Island of Reflection

After spending months at sea, with no food, no water, and your only company being a Bengal tiger, even the smallest plot of land would seem like a dream come true. However the idea of an algae covered floating island, is quite the opposite. In my opinion Martel is demonstrating that things do not always turn out the way we want to and the way I visualized the island, it seemed as if it represented Pi himself. Pi was a vegetarian for as long as he could remember, but after being thrown out to sea and therefore being forced to fight for his own survival, he broke away from that lifestyle and killed any animal he could lay his hands on. The island, although only a piece of land floating in the Pacific, ate animals, insects, and even humans for it's own "survival". I think that the fact that the island was introduced after the scenes of Pi's animal consumption was meant to be sort of a punishment for Pi, showing him exactly what all this animal death looks like.