Pi's will to survive?

The primacy of survival is the definitive theme in the heart of the book, Pi’s time at sea. This theme is clear throughout his ordeal—he must eat meat, he must take life, two things which had always been anathema to him before his survival was at stake. Survival almost always trumps morality, even for a character like Pi, who is deeply principled and religious. When Pi tells the second version of his story to the Japanese men, this theme is highlighted even more vividly, because he parallels his survival instincts in the second story to Richard Parker in the first—it is he, when he must survive, who steals food, he who kills the Frenchman. If the first version of the story is seen as a fictionalized version of the second, the very fact that he divides himself from his brutal survival instinct shows the power of that instinct.