Annalisa's Reviews > Life of Pi

I read this book two years ago, but when we discussed it this month for book club, I remembered how much I liked it. A good discussion always ups my appreciation of a novel as does an ending that makes me requestion my givens in the story. I find myself reading contradictory interpretations and agreeing with both sides. That's the beauty of symbolism: as long as you back up your cause, it's plausible.

Initially it took me several weeks to get into the book. The beginning reads more like a textbook with inserted clips of the main character's future self. While the knowledge I gained about zoology and theology was interesting, it wasn't intriguing enough to keep me awake for more than a few pages at a time and often I found the tidbits a confusing distraction. But with distance I enjoyed the backdrop information it offered. If you're struggling through the initial background, jump ahead to the second section. Yeah it's important, but it's not vital. And maybe once you've read the story you'll want to come back and appreciate his analysis.

I highly enjoyed this strange journey at sea and found it almost believable--until the castaways encounter the island at which point I wondered how much of his sanity wavered. Being shipwreck is one of a plethora of phobias I have. Throw on top my even stronger fear of tigers and this was a story straight out of a nightmare, one that kept me intrigued for a resolution. How could a boy keep the upper hand shipwrecked with a tiger? I had a picture in my head of Pi clinging to the side of the boat to avoid both the salty water infested with sharks and a foodless boat housing a hungry carnivore.

I found myself stuck in the unusual place where as a reader I find a story plausible with full knowledge that had this story been presented in real life I would have doubted its authenticity. I wanted to believe the story and all its fantasy. The end initially annoyed me, but if you look at the rich metaphors in the story, it becomes delectable for a story analyst like me. There is nothing I enjoy more than tearing apart a story and pulling out the intentions and symbols buried inside. Instead of just a fantastical story, you find a fable with a moral.

Spoilers here.
(view spoiler)[I want to reread the story now and analyze Richard Parker as Pi's alter ego, seeing that alpha and omega struggle as an internal one. Even the name Richard Parker is a hint at cannibalistic roots since it is the true account of a sailor who died at the hands of his cannibalistic crew members. I keep going back to that moment when Pi calls for Richard Parker to join him on the ship and then is appalled at what he has done. Once Richard Parker has joined his voyage, there is no banishing him. If they are one and the same, they beautifully represent that internal battle between the civilized vegetarian and the animalistic instinct to survive, showing the compartmentalization he needed to prevent madness.

You would not expect the small boy to conquer the beast (whether animal or himself), and yet he keeps the upper hand for an unimaginable 227 days. Had the cannibal overrun his pysche, he would have lost his battle and landed a madman. When the duo landed on the beaches of Mexico, Richard Parker took off, never to be noted by civilians again, but alive and surviving. Thus the horror of the incident will always live in Pi's memory but he chooses to repress it as it has no part in civilization.

I enjoyed the portrayal of the characters on the boat as animals. I could envision the quiet maternal sadness the orangutan gave his mother. Since the crew would be blamed for the demise of the ship, the wounded sailor as the zebra lying as prey to a demented and angry foreign chef who is just as crazy as we view the viscous hyena. The symbols were perfect and I think a second read would bring out their traits even stronger.

Some of the richest symbolism comes from the cannibal island and sailor. I think Pi's childlike mind could not deal with the cannibalism of a loved one and lets this theme leak into other story elements. The blind sailor is a second portrayal of the French chef, a character too big and conflicting to fit into one projection. At first he is the mean animal thinking only of his own survival, but as the journey progresses, Pi is conflicted with his friendship for the man. A bond is bound to happen between the only two survivors in limited space and Pi could not come to terms with his human feelings for the barbaric man. So he invents a second character, one whom he can make human, worthy of connection, but in the end is still untrustworthy and Pi must kill or be killed.

So what of the strange island? In his hallucinating state, it serves as a mirage where life is not as sweet as he suspected. The island parallels his own problems at sea with rich religious symbolism of the Garden of Eden. No matter what one's ethical code, the will to survive trumps one's moral haven. These vegetarians (person and island) don't want to harm, but are killing to survive. Something happened out at sea that his waning mind (and blindness both real and spiritual) could not substantiate and like all else he twisted it to a socially accepted tale. Since the island is discovered just after the sailor dies, maybe finding one of the chef's tooth on board turned him. Or maybe Pi happened upon a pile of garbage infested with rats and this boy, starving and demented enough to have tried his own waste, sees it as a heaven. His civilized nature knew he should scorn the filth but his barbaric needs were grateful for the nasty feast. The bones in the boat, proof that his experience was real, could have been rat bones.

Whatever the cause of his epiphany, he had to enter the depths of his own personal hell to realize this was not a heaven, or Garden of Eden, and a return to civilized behavior was vital for his own survival. Richard Parker was winning as he felt completely detached from civilization. He almost wished to stay and die at sea, to live at a level of base survival, instead of have to emotionally deal with his ordeal to progress. But his innate need to survive wins out as he realizes that as the lone castaway if he does not fight his mind's descent into madness, the sea will eat him mentally and literally.

One of my favorite interpretations of the island is a religious fork in the road. Whatever truly happened, the island cements your belief in the first or second account. Either you see the meerkat remains as proof that the beauty of the first story is true or the island is the point at which you start questioning the credence of his tale and believe he threw in this unbelievable turn of events to ready you to accept his alternate ending. As readers we are given the choice between two stories. We can pick the miraculous version of the first story, an icon of those who believe in God, or we can pick the grim atheist view of the pessimistic--although reasonable--second story, as do those who believe science disproofs God. In section one, Pi references religion to not only show where his beliefs give him strength but to give backbone to the religious allegory. He shows disdain for the indecisive agnostic (see quotes below) and bids you chose your path. The island serves to question your own religious devotion, but you have to pick what you think it represents, which story you care to believe.

Pi states this is a story that makes you believe in God. As a believer in God and the second story, I don't think there is merely an atheist interpretation to the second. Either you accept God with a leap of faith despite dissenting controversy or you take the bleak realism and see God saved him from death at sea and even more protected him from mental anguish by healing his soul from the horrors he experienced. Both stories can justify the belief in God or justify your belief in nothing. Just as I don't believe people who buy the second story are atheists, I do not believe people who chose the first story follow blindly or idiotically. It's a matter of interpretation. The story isn't going to make you believe or disbelieve God anymore than you now do.

At first I was annoyed he recanted his story because I wanted to believe his original story. It is imaginative and well written and I didn't like being called out for believing fantasy from the fantasy itself. But how could I not love an allegorical explanation to a literal story? So now I love that he presents both stories: the imaginative far-fetched one and the plausible horrific one and leaves you the reader to decide which one you want to buy into and let you ponder what it says about you. That is the point of the story. (hide spoiler)]

Some of my favorite quotes from the book:
"Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can."
"It was my luck to have a few good teachers in my youth, men and women who came into my dark head and lit a match."
"Doubt is useful for a while...But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation."
"All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways."
"Memory is an ocean and he bobs on the surface."
"First wonder goes deepest; wonder after that fits in the impression made by the first."
"The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart."