1

Introduction

Narrative is a story, whether told in prose or verse, involving events,

characters and what the characters say and do. Some literary forms such as the
novel and short story in prose, and the epic and romance in verse are explicit
narratives that are told by a narrator. Narratology denotes a concern which
became prominent in the mid-twentieth century, with the general theory and
practice of narrative in all literary forms. It deals especially with the types of
narrators, the identification of structural elements and their diverse modes of
combination, recurrent narrative devices, and the analysis of the kinds of
discourse by which a narrative gets told.

The term narrative technique may refer to the types of narrative devices
that the author make use of to make the story much more interesting. It can be
said that the success of a novel or fiction depends mainly on the narrative
technique used in it.

The term, point of view, or narrative perspective, characterizes the way

in which a text presents persons, events and settings. The subtleties of narrative
perspectives developed parallel to the emergence of the novel can be reduced u
three basic positions: Omniscient point of view, first-person narration, figural
narrative situation. This tripartite structure can only summarize the most
extreme manifestations which hardly ever occur in their pure form; individual
narrative works are usually hybrids combining elements of various types of
narrative situations.
Texts with an omniscient point of view refer to the acting figures in the
third person and present the action from an all-knowing, God like perspective.
Sometimes the misleading term third-person narration is also applied for this
narrative situation. Such disembodiment of the narrative agent, which does
away with a narrating persona, easily allows for changes in setting, time and
action at the same time providing various items of information beyond the
range and knowledge of the acting figures.

First-person narration renders the action as seen through a participating

figure, who refers to her or himself in the first person. First- person narrations
can adopt the point of view of either of the protagonist or of a minor figure as

in Laurence Stern's Tristam Shandy (Klarer 21). These first person narrations
by protagonists aim at a supposedly authentic representation of the subjective
experiences and feelings of the narrator.

In the figural narrative situation, the narrator moves into the

background, suggesting that the plot is revealed through the actions of the
characters in the text. This literary technique is a relatively new phenomenon,
one which has been developed with the rise of the modern novel, mostly
inorder to encourage the reader to judge the action without an intervening
commentator. James Joyce's A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Klarer
22) can be considered as an example for this. This form of third-person
narrative is bound to the perspective of a figure who is also a part of the action.

If a text shifts the emphasis from exterior aspects of the plot to the inner
world of a character, its narrative technique is usually referred to as stream-ofconsciousness technique. The narrator disappears, leaving the thoughts and
psychic reactions of a participating figure as the sole mediators of the action,
These techniques found their way into modernist prose fiction after World War

I (Klarer 23). James Joyce is considered to be the inventor of this technique, .

best exemplified by the final section of his novel Ulysses (1922).

These experimental narrative techniques of character presentation

became the major structural features of modernism, thereby characterizing an
entire literary era at the beginning of the twentieth century. A good example is
Virginia Woolfs novel Mrs. Dalloway (1925) which presents events not only
through the thoughts of one person, but also through a number of figures (23).

Modernist and postmodernist novels introduce these techniques in very

overt ways, often even changing narrative perspectives within one text in order
to highlight decisive shifts in the course of action or narrative. The Canadian
novelist Margaret Atwood's novel The Edible Woman (1969) is an obvious
example of how thematic aspects of a text, in this case the protagonist's loss of
identity, can be emphasized on a structural level by means of narratological
techniques such as point of view.

A lot of narrative techniques have been and is still being used in the

realm of literature with the help of which the stories are represented in different ways. In Life of
Pi, Yaan Martel makes use of magic realism as a narrative
technique wherein he juxtaposes myth and reality at its utmost perfection.
Through the events described in the story, it is very clear that magic realism
has been used even from the days of The Mahabharatha. The story also follows
the technique of first-person narration with authorial intrusion.

The research work is divided into two chapters. The first is a brief
introduction of magic realism. The second chapter analyses how magic realism
is used as a narrative technique in Life of Pi, followed by a proper conclusion.

Chapter 1

Magic Realism - An Overview

Magic realism according to Scottforesman Literature and Integrate

Studies means "a fictional literary work that combines the elements of dreams,
magic, myths and fairy tales along with realistic elements" (Puever, Carol and
Corster 973).

The term magic realism was coined by Franz Roh and used in the title of
his book "Nach-Expressionismus: Magischer Realismus: Prblemederheuesten
Europaischer Malerei" (Keralavarma 149). According to Roh, it was a way of
representing and responding to reality and pictorially depicting the enigmas of
reality.

He was concerned with the characteristics and tendencies

discernible in the work of certain German painters of the period
... the themes and subjects were often imaginary, somewhat

outlandish and fantastic with a certain dream-like quality.... In

due course, the term caught on in literary circles and was used by
critics (qtd. in Keralavarma 148).

By the 1980s, it had become a well established "label" (149) for

some forms of fiction.

Historia Universal de la infamia by Louis Borges (1899 - 1988) is

considered by many as the first work of magic realism. Louis Borges was an
Argentinian and his work was published in 1935. He was the most eccentric
and original of the great writers of the continent. Literary magic realism
originated in Latin America. Writers often travelled between their home
country and European cultural hubs such as Paris or Berlin and were influenced
by the art movement of the time. Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier and
Venezculan Arturo Uslar Pietri, for example were strongly influenced by
European artistic movements, such as surrealism, during their stays in Paris in
1920s and 1930s.

The term was originaly applied in the 1920s to a school of surrealist

German painters and was later used to describe the prose fiction of writers like
Gabriel Garcia Marquez in Colombia, Isabel Allende in Chile, Italo Calvino in
Italy and Salman Rushdie in England (Abrams, M. H and Geoffrey Gait
Harpham 200). These writers weave, in an ever shifting pattern, a sharply
etched realism in representing ordinary events and details together with
fantastic and dreamlike elements as well as with materials derived from myth
and fairy tales.

Latin America owes its literary prestige in the world, in a large measure
to Marquez, the greatest creative genius of the contemporary age, a master
craftsman of narratives. The whole genre of storytelling, by being rid of
overused techniques has become in his hands something original, new,
remoulded and endowed with magic. Like an enchanter, he casts a spell on the
world he depicts in his work and the readers who cannot or are reluctant to
break the charm (Keralavarma 153).

The term magic realism got its own prominence in the field of art with

the publication and translation of Franz Ron's book and thus was even applied
to the prose of European authors in the literary circles of Buenos Aires. Jorge
Louis Borges inspired and encouraged other Latin American writers in the
development of magical realism. Between 1940 and 1950, magical realism in
Latin America reached its peak, with prominent writers.

The theoretical implications of visual art's magical realism greatly

influenced European and Latin American literature. Italian Massimo
Bontempelli, for instance, considered the first magic realist creative writer who
sought to present the mysterious and fantastic quality of reality. He claimed
that literature could be a means to create a collective consciousness by opening
new mythical and magical perspectives on reality and used his writings to
inspire an Italian nation governed by fascism.

Pietri was closely associated with Roh's form of magic realism and his
writings emphasize the mystery of human living amongst the reality of life. He
believed magic realism was a continuation of the vanguardia or avant-garde
modernist experimental writings of Latin America. This is also mentioned by

10

B. Keralavarma in Cross Currents: The Evolution of Literary Movements(148).

Some of the characteristic features of this kind of fiction are the
mingling and the juxtaposition of the realistic and the fantastic or
bizzare,skillful time shifts, convoluted and even labryinthine
narratives and plots, miscellaneous use of dreams, myths and
fairy stoires, expressionistic and even surrealistic descriptions,
arcane erudition, the horrific and the inexplicable, (qtd. in
Keralavarma. (149)

A literary mode rather than a distinguishable genre, magic realism is

characterized by two conflicting perspectives, one based on a so called rational
view of reality and the other on the acceptance of the supernatural as prosaic
reality. It is a genre that would be incompatible in other modes of fiction. Like
many modernist movements, magic realism rejects nineteenth-century'
positivism, the privilege of science and empiricism, returning stead to
mythologies, folklore and mysticism.

Magic realist texts tries to convey that transformation, metamorphosis,

11

dissolution are common, that magic is a branch of naturalism or pragmatism.

So magic realism can be considered as an extension of realism in its concern
with the nature of reality and its representation, at the same time it resists the
basic assumptions of post-enlightenment rationalism and literary realism. Mind
and body, spirit and matter, life and death, real and imaginary, self and other,
male and female: These are boundaries to be erased, transgressed, blurred,
brought together or otherwise fundamentally refashioned in magical realist
texts as it says in Magic Realism: Theory, History, Community which is clearly
shown in Yann Martel's Life of Pi. Magic realism proves to be universal, a
code that defies limitations of geography, generation and language. Until the
Latin American boom in the 1960s, the term had been subjected only to limited
scrutiny and had few applications. The boom expanded scholar's and reader's
opinions of both Latin American literature and magic realism.

By claiming sole rights to magical realism, Latin American authors

helped to prove that they could, in fact, create a new literature worthy of world
attention. More recent scholarship has shown that, rather than magical realism
being the attitude, it has been appropriated by a variety of authors many of

12

whom have no connections to Latin American literature. The fact that magic
realism existed before it existed, that is, before we knew what to call it,
suggests that its definitions will not be limited to any particular regions or set
of experiences. As international writers continue to borrow from the Latin
American magical realist tradition and to make it their own, critics are forced to
revise their perception of magic realism as the sole property of Latin America
(Schroeder 8).

In magical realism, the supernatural is not displayed as questionable;

while the reader realizes that the rational and irrational are not disconcerted
because the supernatural is integrated within the norms of perception of
narrator and characters in the fictional world. Something that most critics agree
on is the theme of sense of mystery. Magic realist literature tends to read at an intensified level.

Taking One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez,

the reader must let go of preexisting ties to conventional exposition, plot
advancement, linear time structure, scientific reason etc to strive for a state of
heightened awareness of life's hidden meanings. Carpentier articulates this

13

feeling as to seize the mystery that breathes behind things and supports the
claim by saying a writer must heighten his senses to the point of extreme
inorder to realize all levels of reality, most importantly that of mystery.

The term, which has a long and quite distinctive history in Latin
American criticism was first used in a wider post-colonial context in the
foundational essay by Jacques Stephen Alexis 'of the magical realism of the
Haitians' (Schroeder 9). Alexis sought to reconcile the arguments of post war,
racial intellectuals in favor of social realism as a tool for revolutionary social
representation, with a recognition that in may post-colonial societies a peasant
pre-industrial population had its imaginative life rooted in a living tradition of
the mythic, the legendary and the magical.

The term tended to be used indiscriminately during the 'boom' period of

the 1960s and 1970s by some critics who saw it as a defining feature of all
Latin American writing, in stark contrast to its older, more specific usage in
Latin American criticism, a usage that differed in many marked ways from the
recent rather loose and generalized use of the term.

14

However, its origins in the 1950s lay in the specific need to wed the
Caribbean social revolutions to local and national cultures and were the
collective forms by which they give expression to their identity and articulated
their difference from the dominant colonial and racial oppressors. They were,
in other words, the modes of expression of that culture's reality. Radical social
visions of art and culture thus regarded myth and magic as integral.

The term has become ubiquitous to describe various contemporary

works, yet a certain ambiguity surrounds it. Much of the critical work on magic
realism has focused on the history and usage of the name itself, rather than the
actual characteristics of the movement which can be seen as an evolution of
traditional mimesis initially exploring changing perceptions of the visual and
the real, and culminating in a totalizing epic view of history based on the
representation of the collective memory of people. What remained central to
the early magic realism is its emphasis on perception. Both the nineteenthcentury fantastic, which excels in the representation of unreal or uncanny

15

effects, and nineteenth century realism strongly privilege the role of the visual
(Zamora, Parkinson and Aris 5).

More recently, the term has been used in a less specific way to refer to
the inclusion of any mythic or legendary material from local written or oral
cultural tradition in contemporary narrative. The material so used is seen to
interrogate the assumptions of Western, rational linear narrative and to enclose
it within an indigenous metatext, a body of textual forms that recuperate the
pre-colonial culture. In this way. it can be seen to be a structuring device in
texts as varied in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Ben Okri's The
Famished Road, Keri Hulme's The Bone People or Thomas King's Green
Grass, Running Water.

In texts like these and many others, the rational linear world of Western
realist fiction is placed against alter or native narrative modes that expose the
hidden and naturalized cultural formation on which Western narratives are
based. Thus, although the term has been useful, there are some critics who
suggest that "it has become a catch-all for any narrative device that does not

16

adhere to Western realist conventions" (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin 132).

Magic realism thus is a key through fusion of fantasy with realism and it allows
for the exploration of alternate perceptions of the world, offering different
views of history and identity. Magic realism reveals the instructive nature of
language as well as its fluidity which allows for crucial revision of cultural
ideologies.

The researcher in the following chapter thus tries to point out the
instances of magic realism in Life of Pi thus showing what made this work grab
attention of the world along with the quotes taken from the primary source
followed by a proper conclusion.

17

Chapter 2

Implication of Magic Realism in Life of Pi

Human beings always love to grab the attention of others by bringing

up new events, some adventurous or miraculous happened in their lives. They
always like to begin as "The strangest sight I ever saw was...or I'll tell you
something queerer than that" (Sebastian and Chandra 149). Magic realism is a
narrative technique that grabs the attention of the world by the mode of its
presentation and narration of the story. The novel Life of Pi can be considered
as a wonderful example of magic realism. It also in a way, tries to convey a
message that life can be miraculous.

Before getting directly into the aspects of magic realism. Martel

gives away a marvelous introduction of the narrative technique with the aid of
Hindu mythology. Life of Pi mentions the childhood days of Krishna being

18

accused by his friends of eating dirt. Yashoda, His foster mother, finding Him
eating dirt, scolds him and He opens his mouth showing "Ihe whole complete
entire timeless universe, all the stars and planets of space, all the lands and seas
of Earth and life in them, all ideas and emotions, all pity and all hope and every
bit of dirt in its truthful place in his mouth" (54).

It is hardly possible to believe that one would experience the universe in

a child's mouth and this is clearly proved through Yashoda who stands
dumbstruck. Martel also points out the instance of Vishnu incarnated as
Vamana, the dwarf (55).

Pi describes how and what made him to believe in religion and there arc
instances where he describes his meeting with God. One instance is that when
he was in Canada, visiting his friends in the country. He was out alone for a
walk. The day was clear and sunny after a night of snow fall. As he was
coming upto his house, he turned his head. There was a wood with a small
clearing. Fine snow was falling through the air. glittering in the sunlight. In that
falling golden dust, he saw Virgin Mary. There is a clear description of Her

19

appearance which shows that what happened at that speck of time was real.

It has been said that Almighty up above, at the time of despair or

agony in human life, sends His angel and not Him as such to Earth to protect
us. Here, the surroundings of Pi in Canada doesn't reveal that he is in danger
ralher in calm, relaxed realm of life which makes reader to raise the question
'How come that be possible?' .

The 2nd part of the novel directly gets into the tragic shipwreck. It can be
considered as the crux as it is that part which later determines the whole life of
PL An instance of magic realism could be clearly seen when the protagonist of
the novel Piscine tells Richard Parker, the tiger to get into the lifeboat. There is
a moment mentioned in the novel before, that when Pi's father along with his
mother and brother Ravi takes them to "Mahisha, the Bengal tiger patriarch, a
hulking beast of 550 Pounds' (33). Then the Father tells them that "I'm going
to show you how dangerous tigers are" and added that "I want you to
remember this lesson for the rest of your lives" (34). Father turns to Babu. the
zoo keeper and nodded his head.

20

Babu, later, places a goat on the floor. The text also mentions Pi saying
"I heard two things at that moment: Father saying "Never forget this lesson" as
he looked on grimly: and the bleating of the goat. It must have been bleating all
along, only we couldn't hear it before" (35). This shows that the fear for tigers
was invoked in him from his childhood days. Telling Richard Parker to get into
the lifeboat hence becomes impossible for one to believe. It is like digging
one's own grave though later he realizes what he was trying to do is wrong.

One of the characteristic feature of magic realism as mentioned in the

previous chapter is the miscellaneous use of expression. Pi finds himself in
utter shock when he remains uninjured after the tragic shipwreck and this is
proved when he says that "It is a miracle that I didn't hurt myself"(105). He
lost everything, his mother, father and brother. What remains in his life is a
Zebra with a broken leg. a hyena, an orang-utan and a Royal Bengal tiger. The
climate during the shipwreck was much worse that it is hardly possible for
someone to remain uninjured. This is clearly described by Mattel through the
technique of magic realism. Magic realism thus is the juxtaposition of events

21

and images so as to create a sense of magical. When one thinks of a moment of

being all alone in a lifeboat along with some animals, it becomes impossible for one to put it into
practice.
The description in the book makes the reader eager to know what
happens in the life of a sixteen year old boy. The book also portrays the logical
events like the hyena eating the wounded zebra and Parker eating the hyena. It
makes the reader dumbstruck when he/she finds that a sixteen year old boy is
left all alone in the middle of the Pacific, orphaned, hanging on to an oar,
along with an adult tiger in front of him. sharks beneath him. and storm raging
all around.

There was nothing left around him other than the sea and the sky.
Chapter forty three mentions about the hyena's behavior to the wounded zebra
which was highly unpredictable and it increased the fathom of fear in Pi. It is
hardly possible to believe that a pure vegetarian like Pi witnessed the cruel
death of zebra with blood all over the lifeboat and its stench would make one
out of consciousness but he got himself over the situation.

Chapter fifty seven in the novel shows that both Pi and Richard Parker

22

had a kind of visual communication. "He looked at me intently. After a time I

recognized the gaze. I had grown up with it (162). It also shows Pi claiming
that Parker is one of the reasons for his survival and that he is grateful to him.
A bond between a human to that of a pet is believable. But the bond between Pi
to that of Parker makes one startled. The juxtaposition of reality with magic is
again used when Pi, as they moves on observes with a single glance at the sea
that it is a city. The water is described as "dense, glassy and flecked by millions
of lit-up plankton, fish like trucks and buses" (175).
As days passed on. Pi was left all alone with the tiger and they were
running out of food. Animals won't be having any patience when it comes to
food and water and still the tiger left Pi without hurting is something
unacceptable for the readers. When it was hardly possible for a moment to pass
on. Pi looks out for fish which at first he failed to find one but finds one in the
locker which was about fifteen inches long and the most unpredictable part was
that it had wings.

The physical description of the fish says that it is not the kind normal
that we usually see around rather it is so "slim and dark grey blue, with dry,

23

featherless wings and round unblinking yellowish eyes. After a precise instant,
there was a vibration in the air and they were struck by a school of flying fish"
(180). A school of flying fish almost insect like dived into the water just before
the boat, some crashed into its side, sounding like fire crackers. Several
returned to the water after a bounce on the tarpaulin which doesn't make any
sense to the readers.

Communication between Parker and Pi can also be considered as an

instance of magic realism as it tells the readers that a tiger can speak to its
enemy. Pi tells the readers that Parker gave him a life of his own but in what
and which way remains a mystery. Pi's 227 days of survival in the sea is yet
another shocking moment. What makes it much more shocking is that he is just
a sixteen year old boy and how a lad of sixteen be able to get over the harsh
realities of life does deserves a practical answer. He mentions that he kept
himself busy by chaining prayers and that was one among the key that made
him to survive. By pointing out this instance, Martel is trying to make the
reader believe in the existence of God and that with the help of that
supernatural entity, one would easily be able to overcome difficulties of life.

24

Martel uses the technique of magic realism when he describes Pi's stay
on island. The island that Pi saw from a distance was enriched with trees but
what makes one struck is that there is no soil. Pi describes the island as fanciful
which is another aspect of magic realism. The island is unique as it carries
algae and meerkats. The meerkats of the island behave in a different way than
normal meerkats do. They were most definitely a sub species that had
specialized in a fascinating and surprising way.

During his stay in the island. Pi finds that "the meerkats were
abandoning the ponds, the whole plain and rapidly making for the forest. An
entire nation of meerkats was on the move, their backs arched and their feet a
blur" (275). Though he thought about what made the meerkats to behave in
such a weird way, the tiredness in him dominated and he gets back to sleep. He
noticed the same event one night wherein "the sky was cloudless and the moon
was full. The land was robbed of its colour. Everything glowed strangely in
shades of black, grey and white" (276). Suddenly, he noticed the pond in which
silver shapes were moving, emerging from below and breaking the black

25

surface of the Water.

He also notices that the dead fish were floating up from deep down. The
pond was tilling up with all kinds of dead fish until its surface was no longer
black but silver. These events that had happened to Pi inturn makes the reader
struck as it is hardly possible for one to believe that these things do exist in
reality. It has been mentioned in the novel that the pond carries fresh water and
what makes the fish die at first remains a mystery but later. Pi claims that its
the algae that eats up the fish and it is this that makes the water fresh.

The idea of an organism like algae being able to eat fish brings the
reader to the world of wonder. What again pulls the reader in shock is a tree in
the island that stands unique from the other trees. The trees of the island didn't
bear any fruit. But, this single tree seemed to have fruit. "Elsewhere the forest
canopy was uniformly green, these fruits stood out black against green. The
branches holding them were twisted in odd ways" (278).

An entire island covered in barren trees but for one. The most striking

26

part is that the fruit grew from only one small part of the tree. The fruits were
about the size and shape of oranges. It had not one stem, but dozens. Their
surfaces were studded with stems that connected them to the surrounding tw igs
Since the fruits were of the size of oranges, they are supposed to have a weight
akin to an orange. But here, they are described as light weighted. As Pi
examines the fruit, he finds that "it is not a fruit as such rather a dense
accumulation of leaves together in a ball" (280). What he finds inside that leaf
ball is a human tooth.
It is incredible to find human tooth in a ball of leaves. The island is
described as carnivorous. We all are familiar with carnivorous plants and even
animals but an island and trees, but at a much lower level of acidity, safe
enough to stay in for the night while the rest of the island seethed is something
that seems irrational.

These all events described from the second part of the novel does clearly
invokes a kind of urge in the reader's mind to know how the sixteen year old
lad gets over the situation and also to know how he faces each and every
challenge in his life and this can be considered as the point that makes the

27

novel occupy the high pedestal in the realm of fiction.

The technique is thus used to describe what all things are happening in
the island, including the carnivorous algae, the salt water fish in fresh water
and also the sea dwelling rodents who live on trees. This technique of magic
realism is effective in the novel because it makes the reader think about the
possibilities of the occurrences on the island.

The technique is also useful to make things more interesting to the

reader because reading about living on a lifeboat for such a long time
throughout the book can to some extend get the reader bored. But by adding the
element, the reader becomes fascinated with the new surroundings and is more
interested in the book.

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Conclusion

Life of Pi by Yann Martel won the Man Booker Prize in 2002. Marlel's
International literary reputation was sealed with the publication of Life of Pi. a
runaway bestseller that went on to win prestigious Man Booker Prize and had
since been translated into thirty languages.

29

Martel takes Life of Pi one step further, however, adding a different

flavor to the story with marvelous prose. When he describes the storm at sea.
the reader feels as if they are a pan of it. It is also felt when Pi's father
describes the predatory instincts of animals. This makes Life of Pi engaging
and thrilling. The novel begins with the life of an Indian boy growing up in a
zoo which is run by his father. The story is divided into three parts where the
first part deals w ith the foundations of Pi's coming of age also his trials and
tribulations amongst his family with special attention on his interaction with
the religious leaders. Part two deals with the shipwreck where he confronts
storms and terrifying moments of life at an age of sixteen.

He also experiences moments of beauty at the same time. At the end of

the novel, we are presented with interview transcripts, another genre of
nonfiction writing. This mixing of fiction reflects the twist ending of the novel,
in which the veracity of Pi's fantastical story is called into doubt, and the reader, like Pi's
Japanese interrogators, is forced to confront unsettling
questions about the nature of truth itself.

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Yann Mattel uses magic realism to show the existence of God. Pi is

portrayed as a boy who practices three religions though he is born as a Hindu.
He. in the beginning, says that "Academic study and the steady mindful
practice of religion slowly brought me back to life" (3) and his majors were
religious studies and zoology. This shows that he is a religious boy. During the
heavy storm at sea. he calls upon the supernatural entity that prevents him from
being harmed. Yann Martel through this proves that even during the times of
hardships, one would be able to get over it through God. There are also
instances where Pi describes how Hinduism. Christianity and the practice of
Muslim made him believe in God and thus Martel asserts the existence God
very clearly.

By using magic realism as the narrative technique, Martel also tries to

prove that life can be miraculous. It is clearly proved through Life of Pi. From
the day of the shipwreck till the day he landed Mexico, Pi confronts lots of
hardships but incredibly gets over the situations and moves on in his life. If
there weren't any sign of miracle, he wouldn't be able to live his life. From the
instance of Pi being to the island of vegetation when he was out of food itself

31

shows that life can be miraculous which inturn makes one worth living.

It is very well explained in such a way that the reader will be able to see
it in his own eyes. Martel, on one level, is just doing what fiction writers do: Creating an
imaginary scenario to delight and entice his readers. But on another
level, the opening six pages deftly lay the foundation for the novel's central
theme, which is that storytelling is a way to get around telling the boring or
upsetting or uninteresting truth.

Martel doesn't want to say that the novel was created painstakinglyresearching zoos and religions and oceanic survival guides, getting up early
every morning and writing for several hours a day. Such an explanation would
poke a hole in the balloon of fantasy that Pi's account inflates over the course
of next three hundred pages; so, instead, he invents a different origin of story.

In literature itself, rather than reading and thinking over the same plots,
subjects, techniques they look forward for something new and they have found
The essence of newness through magic realism which Martel has successfully
used in his novel which inturn is adventurous and interesting all throughout.

32

Martel thus through Life of Pi along with the excellent use of magic realism as
the narrative technique shows that Life, not only of Pi but also of each person
brings at some point some sort of miracle.

People always move in the hope of a better life. They always search for
some miracle, some entertaining events in their lives. Hence, they search for
the essence of it in things they are concerned within their daily lives. He also
makes use of this technique to prove the existence of God. Though his previous
novels didn't gain much attention, through the incredible use of the technique
he himself has proved that failure is a stepping stone to success.

Works Cited

Abrams. M.H.. and Geoffry Gait Harpham Glossary to Literary terms. 10th ed.
Andover: Cengage learning, 2012. Print.
Ashcroft. Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, eds. Key concepts in postcolonial studies. London. Routledge, 1998. Print.
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