What do you make of Pi’s relationship with his uncle, nature, and animals? What are your philosophies on zoos in regards to keeping them in zoos rather than in the wild: agree or disagree?

Pi had an interesting relationship with his uncle because Mr. Adirubasamy is not actually his uncle. He was just a very close friend of the Patel family. He was especially close to Piscine because he was Pi’s swimming coach. Pi practiced with mamaji three mornings a week at the Aurobindo Ashram swimming pool in Pondicherry. The relationship between Pi and mamaji is very a important part of the story because it helped lead Pi to finding who he is when he was on the boat. If Pi hadn’t been the accomplished swimmer he was, he wouldn’t have learned to swim and would have died as nothing, with no identity.

Pi’s relationship with nature and animals is even more abnormal than his relationship with his “uncle.” Unlike most kids growing up whom only have one or two pets, Pi had hundreds of pets. His father was the owner of the Pondicherry Zoo when he was growing up in India. Pi woke up in the morning to the sound of tigers roaring and tropical birds wished him “good day” as he left for school. Pi often anthropomorphized the animals in this way. Pi’s ability to anthropomorphize the animals was vital to his survival of the two hundred and twenty-seven days at sea because without his anthropomorphism of the tiger, Pi would have gone insane. He would have felt totally alone. That Pi enjoyed imagining the animals as his friends helped him find the companion on the lifeboat that gave him the will to live.

Before reading Life of Pi I always thought that seeing animals in captivity was a disgrace. I imagined the previously majestic animals turning into sloth, gluttonous beings. I thought of the zoos as places where the will to live and the will to be active were literally fed out of the animals. An image from my most recent trip to a zoo comes to mind when I think of this. It was at The Elmvale Zoo and I was looking at the two leopards that the zoo imprisoned. The leopards were housed in a large enough cage but they seemed unwilling to do anything, even to move anything more than their eyes to follow me. Little did I know that leopards are nocturnal and were likely glaring at me for interrupting their sleep. Piscine’s philosophy on zoos completely changed my mind on the feelings of the animals. A zoo is to an animal as a house is to a human. They offer easily accessible food, water, and shelter; all of the necessities of life. “If you went to a home, kicked down the front door, chased the people who lived there out into the street and said, ‘Go! You are free! Free as a Bird! Go! Go!’ – Do you think they would shout and dance for joy? They wouldn’t,” is the perfect summation of the point that Pi tries to impress upon Yann Martel; the fact that animals in the wild are not free. They are confined by their needs of food and water. A zoo frees animals by making the necessities readily available.