Survival, hardships, and religious themes all intertwine in this fantasy about an Indian boy who, on his way to Canada, ends up lost at sea.
With him are just four animals: a tiger, an orangutan, a zebra and a hyena. These animals are all from the zoo the boy’s father owned in India and the family intends to sell them once they reach Canada. Obviously that doesn’t happen.
For nearly a year the boy, Pi, floats on the water with his animals. When I first picked up this book I thought it would be much different than it was; I thought it would be more of an adventure story with Pi and the animals. And while it has nothing to do with that, the way it is written makes an almost dry theme appear interesting.
In the first part Pi, raised a Hindu, discovers Christianity and Islam and practices all three of them until his parents and the three Priests demand he choose one. It makes you wonder what is so bad about a person wanting to practice more than one religion.
Growing up in a zoo is what fuels Pi’s love for animals and zoology later on in his life when he attends college. We know he is very bright when he enters college at the age of sixteen and interestingly enough, his majors are zoology and theology.
Among all of the animals on the lifeboat the only one who survives is the tiger, named Richard Parker. Throughout the book you occasionally question Richard Parker’s authenticity. Almost godly, he hides for a portion of the book and like God he pops out when you least expect him to. At one point, Pi comes to an island that is inhabited by a group of meerkats and, in the midst of the scene’s beauty, Richard Parker comes in and kills every single one of them and it makes you remember his true nature.
When Richard Parker first gets on the boat, Pi is terrified of him after an experience he had as a child. To scare his children out of ever going into the cages of the tiger, Pi’s father ordered the zoo’s largest tiger not to be fed for a few days, had him locked up in his small indoor enclosure and brought the children.
The large ferocious hungry tiger roaring combined with the dark room and small space makes for a terrifying experience that evidently left its mark on Pi even ten years after it occurred. After the boat lands in Mexico, Richard Parker runs off into the jungle and the officials who find Pi don’t even seem to notice him or send anyone after him and that is when you really wonder if he was ever there.
The Life of Pi is what I call an “iceberg” novel; your eyes only see a small part of it, but most is deep within. To know the whole story is to be able to think about it and separate what is real and what are mere hallucinations. The delicate joining of these two forces is what drives the reader to keep going and discover a new world alongside the infamous Pi.
The Life of Pi is a novel written by Yann Martel and was published in September 2001 by Knopf Canada. A film version of the novel opened in theaters on Nov. 21, 2012. For more information please visit www.lifeofpi.co.uk.