Piscine Molitor Patel, the protagonist of Yann Martel's acclaimed novel The Life of Pi, survives a horrific ordeal lasting 227 days trapped aboard a lifeboat directionless with only a 450-pound Bengal Tiger, named Richard Parker, for company. Pi's account of his misfortune takes up most of the work, and it takes him hours to tell it to the Japanese investigators at the novel's conclusion. His description is so vivid, so extensive and so detailed that it would seem, despite its admittedly extravagant elements, to be deeply based on actual events. Indeed, manufacturing something of such intensity would be unthinkable – and indeed it is. Pi almost unthinkingly constructs a fantastical alternative to the frightening truth of his experience to protect his psyche from the truly terrible circumstances of his survival. Pi alters the reality of his time on the lifeboat so unconsciously that he can believe this figment of his imagination without hesitation, insisting on the veracity of his original account. It is only after a “long silence” that Pi can testify to the real facts regarding his experiences on the lifeboat (381). Author Joan Didion suggests that we must “tell ourselves stories to live.” This statement has special meaning for Pi's situation on the lifeboat, and his subsequent subconscious confusion between the story of cannibalism, slaughter, and murder that rang true, and his more pleasant, fantastical construction in which all the negative elements of true story I am projected onto a tactless wild animal. Didion would argue that this "story," including the host of wild animals that accompany Pi on his drift across the Pacific, is simply one he tells himself to live and to protect himself from going completely mad. plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Pi's survival on the lifeboat, which began on July 2, 1977 and did not end for some 227 days, continues only because of the sheer ruthlessness with which his surviving companion, the Frenchman, fares well. On board the lifeboat, in addition to the Frenchman, Pi's mother and a seriously injured Chinese sailor are initially also found (382). Immediately identifying the sailor as a weak point, the Frenchman quickly maneuvers Pi and his mother to "help" the sailor by helping the Frenchman amputate his leg (383). Soon after, however, we learn that the Frenchman only did this to secure bait for his fishing lines (384). Over the course of the ordeal, Pi witnesses increasingly horrific acts of inhumanity, all in the name of survival: the Frenchman promptly slaughters the sailor's body once he dies, including "ripping off his face" (387). When the fishing does not immediately prove successful, the Frenchman begins to eat the sailor's corpse: “'It tastes like pork,' he muttered” (388). As the situation on board worsens, the cook resorts to killing to feed himself: "They were fighting. I did nothing but watch. My mother was fighting with a grown man. He was mean and muscular. He grabbed her by the wrist and he turned it to her. She screamed and fell. He moved on her. The knife raised it in the air. Then he stood up: he was red on the bottom of the boat. He stopped, raised his head and looked at me of blood hit me in the face. No whip could have given me a more painful lash. It appeared when he threw my mother's body into the sea." (389-390) The depravity of the cook and the unimaginably macabre concept of holding the decapitated head in one's hand.