Survival Narrative In Yann Martel’s Life Of Pi

Ever since its publication in2001, Life of Pi, Yann Martel’s Man-Booker Prize winning novel, has won both critical acclaim and popular attention. Its criticism covers various aspects and perspectives, including the truth of the two stories, the implication of the tiger character, the contradiction between faith and reason. Regretfully, although some critics have noticed the theme "survival", a systematical study on survival remains blank and necessary. On account of this, the thesis attempts to interpret "survival" from three perspectives: the protagonist Pi’s struggle to survive, the mysterious aspects of Richard Parker’s survival and the uniqueness of Yann Martel’s survival narrative, in the light of Canadian writer Margaret Atwood’s assumptions of "survival" and "victimization" and the famous American critic Janet Reno’s survival narrative paradigm.Starting with the definition and etymology of the word "survival", this thesis first summarizes various interpretations of the word and its textual, multifaceted meanings in the context of castaway literary works. Then the protagonist Pi’s struggle to survive in the Pacific Ocean and the consequences he has to face after he has been rescued are examined in details, on the basis of Freudian psychoanalysis. Meanwhile, compared with Pi, Richard Parker’s survival pattern is mysterious and more symbolic. His existence as a survivor implies a retrospection of human-animal relationship and a traumatic nature of survival. Furthermore, the way how the survivor/narrator generates his survival experience into stories is demonstrated based on Reno’s model and Rebecca Duncan’s postmodernist study on this novel. I hope this thesis could enrich the idea of "survival" and give insight into Martel’s creative efforts in dealing with the survival issues in the postmodern context.