The “Life of Pi” by Yann Martel is a
wonderful novel about self-preservation, bravery, and the gifts that religion
can bring to you. It starts out in Pondicherry, India, with a young boy named
Piscine who is named after a great pool in France. He lives with his mother and
Father and older brother Ravi. His Father is the humble owner of the local zoo;
Pi goes into great detail about the nature of the animals throughout the novels
and explains the parallels between humans and beasts. Pi is an abnormal young
boy because he is born a Hindu, and also practices Christianity and Islam,
against his parents’ wishes. He has great spiritual calling which is very
admirable in a boy his age. This is during a time of governmental upheaval in
India, so Pi’s father decides to move his family to Canada, a foreign land to
Pi’s family. Pi’s father sells some of the animals but keeps the most expensive
ones. They are sailing a boat to leave India when Pi hears a noise when they
are sleeping, he goes out on the deck and sees that the boat is sinking and the
stairwell to his family is already filled with water. He sees a life boat that
has been already thrown out to see and jumps from the hull about 40 feet onto
the life boat. As he watches the ship sink, a zebra jumps from the deck, a
hyena and tiger swims up to the boat (the most menacing of the creatures) and a
mother orangutan named Orange Juice. Throughout the next few days Pi watches in
horror as the hyena eats the zebra alive, and decapitates his friend 0range Juice.
The hyena eventually gets killed by the tiger whose name is Richard Parker. Pi
knows he will be next because he is the only living creature on the boat so he
creates a space between them by using oars and life preservers to float in the
water. Over the next couple of days Richard Parker starts whining Prusten,
which is a benevolent sound which means he wants to make friends with Pi. Pi
then asserts dominance by making loud noises and peeing on his side of the life
boat. Pi then starts to fish; he was born and raised a vegetarian but has to
kill a fish which he is hesitant the first time. It’s an obvious change over
the novel that Pi starts to evolve from a well-mannered young man to mimicking
the beast he shares his time with. A series of storms hit the lifeboat and Pi shield
himself and the tiger with a tarp, which gives them a sense of friendship
against the larger elements. Pi starts to go blind after a while and he hears a
French man’s voice talking to him about French food and he assumes that it is
Richard Parker talking to him. It is actually another survivor who jumps onto
the boat and tries to cannibalize Pi, and Richard Parker kills the man. They
end up floating into a Mexican beach and Richard runs into the jungle never to
be seen from again. I thought that this was a precious book, full of the harsh
reality of the wild. Yann Martel switched from the narration of Pi’s current
friend which he meets in Canada to Pi’s own narration on the boat. It was
wonderful because the boy’s religious beliefs were so strong in the beginning,
and wavered when he acted like a beast but in the end he still found god in
everything. Even with the loss of his family and the horrible things he
endured, he was still as reverent as he was at the beginning of his journey. It
is the age old hero’s journey, the call, the sacrifice, the endurance, and in
the end the atonement.
