“I was getting used to the mental delusion” (Martel 285). Pi desperately wants to be back with his family and for his life at sea to end which could lead him to start seeing things in his distraught mind. Tell me it’s not real” (Martel 307).ĭenial is one of the coping mechanisms used he wishes that he was not stuck in his predicament therefore he will do anything to rewind the past. “Can you believe what has happened to us? Tell me it’s a bad dream.

It is evidently hard for him to accept the fact that he is alone at sea which leads him to imagine that he is not. The trauma of the ship sinking affects Pi in the way that he misses his past life. The two protagonists as well as the other characters become more alike and therefore when thinking that the animals were never on the lifeboat and were figures of his imagination, it is not hard to believe.

Pi becomes more animalistic as his journey progresses, which is caused by his predicament, for example by eating “exactly the way Richard Parker ” (Martel 250). The orangutan is described as being “gentle and unaggressive her whole life” (Martel 143), similar to a maternal and protective parent.

Not only the actions and fate of characters are similar, but the emotional characteristics can be related as well, such as with Orange Juice and Pi’s mother. The coincidence of these events shows the close relationship between Pi’s accounts.

Life of pi by yann martel characters