BOOK

Life of Pi (2001)

by Yann Martel

I love this book and it's one my favourites, that's it now here I'm not going to review it but analyze it, so if you haven't read the book or watched the movie atleast ...

!------------------------------------------- SPOILER ALERT --------------------------------------------!

The ending is so ambiguous - there are two stories and it depends entirely upon you of what you want to believe. On surface the book looks like it's not for atheists - that it's a highly religious but it explores 'What place does the belief in God have in modern world?' and this question means a lot to me since I'm agnostic.

Now, I say that the second story was much deeper and meaningful!! Weird! right? So let's recap there - there the animals are the humans - the Orangutan represents Pi's Mother, the Hyena is the Cook, the Zebra is the injured Chinese Sailor and Richard Parker, the Tiger is Pi himself not only that, the animals also personifies different emotional states that arouse during Pi's odyssey - for instance the Hyena represents selfishness, cruelty, violence; the Zebra for fear and pain; the Orangutan for nurturing love; Richard Parker for the insidious evil in the hearts of men also the Meerkats in the island stand for an eternal-awe towards nature and serenity.

Here, Richard Parker is the inner hatred that Pi developed towards the cook when he killed his mother and that rage killed the cook. Now the thing with hatred is its keep you going however the odds, it gives one purpose to survive but it stays with one even after redemption as one is addicted to it and is in it's constant need that one feels secured with hatred. For e.g. Most of the POWs from WWII who've survived suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder when they return back to their normal lives and have continuous seizures of the episodes of violence that they were subjected to willingly or unwillingly. Thus Pi in his boat attempts to control his rage (i.e. Richard Parker) inorder to use that he succeeds to tame his anger (here 'tame' has a much more meaning as in the book 'Little Prince') and develops a friendly relationship with his own vice.

The Island in the first story seems like a magical, heavenly place that is floating in the sea - is infact a metaphor for his own boat that Pi is used to hunting fishes and is away from land that he develops a philia towards the condition in which he is and is a stage in which he decides to remain there forever - for as we come across the Island, Pi comes to know that it is flourishing and nourishing in the day whilst carnivorous and haunting at night (notice how the swamps and puddles of the island turns poison at night so as to deposit dead big fishes that turns out breakfast for Meerkats) so that Pi realizes that all the comfort in it was temporary here - there are consequences for life and thus he moves on.

At the end, Pi lets go of Richard Parker (i.e. his Hatred) on the land but though he feels deep sorrow for it - as that vice helped him to survive and it's extremely difficult to loose one's self - one's characteristics within.

Alas, as the author meets Pi we see that he doesn't seem like a person who had seen his mother getting killed or the one that is subjected to cannibalism or with the killing - that he'd distorted his reality that he believes that things happened differently with animals and is also making others to believe the same - only because he had a faith in God so this book has to say that the belief in God can prevent one of being consumed by the evil.

Now, the first version of the story almost feels like a biblical tale of survival especially the part of the island but now we know it represents something altogether different like the testament itself and other religious texts - like a believe it or not.

The name 'Pi' itself represents an irrational quantity and like that the question of faith itself will keep on pondering endlessly.