Coping with the Adversities: A Study of Yann Martel's Life of Pi

In Yann Martel's Life of Pi, the protagonist, Piscine Molitor Patel survived 227 days stuck in the Pacific Ocean. He is seen to coexist with a Bengal tiger in the small life boat during those days. But once he comes back alive, it becomes increasingly difficult for him to convince people of the peculiarities of his struggle for survival. Hence, he chose to tell a more convincing version of his experiences. Therefore, his tale of survival becomes an ambiguous one. The readers so far believed all the spectacles to be real about his struggle for survival but suddenly, with the introduction of the other version of the story, question arises whether all these were indeed parts of his imagination to cope with his afflictions. The research objective of Syed Akram Hossain, in this project, was to explore causes of Piscine Molitor Patel’s anxiety and to examine the process of minimizing Patel’s anxiety in Life of Pi by using the theory of Sigmund Freud's defence mechanism (The theory was further developed by Anna Freud).

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