Life of pi : The book review

The first section is an adult Pi Patel’s rumination over his childhood. The main character, Piscine Patel (aka "Pi") talks about his life living as the son of a zookeeper, and speaks at length about animal behaviour, while also speaking about his religion - Pi practices Hinduism, Christianity and Islam, having seen merits in all three religions. He says "I just want to love God." While on a ship when his family leaves politically oppressed Puducherry for Canada, the Japanese ship Tsimtsum mysteriously sinks into the ocean (most likely due to an engine malfunction).

Everyone, including Pi's family, is lost at sea and Pi is the only survivor of the fatal accident. He manages to survive due to being tossed into the lifeboat before the ship went under, and is joined by a zebra who jumps into the boat and breaks its leg due to the impact. Pi then mistakenly helps a dangerous 450-pound Bengali tiger by the name of Richard Parker, only to realize his mistake after the tiger is on board. There are other animals on the boat with Pi, including a hyena, orangutan, various insects and other pestilence. At first Pi believes that Richard Parker the tiger has abandoned the boat, and focuses on surviving the hyena. It is not long before the hyena begins to feed on the zebra. After the zebra's death, the hyena kills the orangutan, prompting Pi to approach it, lest he be next. It is then that he notices that Richard Parker has been resting under a tarpaulin and has been aboard the lifeboat the entire time.
The tiger kills and eats the hyena, but does not immediately attack Pi. The young man manages to construct a raft using supplies aboard the boat, and avoids direct confrontation with Richard Parker by keeping out of the tiger's territory on the deck of the boat. He fishes and feeds both Richard Parker and himself and tries to keep both of them alive. Later as they are close to death, the duo wash ashore upon a strange island formed of a tightly-knit edible algae. The island is populated by meerkats and contains pools of fresh water, but at night the algae that forms the island becomes dangerously acidic. After some time, Pi finds a strange tree on the island, and upon examining the tree's unusual "fruit", finds human teeth. He deduces that the 'island' is actually a massive plantlike organism that has consumed a human previously. Pi and Richard Parker soon leave. They later make it to Mexico, whereupon the tiger leaves Pi feeling at a loss for losing his one companion. By the time he has made it to the hospital, he has been at sea for 227 days.

During his stay in the hospital, Pi is visited by two Japanese officials, Okamoto and Chiba, who work for the Japanese government, and he proves to be most frustrating for them. They tape record their conversation with him in order to find out and form an official report on how the ship sank. He stubbornly tells them his story of animals and spending 7 months at sea with a ferocious tiger, but the skeptical men cannot believe his tale. Pi asks the two men if they disliked his story. Okamoto replies that they enjoyed it, but that they need to know what really happened. Pi says he will tell another story. In this story, the four occupants of the lifeboat are Pi, his mother, the cook (an ill-tempered, greedy French man), and a sailor (a beautiful young Chinese boy). The sailor had broken his leg jumping into the lifeboat, and the cook cuts the leg off and tries to use it for bait. The sailor dies and the cook butchers and eats him. Pi and his mother, both horrified, try to stop him. The cook kills Pi’s mother and throws her head in Pi’s direction. Soon after, Pi fights the cook and kills him. He eats his heart and liver and pieces of his flesh. Then, as Pi says to Okamoto and Chiba, “Solitude began. I turned to God. I survived.” The parallels between that story and his story involving the tiger are noted by the two horrified Japanese men. They ask more about the ship and how it sank, but Pi cannot tell them anything useful. Pi asks them which story they preferred: the one with animals or the one without. Both Chiba and Okamoto agree that the one with animals is “the better story.” In his report, which years later he sends to Martel, Okamoto writes that Pi’s story of survival at sea with an adult Bengal tiger is astonishing and unique.

( internet sources)