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Chapter 41
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Life of Pi, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Survival
Religion and Faith
Storytelling
Boundaries
Summary
Analysis
Soon afterward an old orangutan named Orange Juice floats by on an island of bananas held together by netting. Orange Juice was a popular member of the Pondicherry Zoo and the mother of two male orangutans. Pi laments that such a gentle creature should experience so much pain, but he is glad to see her and invites her aboard. She climbs up and the bananas come loose, floating away, but Pi salvages the netting. Later he would curse the loss of the bananas, but the net would help him survive.
Orange Juice also shows miraculous luck and will in surviving, as she somehow escapes the sinking ship and finds a “lifeboat” of bananas. In Pi’s “human version” of his story Orange Juice is replaced by Pi’s own mother, and here we already see some similarities, as Orange Juice had given birth to two sons – like Pi and Ravi.
Themes
Literary Devices
