation from Pi’s civil eating habits to an animalistic devouring of
Luckily for Pi, some of the fish fall into the boat, making them readily available for Pi and Richard Parker to eat. Being the animal that he is, Richard Parker does not hesitate to eat his portion of the fish. However the same does not go for Pi. Eating the fish meant doing what he considered to be the unthinkable. Pi “proceeded with great deliberation” (182) and “unwrapped the fish carefully” (182). It was apparent that killing the fish went against all of Pi’s morals because “the closer the fish was to appearing, the more afraid and disgusted” (182) he became. Pi’s contemplated a lot before making his decision because “a lifetime of peaceful vegetarianism stood between [Pi] and the willful beheading of a fish” (183). After deciding that the best way to kill the fish was to break its neck, Pi had “tears flowing down his cheeks” (183). The simple killing of a fish left Pi in an emotional state. Now instead of an innocent sixteen year old boy, Pi was a killer and guilty of taking a life away. In other words, Pi now “had blood on [his] hands”
After discovering the simplicity in catching turtle, Pi began to eat them. More specifically, Pi butchered the turtles and drank the “sweet lassi” (212) that would spurt from the turtle’s neck. Not only did turtles become Pi’s “favorite dish” (212), but it also ate everything that turtles had to offer, whether it be their liver, heart, lungs, flesh, or intestine. Pi’s methods for killing the turtles and his behavior when eating the turtles showed how Pi was slowly transforming into a version of Richard Parker. His eating habits were becoming animalistic and they continued to worsen as Pi spent more time stranded out in the Pacific. In addition to ravenously eating his prey, Pi’s mood began to reflect the amount of food he ingested. Once Pi’s rations were gone, “anything was good to eat” (213). Instead of using his morals and sense of reasoning, Pi would just eat anything he could find, regardless of the taste. Even Richard Parker’s feces caused Pi’s mouth to water. Pi’s need for food numbed his mind from making reasonable decisions. In Pi’s mind, everything was edible, much like how animals perceive everything to be