Life of Pi Final Essay- A Meaningless Life

AN: I'm not quite sure about this essay. It seems really repetitive and redundant. However, I tried to get my point across and hope it is still meaningful to you.

You turn the page once more, the thin paper nearly crumbling under your touch. You eye the first word on the new sheet. Drab. You sigh and begin to write, as you have done yesterday and every day before. Yes, after working for nearly a year at the tiresome job of copying the dictionary, you are only in the fourth letter of the alphabet. You can feel the boredom seeping in through your skin, threatening to engulf you in its monotonous wrath. You suddenly stop, your pen poised barely a hair above your writing sheet. A realization spreads through your body as if you have been electrocuted. You have no purpose. The words ring clear in your mind now, and fear spreads throughout your body, the first feeling you have felt in months. Its chills send shivers through your veins as you try and process this new-found epiphany. Your life is empty. If you were to disappear, nothing in the world would change. Nothing. Life needs to have a purpose to have meaning. If you do nothing, if you feel nothing, you might as well be nothing. Without feeling and purpose, life is meaningless.

Pi Patel from Yann Martel’s Life of Pi may have known the dangers of feeling nothing, but that didn’t stop him from being tempted by an easy life of no consequences. Being lost at sea for months, it was a miracle to him when he happened upon an island in the Pacific. He soon fell in love with the island, believing that it was the perfect new life for him and his alter-ego tiger, Richard Parker. He may have stayed there forever, if it hadn’t been for the teeth he found embedded in the skin of a seemingly normal fruit. This sent a horrible realization through him- the island itself was a giant carnivorous plant that would eventually devour him, both physically and mentally. He learned an important life lesson- good things are not always what they seem. A simple, effortless way is the destroyer of life.

Just as Pi learned that he had to escape the island before it consumed him, we as people have to get out of our boxes before we are consumed by our own mindlessness. If we spend our lives stuck doing the same thing over and over again, we will never get ahead. People try to take the easy way out because they fear stepping out of their comfort zone. They figure, as Pi did, that if they can get out of the journey of life, escape into a safety zone, like Pi’s island, that they won’t have to try anymore. This is a dangerous situation to be in. You shouldn’t fear life, and fear the future. Do not fear love, do not fear pain. Only fear feeling nothing.

Although a life free of consequences is not the right path, some may ask why it’s such a bad thing to have a carefree life. Happiness, of course, is supposed to be a good thing. However, as Greek philosophy states, balance is key to life. Without an even balance of pain and pleasure, of life and death, catastrophe may occur and you may end up in a place that isn’t really all it’s made out to be. What would you have to live for if all you have is happiness? Even Pi realized that the island was not paradise, and he fled from it eagerly, knowing that true happiness was right around the corner. Sure enough, he reached real land a short time later. After all that pain he had to go through in the lifeboat, he was finally rewarded. This is true in real life as well. If we endure our pain with bravery, we will be rewarded.

Although Life of Pi as a novel is filled with challenging questions and debatable ideas, Yann Martel wants to reach out to the reader and make them understand that in life, there are no second chances. If you waste your life away now, you can’t have a promising future. Life is about taking risks, taking chances, and taking leaps, not hiding away in some dusty building copying a dictionary to earn your next paycheck. Everyone needs a real purpose, something that keeps them striving for more and challenging their spirit. Pi found himself out on that lifeboat. We too can find ourselves in our lives by stepping up and searching for real meaning. Without this purpose, this meaning, this passion, life has no meaning.