Survival, Faith, and Narrative Truth in Life of Pi

Introduction to Pi Patel and the Novel's Premise

Life of Pi by Yann Martel is a story of a young man named Pi Patel who was born in India. Inheriting great intelligence and keen curiosity for several areas of life — in particular religion — he decides to follow three faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism, to the confusion of his family. Aside from his interest in religion, Pi is also deeply fascinated by and understanding of the animals that reside in his father's zoo. Curiosity fuels Pi's storytelling, shaping his identity and how he perceives the world.

While some of his storytelling seems outlandish at times — especially the personification of a tiger — Pi recounts his amazing tale to Japanese investigators because he himself believes it to be true and does not consider that it might appear implausible to others. Although he presents the investigators with two versions of events and leaves them to decide which is true, perhaps a marriage of both versions contains the greater part of the truth about Pi's life at sea.

Plot Summary and the Two Versions of Pi's Story

To truly understand Pi's reasoning, it is important to understand the plot of the novel. As previously noted, Pi was curious about both animals and religion. When his father decided to move the family to Canada to escape political upheaval at home, some of the zoo animals were transported with the family aboard a cargo ship. As fate took a turn for the worse, the ship was struck and began to sink.

Pi managed to escape by climbing onto a lifeboat, but his family drowned. Remarkably, several of his father's zoo animals also made it onto the lifeboat: a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan named Orange Juice, and Richard Parker, a Bengal tiger. Eventually most of the animals perished, leaving Pi alone on the boat with the tiger.

Pi had to learn to fish, to build things, and to train Richard Parker in order to survive, since the tiger would attack anyone who did not assert dominance — a dynamic that ultimately led to the tiger killing a French castaway. After 227 days at sea, Pi finally reached the Mexican shore, where he was rescued. Strangely, Richard Parker left the boat and was never seen again. In reality, the tiger may have been a delusion born of grief and isolation, but to Pi the experience seemed entirely real.

When two investigators arrived to question Pi about the sinking, he offered two versions of the tale and invited them to choose which to believe. The first version involved the animals and seemed the most extraordinary. The second version, while running parallel to the first, included cannibalism and depicted a far darker side of humanity. The investigators ultimately accepted the first version — perhaps because the second was simply too grim to accept.

Parallels Between the Animal and Human Versions

Clear parallels exist between the two versions in the roles assigned to animals and humans. The cook corresponds to the hyena, who in the second version severs the sailor's leg. The sailor corresponds to the zebra. The orangutan represents Pi's mother, and Pi himself represents Richard Parker. If one were to merge both versions, it might suggest that Pi was hallucinating — projecting the familiar animals from his father's zoo onto the people on the boat in order to cope with the trauma of witnessing cannibalism and being forced to participate in it.

This interpretation makes sense for several reasons. The tiger was never found, and losing a mother — particularly to murder — can be profoundly traumatic. Pi is described throughout the novel as relatively immature, but his time at sea forces him to grow and become a far stronger person. This growth is foreshadowed in the scene where he watches Mahisha, a Bengal tiger, devour a living goat, and comes to understand the necessity of strength in the face of adversity.

The writer of the novel also drew on a curious literary tradition: in Edgar Allan Poe's work and other 19th-century writings, several figures named Richard Parker perished through cannibalism at sea. When Pi reveals in his second version that cannibalism occurred and that he ate the cook, this becomes an odd inversion of the predator-prey dynamic. If the tiger is associated with Pi, then Pi becomes Richard Parker — a survivor, albeit one who endured a harrowing series of events.

Even in version one, where Richard Parker is genuinely a Bengal tiger, the fact that he walks off the boat and disappears underscores the author's desire to portray Richard Parker as a survivor rather than a perpetual victim. In a strange way, merging both versions creates a deeper understanding of Pi's character and what he had to overcome. If one takes from the first version the idea of Pi training the tiger, and from the second version the idea of Pi eating the cook, one might conclude that Pi essentially trained himself to overcome his fear of violence — and then consumed the threat on the boat.

Works Cited

Cole, Stewart. "Believing in Tigers: Anthropomorphism and Incredulity in Yann Martel's Life of Pi." 29.2 (2004): n. pag. Web. 12 Dec. 2015.

Duncan, Rebecca. "Life of Pi as Postmodern Survivor Narrative." Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 41.2 (2008): 167. Web. 12 Dec. 2015.

Dwyer, June. "Yann Martel's Life of Pi and the Evolution of the Shipwreck Narrative." Modern Language Studies 35.2 (2005): 9. Web.

Herbert, Marilyn. Bookclub-in-a-Box Presents the Discussion Companion for Yann Martel's Life of Pi. [United States]: Bookclub-in-a-Box, 2007. Print.

Martel, Yann. Life of Pi. New York: Harcourt, 2001. Print.

Stratton, Florence. "'Hollow at the Core': Deconstructing Yann Martel's Life of Pi." 29.2 (2004): 1. Web. 12 Dec. 2015.