Passage Analysis:
In many pagan religions, someone’s “spirit” or “totem” animal is meant to represent traits and skills that reflect upon their own learning experiences. For example, the tiger spirit animal most commonly symbolizes “primal instincts, unpredictability, and the ability to trust your intuition” (Elena Harris SpiritAnimal.info). In Yann Martel’s, Life of Pi , Richard Parker (a Bengal tiger who is stranded on a lifeboat with Pi for 277 days) shares many of the same characteristic and traits as Pi; such as willpower, strength and courage, unpredictability in actions, and at one point, aggression during his struggle to survive. Orange is also a recurrent symbol of hope and survival throughout the novel and Richard Parker is just one example of this symbol. As a result, Richard Parker is used as an archetype in this novel to represent Pi’s “spirit animal”, but, through this…show more content… After Richard Parker jumps out from under the tarpaulin and kills the wild hyena, Pi is very frightened by the tiger as he is does not know what to expect the tiger to do next. In this passage specifically, Pi comments that Richard “looked exactly as if he were asking me a question. [Pi] looked at him, full of fearful wonder. There being no immediate threat, [his] breath slowed down, [his] heart stopped knocking about in my chest, and [he] began to regain my senses” (Martel, 181). This passage introduces to the reader that both Richard Parker and Pi have the ability to stay calm, or to become aggressive during times of severe suffering. Here, the tiger proves to Pi that he harmless to him and that he will even try to protect him from any danger. Also, later in the book, Pi, who is seemingly calm from the beginning, displays his aggressive side when he becomes accustomed to beating and brutally killing fish, because he knows that this is his only major source of food and