Life of Pi

Life of Pi by Yann Martel is about Pi Patel. Part 1 is about Pi’s high school and college experiences, and interests such as zoology; he is also very religious and his faith is always close with him. Pi's parents decide to leave India for Canada. They sell most of the animals and pack up their belongings. They board a Japanese cargo ship, along with the animals they will sell in North America. In Part 2, Pi’s ship sunk. He has to try to survive with a lack of food and water. On board with him, he soon discovers, is a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, who Pi is scared of at first. He learns that he had nothing to worry about. The book exhibits the power of storytelling and also the power of believing in yourself.

            In the end of the story, Pi tells his survival story to a couple of Japanese men. The first story he tells is a tale filled with tigers and orangutans and hyenas and zebras. The men don’t believe Pi’s story. Pi gets upset by their disbelief; “Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?” (297). Later, Pi tells them a story without any animals. The story is almost exactly the same, just with the absence of wild animals. The Japanese men notice that the animals all represent an actual human; the Bengal tiger is Pi, the orangutan is Pi’s mother, the zebra is the Taiwanese sailor, and the hyena is the cook. Therefore, Richard Parker was not on the boat with him keeping him company. Before he leaves, Pi asks the two men which story they preferred, the one with our without animals. They said they liked the one with animals best. This shows that, to Pi, it’s not the facts that make a story, but the truths they hold and the emotions behind the words.

            Since Pi had to survive all by himself, without even a tiger by his side, it shows how strong the will to survive is. Pi survived against overwhelming odds. Not only did he survive, but also he managed to keep himself alive for 227 days. During his days at sea, Pi breaks his lifelong vegetarianism. Not only that, but he performed cannibalistic acts. This brings up the question of, do your ethics change in life-or-death situations? In our book club, some members said they would eat another human to survive. I said I wouldn’t, not only because it would be disgusting, but because I cant think of a situation in which eating another human is better than dying. Also, there would probably be another source of food for me.

            Life of  Pi was a story of hardship, loss, religion, and overall survival. It shows that anyone, no matter how great the odds, can survive impossible circumstances as long as the will to live is stronger than the fear of death.