Life of Pi essays

The story’s setting is in a small café in Pondicherry, India, where Martel assumes the role of an anonymous author and listens to a fantastic story told by an elderly man named Francis Adirubasamy. This peculiar story is that of his friend’s son, Pi Patel. Martel then shifts straight to the story, using Pi’s voice instead of his own, to create a more natural account.

Starting off, Pi describes his early life, when his father was the owner of a Pondicherry zoo, and it was then that Pi was taught about animals, particularly a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. Pi’s family was Hindu, but he also found solace in Christianity and Islam. Bothered by India’s political situation, his family decided to set sail on a cargo ship to Canada, with cages of animals.

However, tragedy soon followed, as their ship began to sink. Pi climbed onto a lifeboat and tried to save Richard Parker, but upon realizing he was saving a tiger, jumped overboard. He then narrates back to when the whole ship was deep in chaos, he was thrown into a lifeboat, being the sole survivor along with a zebra, an orangutan, and a hyena. Shortly after he realized his whole family was gone, to make things worse, the hyena ended up killing the other two animals. To Pi’s surprise, Richard Parker revealed himself from the bottom of the lifeboat and ended the hyena. Drifting across the endless sea, days went by slowly, and the two coexisted barely. During the encounter with a blind castaway, said the man tried to attack Pi for cannibalism purposes, but Richard Parker killed him, saving Pi’s life. Afterward, the boat drifted onto a strange island. The two slept on the boat by night and explored the island by day. Eventually, Pi found a human tooth inside a fruit and discovered that they were on a man-eating island. The two headed back to the sea, and eventually washed ashore on a Mexican beach. Richard Parker ran off, while Pi was rushed to the hospital by villagers.

Later, Pi was interviewed in order to shed light on whatever happened to the unfortunate ship. He told them the story above, but their overwhelming skepticism forced him to tell a different version, replacing all the animals with humans. Since the two stories matched, they took in the second, more believable one as their report. Finally, they gave Pi praise for having managed to survive so long with a tiger beside him.