Yann Martel's Life of Pi

Piscine Patel or “Pi” was the son of a zoo-owner who grew up near the zoo. Though he did not have first-hand experience as an animal caretaker during his childhood years, he knew enough to understand zoo business and animal behavior.

Pi was also a God-loving kid. His faith was, for his family, unbelievable to the point of being unacceptable. Pi embraced and actively practiced 3 religions: Hindu, Islam, and Christianity. He believed in the concept of one God.

At 16, he found himself on board a Japanese cargo ship to Canada with his family and the zoo animals. The ship sank and Pi tried to survive aboard a lifeboat with a wounded zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger.

Pi extracted all his knowledge about animals and said thousands of prayers just to survive. But will he make it to land?

I found Life of Pi an amazing story of living, surviving, and having great faith. The story is very entertaining, funny, and thought-provoking. It touched some issues which are, up to now, considered debatable.

The book discussed religion, and Pi practicing 3 way different religions is something which I found absurd. I grew up a Catholic and one of its common teachings is “one can’t serve 2 masters; one could be more loved than the other.” However, I do believe in the existence of a universal God – the God who created everything; the God worshiped by all believers of various faiths. In the book, it seemed as if Pi gave equal treatment to his 3 beliefs – something that is very difficult to achieve and master.

The book talked about zoo life – how it is similar with life in the wild. The debate for and against caging animals, in my opinion, would not be resolved. I enjoyed reading the author’s description about zoo life. I never saw animal territoriality could be viewed that way. While zoo life could be viewed as a minute and contained jungle, the issue about instincts in domestication still is a big question.

I tried putting myself in Pi’s position as I went through the story. Surviving more than 300 days of being a castaway is close to impossible. Having a tiger as a companion is simply unimaginable. Yet, author Yann Martel played with my imagination well, and as I flipped the pages, I also tried to picture everything as described. I found it hard to stop flipping the pages.

Life of Pi has an outrageous scenario – Pi’s faith, the tragic sinking of the ship, living with a tiger on a lifeboat, eating uncooked fishes and turtles, Pi bumping into a blind castaway when he turned blind, finding a patch of acidic land – yet the storytelling is disarmingly brilliant.

5 stars for this Man Booker Prize winner.