The Life of Pi – Yann Martel

Yann Martel was born in Spain to French-Canadian parents. Martel’s father worked as a
diplomat, and the family moved to Costa Rica, France, Mexico, and Canada during Martel’s
childhood. He grew up speaking both French and English. Martel studied philosophy at Trent
University in Ontario, and later spent a year in India visiting religious sites and zoos. His first three
books received little critical or popular attention, but with the publication of Life of Pi in 2001
Martel became internationally famous, and he was awarded the Man Booker Prize in 2002.

Most of Life of Pi takes place at sea, but the novel’s initial setting is Pondicherry, India,
during a period of Indian history called ‘The Emergency’, which lasted from 1975 to 1977. The
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had been found guilty of misconduct in her recent election campaign,
but instead of resigning she declared a state of emergency. This effectively suspended all
constitutional rights and gave Gandhi dictatorial power. While the Emergency was a time of
political oppression and violence, India experienced much-needed economic stabilization and
growth as well. Pondicherry is also a unique part of India because it was once a French colony
(while most of India was ruled by Britain), so it has a diverse and unique culture where Pi could
be exposed to Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam.
A fictional author travels to India, and there he hears an extraordinary story from a man
named Francis Adirubasamy. The author tracks down and interviews the story’s subject, Piscine
Molitor Patel, usually called Pi, in Canada. The author writes the rest of the narrative from Pi’s
point of view, occasionally interrupting to describe his interviews with the adult Pi.
Pi grows up in Pondicherry, India in the 1970s. He is named after a famous swimming pool in
Paris. Pi’s father is a zookeeper, and Pi and his brother Ravi are raised among exotic wild animals.
Pi’s tale frequently digresses to explain about zookeeping, animal territories, and boundaries. His
father warns him of the danger of wild animals by making Pi watch a tiger eat a goat, but Pi also
learns that ‘the most dangerous animal at a zoo is Man’.
Pi is raised culturally Hindu, but his family is generally unreligious. As a youth Pi becomes
devoutly Hindu and then converts to Christianity and Islam. He practices all three religions at once,
despite the protests of his parents and the religious leaders. The ‘Emergency’ brings political
turmoil to India and Pi’s parents decide to sell the zoo and move the family to Canada. They board
a Japanese cargo ship called the Tsimtsum, traveling with many of the zoo animals.
There is an explosion one night and the Tsimtsum starts sinking. Pi is awake at the time,
and some sailors throw him into a lifeboat. The ship sinks, leaving no human survivors except for
Pi. Pi sees a tiger, Richard Parker, and encourages him to climb aboard. Pi eventually finds himself
on the lifeboat with a zebra, a hyena, and Orange Juice the orangutan. The hyena kills the zebra
and eats it. The hyena then fights and kills Orange Juice. Pi notices that Richard Parker is still in
the boat, hiding under a tarpaulin. Richard Parker kills the hyena, leaving Pi alone with the tiger.
Pi makes a raft for himself and finds supplies in the lifeboat, and he sets about marking his
territory and ‘taming’ Richard Parker using a whistle. Pi kills and eats fish and turtles, filters
seawater, and collects rainwater. Pi and Richard Parker each occupy their own territory in the
lifeboat and live peacefully, though they are constantly starving. Pi loses track of time as months
pass. He remembers episodes like seeing a whale, experiencing a lightning storm, and watching a
ship pass by.
Pi goes temporarily blind and hears a voice talking to him. At first he thinks it is Richard
Parker, but then he realizes it is another castaway who is also blind. The two discuss food and then
bring their boats together. The castaway attacks Pi, intending to kill and eat him. Richard Parker
kills the castaway. Later the boat comes to a mysterious island made entirely of algae and inhabited
by thousands of meerkats. Pi and Richard Parker stay there for a while and recover their health.
One day Pi finds a tree with human teeth as its fruit, and he realizes that the island is carnivorous.
Pi decides to leave with Richard Parker.
Finally Pi is rescued by some villagers. The last section is a transcript of an interview
between Pi and two Japanese officials who are trying to figure out why the Tsimtsum sank. Pi tells
them his story, but they don’t believe him. He then tells them a second story, replacing the animals
with humans – in this version Pi is on the lifeboat with a French cook, a Chinese sailor, and his
own mother. The sailor dies and the cook eats his flesh. The cook later kills Pi’s mother, and then
Pi kills the cook. The officials are horrified, but they believe this story. They note that the hyena is
the cook, the zebra is the sailor, Orange Juice is Pi’s mother, and Richard Parker is Pi himself. Pi
asks the officials which story they prefer, and they say the one with animals. In their final report
they commend Pi for surviving at sea with a tiger.
 An italicized section precedes Chapter 1. This section is written as if by Yann Martel
himself, but it is actually part of the novel told by a fictional Canadian author. The author says that
he had published two earlier books which were ignored, and he went to Bombay, India to clear his
mind and try to write again. This was his second trip to India. He planned to find a quiet place to
write his next novel, which was about Portugal in 1939. With this Author’s Note Martel
immediately introduces the idea of using alternate stories to describe the same reality, an idea that
will apply to religion and Pi’s accounts of his survival. The fictional author is very similar to Martel
himself, who was also Canadian, had previously published two unsuccessful novels, and went to
India for inspiration. The Portugal book quickly lost momentum and sputtered out. The author felt
desperate and depressed, wondering what to do with his life next. He left Bombay and traveled to
southern India, eventually arriving in the town of Pondicherry. Pondicherry had once been ruled
by the French Empire (as opposed to most of the rest of India, which was ruled by Britain), but the
town had gained its independence decades before. The idea of storytelling itself is worked
throughout the novel’s complex framework. Martel is writing as a fictional version of himself,
who is writing as an adult Pi remembering his youth. Pondicherry’s uniqueness in India makes it
an ideal setting for Pi’s blending of religions and philosophies.
In a local coffee house, the author met an old man named Francis Adirubasamy. Mr.
Adirubasamy offered to tell the author a story ‘that will make you believe in God’. The author
accepted the challenge, and he took notes on Mr. Adirubasamy’s story. The author then returned
to Canada and found the protagonist of Mr. Adirubasamy’s story, Mr. Patel. The author began
visiting Mr. Patel and taking notes.
From the start Martel encourages us to suspend our disbelief and accept ‘the better story’ over ‘dry,
yeastless factuality’ – ideas that will be threaded throughout the book. He is basically inventing a
different origin story for Life of Pi, choosing a more interesting tale than the grueling, unexciting
work of writing every day.
Mr. Patel showed the author old newspaper clippings about the events of the story, and also let him
read his diary. Many months later, the author received a tape and report from the Japanese Ministry
of Transport, confirming Mr. Patel’s tale. The author agrees that it is ‘a story to make you believe
in God’. He says that he has written the novel in the first person, as through Mr. Patel’s voice. He
ends with some acknowledgements, including Mr. Patel and the novelist Maocyr Scliar, thanking
him ‘for the spark of life’. Francis Adirubasamy introduces the important theme of religion with
his claim. After Life of Pi’s success Martel was criticized for taking the idea (a castaway alone
with a wild cat) from Scliar’s book Max and the Cats, but Martel claimed that he had only read a
review of Scliar’s novel, not the novel itself. The two works are very different, and Scliar himself
dropped his plagiarism accusations eventually.
The novel’s main text begins with the adult Pi speaking of his life after the story’s main event. His
suffering left him ‘sad and gloomy’, but he continued his religious practices and zoological studies
and slowly became happy again. He attended the University of Toronto and was a very good
student. His religious studies thesis involved Isaac Luria’s cosmogony theory, while his zoology
thesis was about three-toed sloths.
Pi’s brief mention of Isaac Luria introduces an important religious idea. Luria was a Kabbalist
teacher whose theory of creation involved the concept of tzimtzum, which was basically that God
contracted his infinite light in order to create the universe, hiding himself so that his creation might
become independent of him. This concept will be important later, as the ship the Tsimtsum sinks,
giving Pi ‘room’ to create his own universe and independence.
Pi found studying sloths to be comforting because of their slow, calm lifestyles. Sloths are kept
safe by being so slow and blending into the background. Pi found his two majors to be related, as
the sloths would often remind him of God. Pi excelled at school and won many awards, and he is
currently working, though he doesn’t say where. He says that he loves Canada but misses India,
and he especially misses someone named Richard Parker.
Martel frames Pi’s ordeal by describing Pi both as a child and as an adult, not giving details of
what happened in between but hinting at great suffering and the mysterious being of Richard
Parker. Pi’s unique philosophical blending of zoology and theology, science and religion, will be
threaded throughout the novel.
Pi describes his initial recovery in Mexico after the events of the story. He was treated well at the
hospital. He had anemia, dark urine, and his legs retained fluids and swelled. After a week he
could walk again. The first time he turned on a faucet he fainted at the abundance of clean
water. When he made it to Canada he went to an Indian restaurant, but was offended when
the waiter criticized him for eating with his fingers. We wonder how Pi ended up in Mexico, as
the Author intended, if he is from India, and what kind of memories of India he has that were
trampled upon by the rude waiter. The narrative switches to the author’s point of view, and he
describes the adult Pi as a small, gray-haired, middle-aged man. He wears a winter coat in the fall
and speaks quickly and expressively. These sections remind us of the book’s ‘nonfiction’
framework and also introduce the adult Pi even as we learn the events of his youth.
The story then continues in Pi’s voice. He reflects on his name, which is Piscine Molitor Patel,
and says that he was named after a swimming pool. Pi’s parents did not like water, but they had a
family friend who was a former champion swimmer. This man was named Francis Adirubasamy,
but Pi called him Mamaji, which is similar to ‘uncle’. Martel immediately shows the connection
between Francis Adirubasamy, the story’s initiator, and Pi himself. Pi’s unusual name also
foreshadows his experiences with water – Piscine is the French word for ‘pool’, and in English it
means ‘relating to fish or fishes’.
Mamaji and Pi became very close, and Mamaji taught Pi how to swim. Pi came to share Mamaji’s
love for the water and for the meditative practice of swimming. Pi’s father never wanted to swim
himself, but he came to idealize the world of swimming. Mamaji’s favorite pool in the world was
the Piscine Molitor in Paris, which was clear, pristine, and perfect. Pi got his name from this
swimming pool. Pi has not named himself ‘Pi’ yet in the story, but is still technically ‘Piscine’.
Even at a young age Pi seems to have a slow, patient soul that finds swimming relaxing and
peaceful. This looks forward to his religious devotion and contemplative inner life. Pi’s father ran
the Pondicherry Zoo, which was founded soon after Pondicherry entered the Union of India in
1954. Pi describes the wonders of the zoo and compares it to a hotel with especially uncooperative
guests. As a child he felt like he was living in paradise, surrounded by such amazing animals. His
daily schedule was marked by an alarm clock of lions roaring and the regular routines of other
animals.
Pi’s upbringing at the zoo is both an important part of his life and sets the stage for the events of
the novel. Without his extensive knowledge of wild animal behavior Pi never could have survived
as he does. Martel places the Patels in a historical setting, Pondicherry in the 1970s, but they still
seem to exist in a unique universe. Pi defends zoos against people who feel that animals in the wild
are happier. He argues that in the wild, animals are at the mercy of many dangers, but in the zoo
they have safety and security. He also argues against the idea of zoos as ‘prisons’ – he says that
animals prefer to have a set territory and rigid boundaries, so they will be happy if they accept the
edges of their cages as their territory. He cites instances of animals who had the option of escaping,
but refused to do so. Pi says that now both zoos and religion have fallen out of favor. The
Pondicherry Zoo is shut down now.
 These digressions are the adult Pi reminiscing, but also setting up the story of his ordeal.
Pi here introduces the important idea of boundaries and animal territories. Animals, like humans,
generally like comfort and ritual, so a good zoo provides a sense of order that they have no desire
to escape from. In the wild, however, animals (and soon Pi) have to struggle constantly to maintain
order in the midst of danger. Pi and Martel are clearly both fascinated with the intersection of
religion and zoology, as Pi associates them here and will study both in college.
Pi reflects further on his name and all the teasing he got as a child because of it. The other children
called him ‘Pissing’, which they took from ‘Piscine’. Eventually Pi decided on a nickname, and
when he moved to a new school he trained the teachers and his classmates to call him ‘Pi’. In
each class on the first day he wrote ‘Pi’ on the chalkboard, as well as the first few digits of the
number pi. The name stuck.
Rote repetition and confidence are the most important elements of this ‘training’. Pi’s nickname
refers to the number π, representing the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. The
number is irrational and unending, an interesting contrast to Pi’s love of harmony and order.
The author interrupts again to say that the adult Pi is an excellent cook, and he makes very spicy
vegetarian food. The author has noted that Pi’s kitchen is very well-stocked with spare canned
goods, as if preparing for a disaster. Clearly Pi suffered great deprivation, as he now has a special
appreciation for food.
The narrative returns to Pi’s voice. Pi describes his biology teacher, Mr. Satish Kumar. Mr.
Kumar was an atheist and an active Communist. He used to come to the zoo to watch the animals
and wonder at the natural world. Pi, who had been religious since a young age, was at first shocked
by Mr. Kumar’s atheism, but soon they formed a deep bond. Pi respects atheists for choosing a
certain worldview (one without a God), but he dislikes agnostics, as they must live in a constant
state of doubt or indifference.
The Satish Kumars (there will be another) of Pi’s life provide symmetry in their influence.
Pi’s digression on atheists and agnostics is very important –clearly he accepts that the existence of
God is inherently unknowable, and so it takes faith to either affirm or deny it. When the truth is
unknowable, we can only choose which story we find more beautiful. Pi prefers a worldview with
God in it, but he respects those who do not. What he does not respect are those who refuse to
choose, who linger in doubt. Pi respects those who choose a story.
Pi relates the saying that ‘the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man’, and describes different ways
zoo visitors have tormented or injured the animals, sometimes in bizarre ways. Pi says that this
saying (which was on a sign at the Pondicherry Zoo) was not quite true though. He says more
dangerous than humans themselves is their tendency to anthropomorphize animals, giving them
human feelings and motives.
Martel starts to show the animality in humans and the humanity in animals, as they will
soon come together in Pi’s lifeboat. The human tendency to anthropomorphize (ascribe human
traits to) animals refers back to Pi’s claim that zoos and religion have both ‘fallen out of favor’ –
people assume that animals desire freedom, just as humans think that religion constrains liberty.
One day Pi’s father decided to show Pi and his older brother Ravi about the dangers of wild
animals. He took the boys to the Bengal tiger’s cage and fed the tiger a wild goat in front of them.
The boys were traumatized by this sight, but their father continued by listing other ways even
seemingly docile animals could hurt or kill them. Pi remembered this lesson forever and always
recognized the ‘othernes’ of wild animals. Pi’s father’s choice of a tiger is especially pointed
considering the rest of the novel.
Pi describes the idea of ‘flight distance’, which is how far away a human can be before an
animal runs away. An important part of zookeeping is reducing the flight distances of animals so
that they are comfortable with humans nearby. Zookeepers can do this by providing good shelter,
food and water, and personal attention. Pi says that his father was a natural zookeeper. Pi expands
on the ideas of territory and boundaries. The training of animals is basically a slow rearrangement
of their territory, and in zoos the animals must accept humans living on adjacent territories to their
own.
The author returns to describe the adult Pi’s house in Canada. He says the house is like ‘a temple’,
as it is filled with religious icons and objects. The author notes paintings, statues, books, and
photographs pertaining to Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity. Pi keeps a Bible on his bedside table.
Martel and Pi now shift from animal rituals to human religious rituals. The overlap of religion and
zoology is again emphasized. Based on the contents of his house, Pi’s religious beliefs seem
muddled and unfocused.
For Pi, religion will be about choosing ‘the better story’ in a chaotic, unknowable universe.
This begins to develop a major theme of the book, which is that religion (like stories, and through
stories) is a way of ordering life and making it bearable. Unlike many religious practitioners, Pi
tries to avoid being possessive of religious truth – already he accepts that truth can be relative.
Pi describes his introduction to Christianity. When he was fourteen he was on a holiday in Munnar
and he came across a church. Pi had never been inside a church before, and he stepped inside when
he saw that the doors were open. Inside he met a priest named Father Martin. Pi expected to be
kicked out for being a ‘heathen’, but Father Martin welcomed him into the clean, quiet space.
Pi began returning to visit Father Martin, and the priest told him the story of Jesus. Pi wondered at
the strange psychology involved in Christ’s sacrifice, and he asked for other stories. Father Martin
said that there is only one story in Christianity, and the whole basis of it is God’s love. Father
Martin answered all of Pi’s questions with ‘love’. Pi compared this strange new religion to
Hinduism’s fantastical tales, but he was moved by a God who would give up all power and glory.
Pi starts to learn that he too is looking for something deeper than ritual and tradition, and he finds
different aspects of that thing – God, or universal love, or ‘a better story’ – in Hinduism and
Christianity. Only when Pi looks past his stereotypes of Christians does he see the similarities in
the religions, and he asks us as readers to do the same.
After three days Pi found himself thinking constantly about Jesus. At first he was angry at the idea
of him, but soon Pi decided to become a Christian himself. Just before his family left Munnar, Pi
went to Father Martin and asked to become a Christian. Father Martin told Pi that he already was.
Overjoyed, Pi went into the church and prayed, and then went off to thank Krishna for introducing
him to Jesus.
The idea of boundaries returns here as Pi starts to blur the lines between different religions. Most
people cling to one religion exclusively or no religion at all, but Pi starts to embrace three of them
at once. He has shown that he accepts metaphysical truth as relative, so he chooses religions as a
moving and beautiful way to view the universe.
Pi explains that he had kept his religious activities quiet, and his parents had no idea that he was
now a Christian and Muslim as well. One day Pi was out with his parents enjoying the weather on
a seaside esplanade when they were confronted (by coincidence) by Pi’s imam, priest, and pandit,
the religious leaders with whom Pi had been practicing his Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism.
Pi’s parents were culturally Hindu, but they were secular in their personal lives, so they were
surprised to suddenly find out how religious their son was. The priest, imam, and pandit were also
all shocked to find that Pi was not just a Christian, Muslim, and Hindu, but in fact all three at once.
They each protested that it was not possible to believe in all three religions simultaneously, and
they argued with each other and demanded that Pi choose between them.
Pi became embarrassed and quoted Mahatma Gandhi, saying that ‘All religions are true’ and
explaining that he was just trying to love God. The religious leaders were embarrassed by this, and
Pi’s father took advantage of their silence to hurry the family off to get ice cream.
Pi reflects on how the episode with the religious leaders was symbolic of the problems with many
religious practitioners. People become so concerned with exclusivity and defending God that they
forget to love other humans. Pi declares that when people defend God with violence or anger they
are misunderstanding religion. Pi himself had to avoid zealous people who tried to condemn him
for practicing more than one faith at once.
Pi condemns narrow-minded, judgmental religious practitioners in a similar way that he condemns
bad zookeepers – they give both their lifestyles a bad name. As an adult he starts to recognize that
everyone constrains their ‘liberty’ in some way, the question is just which worldview one chooses.
Eventually, during the Emergency State, Pi’s parents decided that the zoo could not remain
profitable in such a political climate, and they grew outraged at the government’s actions, which
destroyed their hope for the ‘New India’. Finally they decided to move the family to Canada, which
seemed an inherently foreign place to Pi and Ravi. Pi has now become one of those animals being
displaced from his ‘territory’, and he will experience all the chaos that comes with such a shift. In
Pi’s world zoos are delicate things that cannot survive heavy-handed governments.
The author interrupts again to describe his meeting with Pi’s wife, Meena. The author had been
meeting visiting Pi for a while without ever hearing about a wife, so her existence first came as a
shock to him. The author wonders at how protective Pi is of the things that are precious to him.
The author wonders if Meena is the one who has been cooking so much spicy food, but then he
confirms that Pi is the cook.
The same post-deprivation mindset that leads Pi to stock up on canned food also causes him to
guard his family closely. The author returns to Pi’s spicy cooking, a reminder that Pi was once
without food at all and so now has a special appreciation for it, and also referring back to Pi’s
‘spicing up’ of ‘yeastless reality’. The author describes Pi showing him old family photos. There
are pictures of Pi’s wedding and his days growing up in Canada, but almost nothing from India.
There are only four random photos, one containing the mysterious Richard Parker. None of the
pictures have Pi’s mother in them, and Pi says that he has started forgetting what his mother
looks like.
Pi and his family left India on a Japanese cargo ship called the Tsimtsum, departing on June 21st,
1977. Pi describes his mother’s sadness at leaving India, and how she tried to stock up Indian
cigarettes (even though she didn’t smoke), as she was so worried about entering a wholly
unfamiliar territory.
The author returns again. On one of his visits he meets Pi’s two children, Nikhil and Usha. Again
the author had no idea that Pi had children until he suddenly encounters them. Usha, who is four,
is holding an orange cat in her arms and laughing. The author declares that Pi’s story has ‘a happy
ending’. Pi’s orange cat is a clear reference to Richard Parker. Martel has shown Pi’s happy
childhood and happy adulthood, but now he will show the suffering that lies in between.
Pi begins the narrative with the Tsimtsum sinking. Everything is chaotic, and Pi is alone in a
lifeboat. He sees a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker swimming desperately and Pi encourages
him on, addressing the tiger aloud and lamenting the loss of his parents and Ravi. Pi throws
Richard Parker a lifebuoy and the tiger climbs aboard the lifeboat. Pi suddenly realizes the danger
of sharing a tiny lifeboat with an adult tiger, and he tries to push Richard Parker away, but too late.
Pi jumps overboard.
Martel abruptly changes the narrative’s tone from one of contemplation and coming-of-age to this
scene of total chaos. We finally see who Richard Parker is – a fully grown Bengal tiger. Martel
will explore many ideas on Pi’s lifeboat, but one of the strongest is the fierce will to survive found
in all living things. Richard Parker is the first example of this as he swims to the lifeboat.
Later on, when just Pi and the tiger are left, Pi muses on fear, which now totally overwhelms him.
His crippling terror overwhelms his reason and saps the energy from his body. The adult Pi
comments on how fear is the ‘only true opponent’ of life, and so we must constantly work to
overcome it. As a narrator, the adult Pi can muse on the fear that almost killed his younger self.
Richard Parker is also just trying to survive – fear is the most dangerous thing in the lifeboat. Pi is
cured of his hopelessness and terror by Richard Parker himself. The tiger seems sated with
rainwater and hyena, and he looks at Pi and makes a strange sound. Surprised, Pi recognizes this
sound as prusten, a very rare noise that tigers sometimes make to express friendliness and peaceful
intentions. At that moment Pi decides to tame Richard Parker. He knows that he cannot kill the
tiger, so he resolves to live peacefully with him.
Pi admits that part of him is glad that Richard Parker is still alive, as he is a companion and a
distraction from grief and insanity. Pi then remembers everything he has learned about taming wild
animals. He takes a whistle from one of the life jackets and shouts across the water about the
‘greatest show on earth’, standing and blowing the whistle to show his alpha status. The tigers
roars angrily at the sound but then he backs away and lies down in the bottom of the lifeboat.
Pi reads the survival manual that he found in the locker. It advises him about what kinds of fish
not to eat, to not drink urine, and that the horizon, when seen from near sea level, is only two and
a half miles away. After reading it Pi resolves to continue with Richard Parker’s training regimen,
to improve the raft, to build himself a shelter, and to stop hoping for rescue. He realizes that he is
totally alone, and he weeps.
Pi has become more animal-like in his diet and territorialism, but he also shows a very human
adaptability in transferring his religious practices to the lifeboat. The repetition of constantly
seeking food and water is a source of stress, but the repetition of religious ritual is a comfort to Pi.
He shows the same resilience in his faith as in his will to live.
On a day he estimates as his mother’s birthday, Pi sings ‘Happy Birthday’ for her out loud.
This is another small, sad way that Pi clings to his humanity and the outside world.
Pi describes the many different forms the sky and sea would take. He feels that he is ‘perpetually
at the center of a circle,’ as the shape of his setting never changes. His life divides into opposites,
as light is too blinding and darkness is claustrophobic, the day is too hot and the night is too cold.
Pi’s emotions also swing between extreme boredom and great terror. Pi describes his life as ‘a
game with few pieces’, where the elements are simple but the stakes are high. Martel now moves
from the sordid to the sublime. Pi’s life has become one of extremes also in his contradicting
animality and spirituality. One moment he is trying to eat tiger feces, and the next he is
contemplating the sublime. In an endgame of chess there are few pieces left, so every consecutive
move becomes more important to losing or winning. The simplicity of Pi’s life has become like a
religious mystic living in a desert.
Pi admits that his survival is hard to believe, but he explains how he maintained his
dominance over Richard Parker. He was the tiger’s main source of food and water, and
Richard Parker was used to this kind of treatment at the zoo. But the only proof of Pi’s story
is that he lived to tell it.
One day a huge storm comes and the waves turn into mountains. Pi is forced to leave the raft for
the lifeboat, and he unrolls the tarpaulin and gets under it, lying flat on the bench farthest
from Richard Parker. He gradually closes the tarpaulin over both himself and the tiger, as the life
boat rides the huge waves with steep inclines and declines. Waves crash onto the tarpaulin and
pummel Pi’s body. The storm lasts for a day and a night. The storm breaks down the boundaries
between Pi and Richard Parker when they are both forced to take refuge under the tarpaulin—the
mighty power of uncaring nature forces the living beings together. Once again Pi chooses to avoid
a more immediate danger over the lingering threat of the tiger.
Pi develops a method of slightly asphyxiating himself, which creates a pleasing sensation. He takes
a piece of cloth (which he calls his ‘dream rag’), wets it with seawater, and drapes it over his face
as he rests. He has strange thoughts and dreams in this state, and time seems to pass by more
swiftly.
…Insula… Apoi.
One day the lifeboat washes ashore on a Mexican beach, but Pi is so weak that he can
barely believe it or experience happiness. He guides the lifeboat through the breakers and then
carefully lets himself down into the shallow surf. Richard Parker leaps over his head and walks
slowly and clumsily down the beach. Pi is sure that the tiger will at least look back and
acknowledge him, but instead Richard Parker disappears into the jungle without a backward
glance. Pi’s salvation is anticlimactic, but fitting for the chaotic, meaningless movements of the
ocean and fate. Pi has reached land at last, but he still has one last failure to communicate –
Richard Parker leaves without saying goodbye. We realize how invested we are in Richard
Parker as a character because this slight seems so tragic and callous, though it is also a reminder
that the tiger is still a wild animal. (Though this scene might also be read as Pi’s animal will to
survive, as embodied by Richard Parker, is no longer necessary once he reaches land).
Pi crawls ashore and sprawls in the sand, feeling totally alone now that even Richard Parker has
left him forever. A few hours later some people find him and carry him away, speaking in a
language Pi doesn’t understand. Pi starts to weep, not out of joy but because Richard Parker left
him without saying goodbye.
Pi’s universe has consisted only of Richard Parker for so long that the tiger’s disappearance creates
a stronger emotion in him than the rescue he has longed for for months. Even back in the world of
humans, Pi is still unable to communicate with his rescuers.
Pi says that this ‘bungled goodbye’ with Richard Parker has pained him all his life, and he wishes
that he had at least thanked the tiger before the boat touched land. Pi says that things should
conclude properly, and as an aside he asks the author to tell his tale in exactly one hundred
chapters. Pi says that the one thing he hates about his nickname is that the number pi runs on
forever. Without a conclusion one can never let go of a painful memory.
If Richard Parker is actually the animalistic, violent side of Pi’s nature, then the tiger’s abrupt
disappearance shows how thoroughly Pi has cut off this side of his soul once he reaches
civilization. Pi wants conclusions, and good stories provide conclusions, but life does not always
do the same. Martel returns to the idea of symmetry and geometric harmony, as Pi’s nickname is
contrasted with his story, which the author has indeed told in 100 chapters.
Pi’s rescuers take him to their village and bathe and feed him, and the next day a police car takes
him to a hospital. He speaks vaguely of the time following this rescue, where he was treated kindly
by doctors and then sent to a foster home in Canada. From there he entered the University of
Toronto. Pi offers his thanks to all the people who helped him and ends his tale.
The tiger’s disappearance, though painful, shows that Richard Parker (if he is a part of Pi) only
had to exist on the lifeboat, where Pi would do anything to survive. Now that he is back among
civilization, Pi has a chance to become fully human again and achieve the ‘happy ending’ that the
author observed. Pi’s ‘conclusion’ comes about because of the disappearance of Richard Parker.
The author returns to describe the nature of the next section. It is a transcript of a conversation
between Pi and two officials from the Maritime Department of the Japanese Ministry of Transport.
These officials, whose names were Mr. Tomohiro Okamoto and Mr. Atsuro Chiba, were in
California on unrelated business when they were called to Mexico and instructed to interview the
lone survivor of the Tsimtsum, to find out more about why the ship sank. Martel steps abruptly out
of the sad story we have grown invested in, and reminds us of the ‘nonfiction’ framework of the
novel. In this short final section Martel will question the idea of ‘truth’ in storytelling and the
impossibility of properly communicating an unknowable reality.
Okamoto and Chiba tell Pi that his story is interesting, but they express their disbelief to each other
in Japanese. Pi asks for another cookie, and Chiba notes that Pi hasn’t been eating the cookies but
has been storing them under his bedsheet. Okamoto says to just humor him, and he tells Pi that
they will be back in a few minutes. Pi has reacted to his new ‘abundance’ of food by stocking up
in everything, as he is still in survival mode. The officials act like the religious agnostics whom Pi
dislikes, demanding ‘dry, yeastless factuality’ instead of Pi’s fascinating but improbable story.
The interviewers return and tell Pi that they don’t believe his story. As an example of its
impossibility, they claim that bananas don’t float. Pi challenges this and pulls two bananas from
under his bedsheet for them to test. Okamoto fills the sink and puts the bananas in, and they do
float. Okamoto responds to this by challenging the existence of the algae island.
Pi says that they don’t believe in the island just because they haven’t seen it, but Okamoto claims
that it is ‘botanically impossible’. Chiba interrupts that he has an uncle who is a botanist and bonsai
master. Pi says that bonsai trees, ‘three-hundred-year-old trees that are two feet tall that you can
carry in your arms’, also must be fictional because they too seem botanically impossible.
Okamoto moves on, challenging Pi about Richard Parker. He says that no one has spotted a tiger
in the area lately. Pi mentions the panther that escaped the Zurich Zoo. Okamoto says how unlikely
it would be that Pi could have survived so long with such an ‘incredibly dangerous wild animal’.
Pi responds that animals are just as afraid of humans as we are of them. He gives more examples
of wild animals living undetected in big cities, and says that the idea of finding a tiger in a jungle
is laughable. Pi then questions the interviewers – he asks them how they live if they demand
‘believability’ of everything. He asks if they believe in love or in God, as these things also seem
improbable.
Chiba becomes distracted by Pi’s responses and Okamoto berates him in Japanese, asking him to
help with the situation. The officials finally give up challenging Pi’s story and return to their real
directive, which is finding out why the Tsimtsum sank.

Pi is unwilling to give up discussing his story, however, so Okamoto asks him about the
blind Frenchman he met. Okamoto says that the cook aboard the Tsimtsum was also French. Pi
asks the interviewers to explain the meerkat bones in the lifeboat, but the officials say that the
bones are unidentifiable. They return to questions about the ship, and Pi reminds them that he lost
his whole family in the shipwreck.
The officials are embarrassed by this, and Pi offers them cookies. He then asks them if they liked
his story. The officials say that they did like it and that they will remember it for a long time, but
they want to know what really happened. Pi offers to tell them ‘another story’. The officials ask
him for facts, not a story, but Pi replies that life itself is always a story. He finally agrees to tell a
believable story, to give in to ‘dry, yeastless factuality’ and tell a story without exotic animals in
it.
This scene condenses many of the novel’s themes and is a kind of thesis statement for Martel. The
officials admit that the animal story is more beautiful and compelling, but they are still wedded to
‘factuality’. Pi states Martel’s idea that true reality is inherently impossible to communicate, so
any kind of ‘truth-telling’ is in fact a story of some kind. The officials, like Pi’s agnostics, just want
a story that they can pretend is totally practical and true.
Pi pauses for a while and then begins a new account of his experience. In this second story, the
four survivors on the lifeboat are Pi, his mother (who floated to safety on some bananas),
the French cook, and a Chinese sailor. Pi describes the cook as greedy and cruel, and says that he
immediately ate all the flies and the one rat on the boat. The sailor was young, exotic, and beautiful,
but he spoke only Chinese and had broken his leg jumping into the lifeboat. We are suddenly pulled
out of the world we had been sucked into and invested in – the lifeboat of animals – and made to
question the truth of Pi’s story. Of course the whole novel is fiction, but within that fiction we as
readers like to trust the story we are reading and temporarily accept it as reality, or at least as a
vehicle of some emotional or aesthetic truth. The sudden unreliability of that truth then creates a
very interesting effect, which Martel exploits.
Pi’s mother tended to the wounded sailor but his broken leg got worse, growing black and bloated.
The cook eventually convinced the others that they had to cut off the sailor’s leg to save his life.
They held down the sailor while the cook sawed off the leg. The sailor remained calm and quiet
throughout it all, and clung to life even after the ordeal.
The next day Pi went to throw the severed leg overboard, but the cook stopped him. He said the
leg was for bait, and that ‘that was the whole point’. At this Pi’s mother realized that the cook
tricked them into cutting off the sailor’s leg. The cook looked guilty but said that they needed food.
Pi’s mother screamed at the cook and then discovered that he had been stealing rations. Pi
admitted that he ate some of the food too when the cook offered it to him. Pi’s mother turned away
from him and Pi apologized, weeping. Two weeks had passed by that point.
After a while Pi and his mother grew more friendly with the cook, as he helped them to
survive. One day when they were all weak with hunger they tried to bring a turtle aboard and lost
it because of Pi. The cook hit Pi, and Pi’s mother hit the cook. She pushed Pi towards the raft and
he jumped overboard. The two adults started to fight, and the cook killed Pi’s mother with a
knife as Pi watched from the raft. The cook cut off her head and threw it to Pi. Orange Juice’s
death becomes all the more tragic in retrospect, and the human story is now far more horrible than
the animal version, which is interesting as the humans are acting not so differently from the
animals. Again Pi is a weak link on the lifeboat instead of the resourceful, adaptable ‘alpha’ he
was in the animal story.
The cook butchered Pi’s mother and ate some of her flesh. Pi stayed on the raft for a day and a
night, and neither he nor the cook spoke. Then Pi climbed aboard the lifeboat. The cook silently
gave him a turtle to eat, and then Pi fought with the cook and killed him with the knife. Pi says
that the cook seemed to give up, as he recognized that he had crossed a line, ‘even by his bestial
standards’.
Pi cut up the cook and ate his heart, liver, and pieces of his flesh. He says the heart was
delicious. Pi says that the cook was an evil man, but he met with evil in Pi himself. Of the rest
of his journey Pi only says ‘Solitude began. I turned to God. I survived’. There is a long silence,
and Pi asks the officials if this second story is better and more believable.
Okamoto and Chiba are horrified by this story, but they note the parallels between Pi’s two tales –
the zebra corresponds with the Chinese sailor, the hyena with the cook, Orange Juice with
Pi’s mother, and Richard Parker with Pi himself.
Before the officials leave Pi asks them which of his two stories they preferred. He reminds them
that neither story explains the sinking of the Tsimtsum, and neither really matters for the officials’
business. Okamoto and Chiba both agree that the animal story is the ‘better story’. Pi responds
with ‘And so it goes with God’, and then he starts to cry. The officials thank Pi and wish him well,
promising to look out for Richard Parker on their drive. Pi gives them some cookies and the
interview ends.
This final scene is the climax of the novel’s themes, as Pi fully draws the parallel between his
survival stories and his religious faith. Martel leaves it unclear which of Pi’s accounts is the factual
truth, but he comes down clearly on the side of storytelling as its own truth – the animal story is
moving, challenging, and memorable, while the human story inspires only horror, so whatever the
‘dry, yeastless factuality’ is, the animal story is ‘the better story’. And for Pi, a universe with God
in it is a better universe, no matter what the unknowable facts are.

Themes:
  Survival
 Religion and faith
 Story-telling

Symbols:

 The Algae Island

Pi’s time on the algae island is one of the strangest, most surreal sections of the book. Pi comes
across an island made entirely of algae and inhabited by thousands of docile meerkats. At first he
thinks the place is a mirage or hallucination, but when he can actually stand on it he can’t help
believing in the island’s existence. By day this island is a paradise, but Pi eventually learns that at
night the algae turns acidic and deadly, devouring fish that swim nearby. Pi discovers a tree on the
island with black and twisted ‘fruit’ that turn out to be human teeth. He then comes to the awful
realization that the island is carnivorous, and that it has eaten a human being before him.
The island acts as a religious symbol for Pi’s spiritual journey. In one sense it represents an easy,
shallow kind of faith – it seems stable at first and promises worldly delights of food and comfort,
but it has a treacherous underbelly. In another sense the island is a kind of ‘Garden of Eden’, a
place where Pi loses his innocence ( or whatever he had left after experiencing so much horror).
The island seems like an Edenic paradise at first, where the meerkats are tame and peaceful, but
upon discovering the ‘Forbidden Fruit’ of the teeth-tree, Pi gains knowledge of the evil the island
is capable of. He leaves the place of his own accord, both rejecting an easy, treacherous faith and
refusing to live in a spoiled paradise.

 The Tsimtsum

Tsimtsum is the name of the ship that sinks on its passage across the Pacific, drowning Pi’s family
and leaving Pi stranded on a lifeboat. The word ‘tsimtsum’ (or tzimtzum) describes an idea from
the Jewish Kabbalah teachings of Isaac Luria, a rabbi and mystic who is mentioned elsewhere
in Life of Pi. The concept of tzimtzum says that God withdrew or contracted his infinite light in
order to create the universe. This purposeful concealment left ‘empty space’ for the cosmos and
free will. The ship’s sinking can then be compared to God withdrawing, leaving Pi alone to become
an independent person with a strong faith. Pi is exiled from his loved ones and also experiences a
religious abandonment, as God allows him to undergo such suffering, but tzimtzum implies that
such experiences are necessary to grow in faith and independence.

A masterpiece consisting of plenty literary cinematography.

A blend of the most important, humanely beauties of the world: science, religion, morality,
acceptance, a variety of feelings.
In a way, Imho, Pi is a bit hypocritical, as he says that he respects those who choose to be atheists,
but dislikes people who linger in doubt and indifference. By choosing multiple religions, he
actually picks no one for good, having no order in life or making his mind up over a set of values
and rules. Ofc, God is not necessarily exclusive and can take the form of many beautiful things,
which they can all be different, but by not making a specific decision, he is making a specific
decision.