Life of Pi (2001)

Life of Pi is imaginative, fantastical allegory.

A young man, Pi Patel, survives a shipwreck at sea, only to find himself in a lifeboat with a hyena, zebra, orangutan, and a tiger by the name of Richard Parker. The animals are there because Pi’s father is a zookeeper and is transporting it from India to Canada when the fateful storm strikes. Fairly quickly the only two who remain are Richard Parker and Pi, and of course Pi must use his wits to survive for hundreds of days in this predicament. I’ll spare you the details but survive he does; Pi lives to tell his tale to a couple of shocked investigators.

It’s when the investigators express a little skepticism, and ask Pi to tell the story without the animals, that the allegory reveals itself.

Pi says, “You want a story that won’t surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won’t make you see higher or farther or differently. You want a flat story. An immobile story. You want dry, yeastless factuality.” And then proceeds to tell them, briefly, in 10 pages as opposed to the 300 that came before it, a very different version, one with people who have climbed aboard the lifeboat with him instead of animals, one of whom is his mother. They are driven to extremes by hunger, and resort to cannibalism and murder in order to survive.

And so the reader is faced with the question, were the animals make-believe all along, dreamed up by Pi to avoid staring cruelty and inhumanity in the face, so that he doesn’t have to acknowledge the fact that to survive he ate human flesh, and that his mother, not an orangutan, was killed before his very eyes?

It’s a question that Martel doesn’t answer directly, and perhaps it’s not relevant. For he seems to be asking a different question, which as I ponder It seems to be that in a larger sense aren’t all of us adrift in the ocean of existence, often faced with desperate circumstances, and unfortunately witnessing cruelty in some form or another from our fellow man? That to transcend this condition, to transcend our transience, don’t we populate the story of our existence with fantasy as a coping mechanism, and isn’t it perhaps better to do that? Indeed, one of the investigators draws the conclusion that the story with the animals is “better”, to which Pi replies, “And so it goes with God.”

While the religious view does seem to be Martel/Patel’s answer, it isn’t delivered in a heavy-handed way. Patel is open to all religions and in fact chooses to believe in several of them, and also considers atheists his brothers. While I don’t agree with Pi when he says that they are “of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith”, in fact I strongly disagree, to the larger story atheists can draw their own conclusion, for Martel’s question doesn’t seem to be what “reality” or “truth” is, it seems to be what’s the better story, what’s the better way to choose to live life, what’s the better belief system. One can choose the “dry, yeastless factuality”, as he puts it, if one views the unvarnished truth as preferable, and reject the idea of a 450-pound tiger in a lifeboat.

Just this quote, on death:
“To lose a brother is to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old, who is supposed to bring you a sister-in-law and nieces and nephew, creatures to people the tree of your life and give it new branches. To lose your father is to lose the one whose guidance and help you seek, who supports you like a tree trunk supports its branches. To lose your mother, well, that is like losing the sun above you.” ( )

I confess I spent more time than I should have needed to trying to figure out if this was based on a true story or not. I'm glad the interview with the author was included at the end. Very enjoyable. ( )

A young boy moving with his family as they take their zoo animals and head towards a new life is engulfed by a storm and lost at sea. He has to spend the next few weeks in a boat, floating in the ocean, trying to survive not only with little food and water, but also with a hungry tiger nearby.

This book is for older students - most likely high school. The ending sparks an interesting discussion- who was really in the boat? What really happened to the boy and his passengers? ( )