Life of Pi; A Heor’s Journey; This paper will discuss the connection between the book Life of Pi by the award-winning Canadian author Yann Martel and the Hero’s Journey coined by Joseph Campbell. It is divided
into two main sections; one which summarizes the Life of Pi novel and the other which discusses
the connection between the novel and the idea of the Hero’s Journey. L

Life of Pi; A Heor’s Journey
Section one
Life of Pi is a Canadian novel authored by Yann Martel and published in 2001. The
novel’s main character is a 16-year-old South Indian boy who hails from the capital city of The
Union Territory of Pondicherry, Piscine Molitor alias Pi (Martel, 2002). From an early age, the
boy took to explore the issues of spirituality and metaphysics. The Life of Pi novel is fictional
and tells how Pi survived 227 days while on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker
in the Pacific Ocean following a shipwreck (Martel, 2002). At 16, the boy Pi embraced Islam,
Hinduism, and Catholicism simultaneously. His parents named him Piscine Molitor after a
famous swimming pool in France. However, he changed his name while in high school from
Piscine to Pi so that his schoolmates could stop teasing him. This is because his former name is
pronounced the same as pissing (Martel, 2002). Coincidentally, Pi is the 16 th letter of the Greek
alphabet and corresponds with his age. Life of Pi; A Heor’s Journey
Pi is also a mathematical term for 3.14 or 22/7, representing the days the boy Pi spent in
the Ocean (Martel, 2002). Pi’s family decided to leave India for Canada due to political
upheavals in the former country. The cargo ship carrying them sunk, and the boy was the only
human survivor alongside a tiger, zebra, hyena, and orangutan. Shortly after, the hyena killed
both the zebra and the orangutan before the tiger killed the hyena. Life of Pi; A Heor’s Journey APA 7th edition