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Abstract Life of Pi, written by Yann Martel, a Canadian writer, is about a story that a man whose name is Pi and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker on the Pacific Ocean. Martel has used a number of metaphors in this novel in order to convey his thinking on human nature and the society. This thesis analyzes some plots in the novel to find out the relationship between the metaphors and their realistic meaning in order to understand what the author wanted to express.
Key words: Life of Pi; metaphors; realistic meaning 52894
摘要加拿大作家扬·马特尔的小说《少年派的奇幻漂流》，讲述了少年派和一只叫理查德·帕克的孟加拉虎在太平洋上漂流227天的奇幻历程。小说中，作者大量应用了隐喻手法来折射作者对人性与社会的思考。本文主要通过一些故事情节分析，来挖掘出书中的隐喻及其所象征的现实意义以此来理解作者的写作意图。
毕业论文关键词：《少年派的奇幻漂流》；隐喻；现实意义
Contents
1. Introduction.1
1.1 Yann Martel and Life of Pi 1
1.2 The metaphor 1
2. Literature Review2
3. Metaphors in the Story and Their Realistic Meaning .3
3.1 The tiger- Richard Parker 4
3.2 The cannibal island 7
3.3 The name of Pi 8
3.4 Three Religions 9
4. Conclusion......10
Works Cited...12
1. Introduction
1.1 Yann Martel and Life of Pi
Life of Pi is the second novel of Canadian writer Yann Martel. It won the Award of Man Brook in 2002, the German National Book Awards and other four international awards. The book had hit the best-seller list of New York Times for more than one year. That’s why seven million copies have been published all over the world since it came out. The novel tells an adventure story about Pi and a tiger named Richard Parker on the Pacific Ocean.
An author who was seeking inspiration accidentally learned the legendary of Pi. With curiosity, he visited Pi and heard a long but amazing story. Pi’s father owned a zoo. Living in such a particular environment, Pi had his own idea towards belief and nature. Pi’s parents decided to immigrate to Canada for a better life when Pi was 17. Because of the storm, their ship sank in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. And the story of Pi’s 227-day journey on a lifeboat began with a tiger, Richard Parker.
Pi was the only person who survived in that shipwreck except one hyena, one zebra losing a leg, one female Congo chimpanzee and a three-year-old adult Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. Each animal contained a metaphor. The writer, Yann Martel, tried to convey some meaningful teachings through these metaphors.
At a deeper level, it is a story about humanity and animality, belief and hope, life and growth. In this fantastic adventure, Yann Martel effectively used metaphors not only to express a story on adventure and survival, but also to motivate the readers to think deeply on religion, life, self recognition and other philosophical topics. The metaphors in this novel show great originality of the writer and they embody the aesthetic function and educational function. At the same time, Yann Martel revealed several philosophic teachings behind these metaphors. This thesis will sort out and summarize the metaphors in Life of Pi and probe into their real meanings to figure out what the writer really wants to tell us.
1.2 The metaphor
Studies on metaphors among western scholars could be dated back to Aristotle. In his classic works Poetics and Rhetoric, Aristotle had mentioned metaphors for many times and he gave a clear definition on the functions of rhetoric. He believed that a metaphor is kind of rhetoric which use one thing to refer to another and said “The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor.”（Shu Dingfang, 2000:3）Hegel defined metaphor as an abbreviation form of simile in Esthetics. The meaning of image itself was written off while the real meaning was conveyed through the context around the image, although it was not expressed specifically（Hegel, 1996:141）.源-自/751+,论^文'网]www.751com.cn