Imagine someone was alone on a lifeboat, drifting in the middle of the ocean. This person has gone through traumatic and unspeakable horrors that resulted in the loss of his family. Now this person was running out of food and clean water without anyone to help him. If you were this person, do you think that you would ever fully recover and lead a happy life? This is what happens in Life of Pi, the story of Pi Patel, a boy from India who was the only person to survive the sinking of a cargo ship. The novel documents his unbelievable journey across the Pacific alongside a Bengal Tiger named Richard Parker. However, towards the end of the novel, the author presents an alternative story. The alternative story is extremely similar to the story that was originally told, except that the animals were replaced by humans. The author wishes the reader to believe the first story because your imagination can take away hardships in life.
Part 1 of Life of Pi is about how Pi developed a love for theology and zoology, which he eventually studied at the University of Toronto as an adult. The fictional author’s reaction to hearing Pi talk about how he found his faith in religion as a young boy leads him to write, “moral exaltation; lasting feelings of elevation, elation, joy; a quickening of the moral sense, which strikes one as more important than an intellectual understanding of things” (Martel 63). Pi believes that religion and faith is a way to bring animation to life that often only has “dry, yeastless factuality” (Martel 64).
Part 2 of Life of Pi is about how Pi ends up on a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and how he survives. Pi describes many things that logical people would find hard to believe such as carnivorous plants, Pi finding a blind Frenchman in the middle of the ocean, and his ability to survive with Richard Parker onboard. The author wants the reader to believe that Pi used a fantasy to escape from the monotonousness and terrible realities of his trip across the ocean. Pi believes that “if [Richard Parker] died [he] would be left alone with despair” because Richard Parker “kept [him] from thinking too much about [his] family and [his] circumstances. He pushed [Pi] to go on living”, even though a rational person would think that there was no way he could survive for such a long time (Martel 164). Instead of giving up because it was unlikely that he would survive, Pi created Richard Parker as a way to keep him from being lonely and to give him the willpower to find a way to survive.
127 our experts are availableright now
Part 3 of Life of Pi is about the conversation between Pi and the Japanese men trying to find out how the Tsimtsum sank. Pi tells the Japanese men the story that was told to the reader throughout the novel. The Japanese men think that Pi is joking with them because they believe many things in his story “don’t exist” such as “carnivorous trees”, “fish-eating algae that produces fresh water”, “tree-dwelling aquatic rodents” (Martel 294). After the Japanese men continue to interrogate him to get the facts, Pi finally decides to tell them another story. When Pi finishes telling the second story, the Japanese men note that “his stories match” and that “the Taiwanese sailor is the Zebra, [Pi’s] mother is the orang-utan, the cook is…the hyena-which means [Pi is] the tiger”.
The story with the animals was not as chilling as the second story because the actions of the animals were normal for them such as eating prey, attacking, and killing each other, while the story without the animals portrayed how humans can resort to animal-like behavior in extreme circumstances. When Pi asked the Japanese men which story they like more, they both chose “the story with the animals” because it is “the better story” (Martel 317). Then, Pi say says “And so it goes with God”. Pi reasserted his faith in religion because he does not want to live a miserable life regretting the decisions he made on the lifeboat and the horrific things he witnessed. He does not want to “lack imagination and miss the better story” (Martel 64). Instead, he wants to keep faith in God so that he can move past his suffering and have a happier life.
Life of Pi is an eye-opening novel that conveys an important message. The two versions of Pi’s journey across the Pacific Ocean means that in order to overcome your immense grief, some people must believe a fantasy or have faith in their religion. Pi chose to have faith in God and believe the story with Richard Parker because he did not want to live a life where he constantly reminds himself of his terrible past.
Works Cited
- Martel, Yann. Life of Pi. Mariner Books, 2012.
