Life of Pi
[Author Name(s), First M. Last, Omit Titles and Degrees]
Life of Pi, written by Yann Martel, is a story of a young man named Pi Patel that was born in India. Inheriting great intelligence and keen curiosity for several various areas of life, in particular religion, he decides to follow three religions. These are Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism to the confusion of the members of his family. Aside from Pi's interest in religion, he is also intrigued and very understanding of all the animals that reside in his father's zoo. Curiosity fuels Pi's story-telling as it is helped shape his identity and how he perceives the world. While some of his storytelling seems outlandish at times, especially the personification of a tiger, he tells of his amazing tale to the Japanese investigators because he himself believes it to be true and is ignorant of the notion that it may seem outlandish. While he gives the investigators two versions of the events, leaving them to decide which one is true, perhaps there exists a marriage between both versions that could contain the majority of the truth of the events of Pi's life at sea.
To truly understand Pi's reasoning, it is important to understand the plot of the story. As previously mentioned, Pi was curious of animals and religion. When his father decided to move his family to Canada to wanting to avoid political upheaval in his country, some of those animals Pi took such a keen interest in are transported along with the family, in a cargo ship. As fate appeared to take a turn for the worse, the ship took a hit and began sinking.
Pi was able to make it out by hopping onto a life boat, but his family drowned. Oddly enough some of his father's zoo animals made it onto the life boat. They were a rare zebra, a hyena, Orange Juice the orangutan and Richard Parker, the Bengal tiger. Eventually most of the animals die aside from Richard Parker, leaving Pi with a tiger on the boat.
Pi had to learn to fish, to construct things, and to train Richard in order to survive as the tiger would attack anyone that is not the alpha, killing the French castaway. After staying on the boat for two hundred and twenty-seven days, he was finally able to land on the Mexican shore where he is then rescued. Even stranger, the Bengal tiger, who was Pi's companion left the boat, and was never seen again. In reality this could have been a delusion of his, from his grief of losing his family and being out at sea, but to Pi it seemed very real. When two investigators come to ask Pi questions over the sinking of the boat, he delivers two version of the tale and lets them choose which one to believe.
While the first story involved the animals, and seemed the most outlandish, the investigators ended up accepting the first one because the second one, while having parallels to the first, did not seem as believable. Perhaps it was because the second one involved cannibalism. Perhaps it was because it showed a much darker side to humanity had it been true. Who knows. Regardless as mentioned previously, parallels exist between both versions of the story.
The parallels exist in terms of the animals and the humans. The cook symbolizes the hyena, who cut off the leg of the sailor in the second version. The sailor symbolizes the zebra. The orangutan represents Pi's mother and Pi represents Richard Parker. Perhaps if one were to marry both versions, it would suggest that Pi was hallucinating the people being animals and in order to get over the pain of having to not only witness cannibalism, but also eat a human, he projected the animals he enjoyed spending time with from his father's zoo onto the people o the boat.
It would make sense as the tiger was never found and losing a mother can be very traumatic, especially when she is murdered by someone near. Pi is described throughout the story as lacking a lot of maturity and personal growth. However, during his time out at sea, whether or not he trained the tiger or survived a murderer, he grew and became a much stronger person because of his experience. Harking back to the scene in the book when he learns the danger of tigers by watching Mahisha, a Bengal tiger devour a living goat, he realizes the true need to become strong in the face adversity.
One...
The writer discovered from Edgar Allen Poe's work and some other work of the 19th century, that several Richard Parkers died by being cannibalized. When Pi mentions in the second version of the story that there was cannibalism and he himself had to eat the cook, it was an odd manifestation of Richard Parker becoming the predator versus the prey. If the tiger is associated with Pi, Pi becomes Richard Parker, triumphant in surviving, albeit, after a tragic series of events.
Even if it is just version one of the story, and it Richard Parker is in fact a Bengal tiger, the fact that he gets off the boat and escapes, also highlights the desire to show Richard Parker as a survivor instead of someone that is the eternal victim. In a strange way, if both of the versions combined together would create a sort of deeper understanding of Pi's character and what he had to overcome to survive. For example, if one takes from the first version Pi training the tiger and then the second version, Pi eating the book, he could have essentially trained himself to lose the fear of fighting and murder, and ate the threat on the boat, the cook.
Pi became a true survivalist when he was on the boat for 227 days. Regardless of which version was true, he managed to keep sharks at bay, feed himself, withstand direct sunlight and storms to make it to the shores of Mexico to tell his story. He was able to get past the fears he had and the loss of his loved ones, to keep living, to make sure he somehow gets past this, even though the actual end of the voyage took almost seven and a half months to complete. It is here the theme of survival becomes prevalent and perhaps brings an effective means of piecing together the true narrative of Pi while on the boat.
Religion also played an important theme in the story and perhaps could explain why Pi provided two versions of his tale. Even amidst hardship experienced at sea, he was still able to keep true to his religious beliefs with some modification. This "modification" could be pretending that the cannibalism experienced and witnessed on the boat was instead, animals eating and killing each other (Duncan). Looking at his acts in the second version, it would be considered a grave sin to kill and eat someone. This perhaps could explain his willingness to add animals into the mix during his first version.
Nature is another important theme in the story. He liked spending time with animals in his father's zoo. While this was a great way to get a better understanding of the author's character construction of Pi, it also served to provide insight into how someone could create a narrative with animals in it. Since he liked animals and was around them often, he could have simply substituted his mother for the orangutan as well as the sailor and cook in order to take himself back to those times where he enjoyed himself.
While there can be a marriage of both versions of the story. There inclination towards the second version being reality and the first version being something to distract from reality comes to mind. It seems even Pi during his narrative shows how he changes and is forced to do things he does not want, like for example, "eat like a savage." Pi is a vegetarian, as are many Indians. To eat any flesh, let alone human flesh, can be quite traumatizing.
It would make sense that Pi would do anything to erase the shame, guilt, and anger that arose from his mother being murdered and having to resort to cannibalism to survive. Some reviewers of the novel suggest that the two versions of the story that Pi gave to the investigators represents extremes of imagination and reality. What is something Pi would expect and then what is something everyone else would expect.
Life of Pi is organized around a philosophical debate about the modern world's privileging of reason over imagination, science over religion, materialism over idealism, fact over fiction or story. The extreme poles of this debate are represented in the latter part of the novel by the two officials from the Japanese government. (Stratton 1)
Identifying a middle ground would be a difficult pursuit…
