Who is the hyena in life of pi

She appears floating on a nest of bananas, covered in black spiders. Pi welcomes her aboard the small lifeboat that he is knowingly sharing with a hyena and a wounded zebra. The tiger is hiding beneath the tarp that covers half of the lifeboat. Pi feels great affection for Orange Juice, fear of and revulsion for the hyena, and vague pity for the dying zebra.

He hopes that the hyena will be more interested in eating Orange Juice and the zebra than him, as they are more familiar prey. The hyena does, indeed, consume both animals. The author tells the story about a boy named Piscine Molitor Patel known as Pi who survives insurmountable odds.

Pi loses his entire family when their ship sank. Piscine, who is also known as Pi, had to survive days on the Pacific Ocean while sharing a lifeboat with an adult Bengal tiger, when the cargo ship named the Tsimtsum sank with his family on it. There are two stories explaining what happened while he is on the lifeboat. The version that Pi narrates first favors the journey with Pi, an orangutan. Now, the exchanges between Pi, Mr.

Okamoto, and Mr. Chiba are entirely dialogue. The new form of narrative is a third-person transcription, which lacks rich detail, potential illusion, and over exaggeration.

As an audience, we perceive this as solid, factual information. But, Pi is also preparing to retell another version of his survival story. We now have to decide what story—one, both, or none, is the true story. Here we can see. Martel delivers this using Piscine Pi Molitor Patel, the protagonist of the book. Its cowering putting the zebra between itself and Richard Parker doesn't seem like cowardice: rather, it seems like something hyenas just do.

When the hyena tears into Orange Juice's throat, we despise the animal, but it not as an individual with choices. It's a dang hyena. But when the hyena transforms into the cook in Pi's second story, his ugly actions plumb the depths of human evil.

How could anyone do such a thing? The cook makes the second story horrific. We can no longer explain the cook's savagery the same way we explained the hyena's killings. Patel teaches Ravi and Pi about animal nature and its violent tendencies, but it is not until he finds himself in a lifeboat with a zebra, hyena, orangutan, and tiger that Pi truly understands the vicious behavior of wild animals in close quarters.

The brutality of the animals teaches Pi another lesson: the qualities a human or animal exhibit when unprovoked can vary radically from those that same human or animal will show if attacked or threatened. He is astonished when Orange Juice, a maternal creature that grew up at the Pondicherry Zoo, strikes the hyena with a powerful blow.

Pi has never before seen her make any outward displays of aggression; he had assumed her nature was sweet and her disposition even and benevolent. The strike Orange Juice gives the hyena is like a slap in the face to Pi: suddenly he realizes that personality is something separate and distinct from instinct. Equally surprising to Pi is the fact that life continues in the face of unimaginable pain.