The Theme of Hunger in Life of Pi, a Novel by Yann Martel

“This book was born as I was hungry” was the first line of Yann Martel’s book Life of Pi. This was important because hunger was a major theme of the book, Hunger is one of the things that drives people to do things in their life. There are many different types of hunger that manifest in humans; whether it is a hunger for food, for love, for adventure, or anything else, hunger drives humans to get things done. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a basic representation of the things that people hunger for.

The bottom tier of the pyramid represents basic survival needs. The second tier involves our hunger for safety the third tier has to do with our hunger for love and acceptance. The fourth is our need for esteem, and the final tier covers self-actualization. The most basic, primitive hunger we feel are represented in the first tier of the pyramid.

These include things such as breath, food, water and sex, These are the animalistic survival related traits of humans that we kept through evolution.

This was always Pi’s main focus in the novel, he knew that he was in an intimidating amount of danger, and had to do what was required to survive, even though it eventually drove him to do immoral things, such as eating another man, Above the basic survival needs comes our hunger for safety. This includes the need of a feeling of safety of one’s own body, as well as the safety of their family, health and property, This is still a fairly animalistic hunger, but it requires a sense of self to achieve, This is vital to survival, because if someone is not safe, how can they expect to prosper? Pi struggled to achieve any sense of safety throughout the novel, but he certainly hungered for it.

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For example, he tried to secure the boat and make it safe by taming Richard Parker, even though this was an enormous task. What separates this tier of from the first is that it requires preemptive ness. Richard Parker did not present a direct threat to Pi, because he seemed to be peaceful, but Pi knew that he had to tame the metaphorical beast to be safe. Next comes the hunger for love and belonging. This is the first level of the hierarchy that begins to separate intelligent creatures from the rest, While basic survival needs and a need for safety are present in most creatures, not all of them are capable of feeling belonging or love. We feel the need for intimacy and relationships constantly. People constantly do detrimental things to gain the approval of others, and do crazy things for the ones they love Being alone on a life raft depraved Pi of all sense of belonging and love, In the course of over 200 days, he only met one man, and he was too focused on his hunger for basic survival to consider the man a friend.

Pi also lost his family when the boat sank, getting rid of what little sense of love he had This intense hunger for love essentially what created Richard Parker The fourth tier of the is the hunger for esteem, This comes in many forms, the most obvious examples being self-esteem, confidence and mutual respect between one person and another. This is a major part of social interactions between intelligent creatures. The basis of all modern society comes from the idea of esteem; the elite are expected to rule the masses because they are considered more worthy due to their status, This part of the hierarchy was rarely reached by Pi. The idea of esteem become nearly irrelevant when the hunger for the first three tiers becomes strong enough, Pi showed his hunger for esteem when he trained Richard Parker.

He felt that the beast was too powerful, so he forced it to respect and obey him for his own safety. The final tier of the hierarchy is the hunger for self actualization. This includes the need for morality, creativity and expression, and problem solving This part of the pyramid is seemingly only experienced by humans. Once the first four tiers of the hierarchy have been fulfilled, people begin to look inward for answers and comfort, For all of recorded human history, for example, there have been forms of art such as cave drawings and musical instruments This shows that even the most primitive humans felt this sense of self actualization, Pi was a very philosophical man, which was a product of all of the years that he spent in relative safety.

He had the first four tiers of the hierarchy covered for him, so he hungered a lot for the fifth. Once he was on the raft, however, he nearly stopped showing creative and expressive traits because these first tiers were no longer being fulfilled, and he had to sate his physical hungers before he could think of his philosophical ones Hunger has always been what has driven all living creatures. All creatures are subject to its effects and act as quickly as possible to sate it. Hunger is why we are alive. It is why we eat, drink, sleep and reproduce Hunger is why we settle down with a family and live in a house it causes us to respect and to be respected, to fall in love, and even to be creative, without hunger, there can be no life