Gurukul International Multidisciplinary
Research Journal (GIMRJ)
with
International Impact Factor 2.254
ISSN No. 2394-8426
Mar – 2016
Issue – I, Volume – VI
Online Journal
Yann Martel’s “Life of Pi”: A Review
Prof. P. R. Khade,
Dept. of English
S. M. Dr.Bapuji Salunkhe
Mahavidyalaya, Miraj
Yann Martel, (June 25,1963-)was born in Salamanca-Spain. He spent his childhood living
in a variety of different countries including Costa Rica, France, India, Iran, Mexico, Turkey,
Canada, and The United States. His parents were of French-Canadian descent and their family
eventually settled in Montreal. Life of Pi was published in 2001 and his novel won the Man
Booker Prize 2002. Life of Pi, is an utterly enchanting story about 16 year old Indian boy adrift in
a lifeboat with his good friend, a 450-pound Bengal tiger, and some other zoo animals.
Pi had spent an exotic childhood in the Zoo of Pondicherry. Being a zoo keeper's son, he
knew more about wild animals. His knowledge of wild animals, their behaviour and natural
instincts became his only defense against an adult Royal Bengal Tiger, when both were
marooned in a lifeboat for seven months. Pi learns how to survive on the Pacific Ocean without
any food or fresh water and he even knew to keep the tiger alive.
Pi’s family fled from India- where he ran a zoo, heading for Canada, and bringing
various animals along with them on a Japanese cargo ship. It’s on this voyage that their ‘happy
ark’ mysteriously sunk. Luckily, Pi possesses a non-religious kind of understanding and faith that
allowed him to survive on the lifeboat with four animals not known for their compatibility. Pi’s
father taught him that the most dangerous creature in the zoo is “the animal as seen through
human eyes … It is an animal that is-cute,’ ‘friendly,’ ‘loving,’ ‘devoted,’ ‘merry,’
‘understanding.’” Yet, while Pi knew about the ferocity of the beasts, he was also familiar with
the quirks of the animal kingdom that often baffled humans peering from outside.
Pi’s ‘lost-at-sea’ story never drags. The slow journey was spiked with fascinating
survival scenes, as when Pi and Richard Parker met a school of flying fish: “They came like a
swarm of locusts. It was not only their number, there was also something insect-like about the
clicking, whirring sound of their wings.”
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Gurukul International Multidisciplinary
Research Journal (GIMRJ)
with
International Impact Factor 2.254
ISSN No. 2394-8426
Mar – 2016
Issue – I, Volume – VI
Online Journal
Pi’s story became extraordinary when he finally made to the shore. He offered a
comparatively boring version of his tale to the two researchers. He acknowledged that humans
don’t have- a taste for the miracle. This narrated version made Pi’s tale true. The story moved
round man -animal relationship. In the midst of the Pacific Ocean, deprived of food, water and
shelter, man is reduced to savage- sans society. Pi learnt to catch fish, birds, turtles and, killed to
eat them raw. He even described the taste of urine and feces for nourishment. The tiger became
his only companion. He slowly lost fear for the tiger. He mastered the tiger and kept both of them
alive for seven months at the lonely sea.' I love you, Richard Parker...If I didn't have you now,... I
would die of hopelessness...I'll get you to land, I promise.' And true to his promise, Pi was unable
to leave his companion to die on a carnivorous algae island and took him along, at risk, as he sets
out to find hospitable land.
Major Themes in “Life of Pi”:
1. Belief in God:
Belief in God is one of the major themes in Life of Pi. Throughout the novel, Pi makes his
belief in the love of God. It is clearly a love profound enough that he can transcend the classical
divisions of religion, and worship as a Hindu, Muslim, and Christian. Pi’s vision of an atheist on
his death bed makes it clear that he assumes the atheist’s form of belief in God, without realizing
the end. Pi explains, in his Indian hometown, Pondicherry “Hindus, in their capacity for love, are
indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and
Christians, in their devotion to God are hat-wearing Muslims.” When he observes how Muslims
pray, he says, “Why, Islam is nothing but an easy sort of exercise … Hot-weather yoga for
Bedouins.”
2. The Primacy of Survival:
The primacy of survival is another theme in the heart of Life of Pi. This theme is clear
throughout his ordeal—he must eat meat, he must live. Survival triumphs morality, even for a
religious. character like Pi., The theme is highlighted even more vividly, when Pi tells the second
version of his story to the Japanese. As he paralleled his survival instincts in the second story to
Richard Parker in the first—it is he, when he survives, by stealing food, and killing the French.
If the first version of the story is seen as a fictionalized version of the second, the very fact that
he divides himself from his brutal survival instinct.
3. Science and Religion:
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Gurukul International Multidisciplinary
Research Journal (GIMRJ)
with
International Impact Factor 2.254
ISSN No. 2394-8426
Mar – 2016
Issue – I, Volume – VI
Online Journal
The theme of science and religion as not opposed but in concert with each other is present
primarily in the framing of the narrative. It is exemplified in Pi’s dual major at the University of
Toronto of Religion and Zoology, which he admits he sometimes gets mixed up, seeing the sloth
that he studied as a reminder of God’s miracles. Similarly, Pi’s favorite teacher, Mr. Kumar, sees
the zoo as the temple of atheism. The theme of the connection between science and religion is
related to Pi’s respect for atheists.
4. Loss of Innocence:
The theme of loss of innocence in Life of Pi is closely related to the theme of the primacy
of survival. Its significance is reflected in the geographic structure of the book—in Part 1, Pi is in
Pondicherry, and there he is innocent. In Part 2, Pi is in the Pacific Ocean, and it is there that he
loses his innocence. That Part 2 begins, not chronologically with the Tsimtsum sinking, but with
Pi inviting Richard Parker onto the lifeboat, also reflects this, for it represents Pi reaching out for
what Richard Parker symbolizes—his own survival instinct. And it is this survival instinct that is
at the heart of Pi’s loss of innocence. Throughout Part 2 there are other representative moments
of a loss of innocence, besides the symbolic one of bringing Richard Parker onto the lifeboat. The
most important of these is the death of the Frenchman, which Pi describes as killing a part of him
which has never come back to life. That part can certainly be read as his innocence.
Yann Martel uses a lucid and vibrant language to tell his gripping tale. Short sentences
and simple words convey the immediacy of the situation. Martel's language plays along- there is
no poetic descriptions on the beauty of the sea, no charming friendship described between man
and tiger. The language is stripped down to state just fact, as per Pi's reality: 'I burst into hot
tears. I buried my face in my crossed arms and sobbed. My situation was patiently hopeless. 'The
act of story-telling and narration is a significant throughout Life of Pi.
KEY WORDS: Zoo, Sea, Animal psychology, Survival, Religion, Food, God
References: 1.Martel Yann, Life of Pi, Knopf Canada, September 2001
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