Life of Pi, a novel about how we, as people, will do nearly anything to survive. We do not wish to die, we do not wish to stop living.
This idea is illustrated in nearly all of the characters, in the hyena. The hyena believed that if it did not attack the others, the others would eventually attack it. The hyena may seem crazed, but in reality it only wants to survive, it only wants to live. The hyena does not survive long, for Richard Parker was on the boat, and not a soul knew. Richard Parker only killed the hyena so that it, itself, could survive.
Richard Parker killed the hyena, yet it did not kill Pi. Richard knew that if it killed Pi, it would have no source of food, and it would die. Richard Parker kept Pi alive, for Pi will supply food for him. Richard Parker knew that Pi would get him to safety, Richard Parker knew that Pi would save his life. Pi kept Richard Parker alive, for if he tried to kill Richard, he himself would surely die.
The person that Pi met while in the lifeboat would also do anything to survive. He would even eat another human. While both Pi and the survivor would do anything to survive, Pi would never eat another of his own kind. Pi and the survivor were both blind, so the survivor decided to tie their boats together. After that, the survivors hunger took over, and he climbed to the other boat to eat Pi, although the hungry man was unaware of Richard Parker, and thus Richard Parker proceeded to consume the man also.
Pi would do anything to survive, even break have the rules he set out for himself. Soon after setting out on the lifeboat, Pi has to break his lifelong vegetarianism, for if he stayed a vegetarian, he would not stay alive. The only food that they might encounter out at sea, is fish, for what else would be out there? Pi had to kill fish, and eat them to survive, even though he vowed to never harm a soul, and to be a vegetarian. If Pi would have followed through with these vows, Pi would have never survived.
This novel clearly states that we, as humans, will do anything to survive, even if some of the things we do make us sick to our stomach, or if some of the things we do will hurt other people. Our will to survive is the strongest thing any of us have.

Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451, a novel based in the future that we do not wish to have. It shows us in such a way, that we are actually afraid of what we might become, we are afraid of what we will become. We are currently heading towards that future right now, with our video games and TV taking up almost all of our time. Our world is not getting better, it is getting worse. We are becoming a world that is a virtual wonderland, virtual, not actual. Our world is a beautiful place, but if it continues on the downfall that is on, it will not be beautiful for much longer. Fahrenheit 451 shows us what our world will become if we do not work on improving it. It may seem far in the future that this will happen, but it is closer than it may seem. We need to work on rescuing our world before it becomes lost.

In the future that Fahrenheit 451 renders, we have no interaction with each other, we only have contact with the Television Walls in which we do not even choose what to say. In this future of ours, we get sent scripts which we read without even thinking about it in the slightest. We do not even need to think enough to create our own sentence structures, or own ideas, we create nothing of our own. In the future which we will come to, we will believe that the people on the television are our family and that they are our friends. You would even ignore your spouse completely if you are talking to your "friends" on the TV. In general people have no real interaction with real thoughts in the future which Fahrenheit 451 creates.

In the future that Fahrenheit 451 imagined, people can no longer read anything that the government has not distributed themselves. If you are caught with a book, a single book, you will be taken to jail for life or burned alive while the firemen are just staring at you with a devilish smile. They have the best job in the world they imagine. They do not know that Firemen used to put out fires, instead of starting them. We are not allowed to have our own thoughts, we are not even allowed to read other peoples thoughts. We are not allowed that one basic right that we all have now, the right to freedom of speech, freedom of press, and freedom of thought. Our country was smart enough to begin this right in the first place, but if we take it away for any reason the next step our country will take, is the step to the future which Fahrenheit 451 predicts.

The future that Fahrenheit 451 produces, it shows us at our worst, it shows us in a time where we have no interaction with each other, no thoughts, and a time when we have no lives. We have to make sure that we never become what Fahrenheit 451 shows us becoming, we can never become the world that we have been shown. We need to keep our world as beautiful as it is today, for if we do not there is a great chance it will become like the world in Fahrenheit 451, pathetic. We need to rescue our world, before we lose it.