Themes.

Throughout the novel, "Life of Pi" there where many different themes involved. These themes include: religion, man and the natural world, and suffering. Religion is portrayed in this novel as, "a defense of religion". This is because we see a protagonist who believes in zoology as well as religion which are two contradicting theories. As well as this explain we see a boy who is Muslim, Christian and Hindu - all at the same time. This novel shows the common spiritually grounds behind all three of these religions and is able to work harmoniously with each other. The next theme we see Yan bring out in this novel is "man and the natural world". This is shown in a strong way how we see the crossing of these two kingdoms when we see humans becoming more animalistic and we see animals showing more human qualities. A third theme we see is "suffering". Suffering in this novel brings out the best and the worst in all the characters. We see  suffering drive the characters to care for each other when they could have killed them in many different occasions, and then we see the suffering make some characters resort to murder and cannibalism. An example of this is when Pi catches the Dorado and when he had murdered it with the hatchet he says, "I felt like I was beating a rainbow to death". Throughout this story these are the three main themes portrayed and how they where showed throughout the story.

Parts Making A Reader Uncomfortable.

Throughout the novel, "Life Of Pi", there where a series of events that did make me a little uncomfortable reading at times. These parts were mostly when murder was taking place on the lifeboat. The passages where very detailed and vulgar. An example of this is, "He ripped the flesh of the man's frame and cracked his bones. The smell of blood filled my nose". There are many passages like this one that did make me cringe while reading them. Even though these parts where very disgusting to read it did help me get a very intense and good mental picture of the scenes while it was happening. More examples of these take place when Pi was explaining how he ate certain animals. He would explain that he ripped off certain parts of its body and cut and ripped different body parts off to get certain juices out. Also when Pi talks about how he kills different animals before he is able to eat them. These are all strong examples of how book made me uncomfortable but still made it all believable and was very well written.

Characters Changing and Evolving

The character that changed/evolved the most during the novel, "The Kite Runner" was the main character, "Piscine" (aka Pi). Pi changed drastically in many ways throughout the story. The main and most seen way in the story is the way he went from a animal loving little boy who could not harm a fly to a boy who was able to murder, skin and eat any animal possible that he got his hands on. There are many things that triggered this change in Pi. The main event that made this happen was the fact he was stuck on a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with little food/water/survival supplies and a bengal tiger. When Pi realizes that there is little to no food that he can eat to keep himself alive he turns to killing and eating fish of all kinds and sea turtles and eventually a human being. We see the change in Pi when he finally catches his first fly fish and it really bothers him that he has to kill it, it takes him many tries with bringing the hammer down to his head before he is able to truly kill it and eating it the first bit was just as hard for him. After his first encounter with the fish he is able to do this without worry and really turns into some kind of monster within himself. This is how the character, Pi changes and evolves throughout the story.

Setting of the Book.

The setting of the novel: "Life of Pi" by Yan Martel is mainly in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on a lifeboat. This is unique to the novel because it adds to the overall mood of the novel. This enhanced the story because it was one single spot and you didn't have to try and remember where the characters where at each point of the book. This also was good because you were able to get a good mental image of the story because it was so general and wasn't complicated like in a little city in some country that you know nothing about. Some things that may have been taking away due to this setting is that some readers may get quickly bored and uninterested because the story is in the same place the whole time and there is no major changes in setting. Overall I thought having the setting in the Ocean was a very good and interesting idea and I enjoyed it.