Life of Pi: A Short Review

Spoilers ahead!

Introduction

It is possible to summarize the main story of Life of Pi (2001) as “A boy, a tiger, a boat in the middle of the Pacific” (also shown on the cover and in the movie). However, it would be injustice to reduce the novel to just this visual. The novel in its core is philosophical as well as traumatic, with Martel’s genius metafictional storytelling that frequently blurs the line between fact and fiction.

Blurring of fact and fiction in Life of Pi

The overlap between fact and fiction begins with the prologue written in the form of an Author’s Note (written in italics). Here we meet the Author who is struggling in his career and is writing a novel on Portugal (which Martel eventually did) in Pondicherry, India. He meets Francis Adirubasamy, who tells about Piscine “Pi” Patel and claims that Pi’s story will make him believe in God.

Pi’s two stories

Next, we hear from Pi about his growing up in India with interludes from the Author (written in italics). We hear about Pi’s interest in zoology and theology, his simultaneous adoption of Hindu, Catholic, and Islamic faiths and religious practices, and the most harrowing of all, his 227-day ordeal in the Pacific after the sinking of the Japanese cargo ship, the Tsimsum. He tells the story of how he was stranded in a lifeboat with a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and the tiger, Richard Parker.

Towards the end of his story, Pi says, “…could you tell my jumbled story in exactly one hundred chapters, not one more, not one less?” Leaving out the prologue, the Author does exactly that, sometimes cleverly using one-liners in some chapters and even two words in Chapter 97: “The story.”

The last five chapters are his conversation with the officers of the Japanese Ministry of Transport. Here, the officers make Pi tell another story without the animals because it is too incredible for the authorities. Pi then tells another story with the savage cook, the helpless sailor, his kindly mother, and himself (timid at first and gradually finding evil within him). The officers compare the cook with the hyena from the first story, the sailor with the zebra, the mother with the orangutan, and Pi with the tiger.

What I felt

The novel left me with many questions as it ended. I doubted if it fulfilled the promise that it would make one believe in God. I don’t know if it even changed my understanding of God. While Pi’s struggle in the Pacific feels traumatic and extraordinarily human, it did not change me. I felt that although Pi’s experience helped him shape his understanding of God, it also felt detached and dissociated.

Talking about detachment and dissociation, we can understand Pi’s two stories with trauma theory which Gabor Maté has described in detail in “The Myth of Normal.” Maté notes that “the mind can do some amazing things” to protect a person from pain, such as “leaving the body” or splitting the mind. By projecting himself as the tiger, Pi could allow his “animal” survival instincts to take over, while his “human” self remained a “harmless vegetarian boy, bookish and religious.” This allows him to survive his own “savagery” without his spirit breaking entirely. Thus, the tiger becomes a protective mask.

Conclusion

The two stories of Pi differ in details, but the synopsis remains the same: the ship sinks, Pi loses everything, and he suffers. When he asks the Japanese officers which story is better, they choose the imaginative and fantastic story with animals instead of the “dry, yeastless” story of human savagery. Pi finds peace, and so the story “goes with God.” In summary, life of Pi is about which story he chooses to believe no matter how irrational it is.