CHAPTER 30 summary
The author meets Pi’s wife. He describes her as Canadian, second generation Indian, with typical
Indian features. She is a pharmacist. The author has noticed the religious items in Pi’s house all along,
but now sees that there is evidence of married life as well. He suspects it might be Pi’s wife that
cooks the torturously spicy food. But then, smiling, Pi says that he has made special chutney for the
author, confirming that Pi is the cook.
Notes
Again the author interjects reality to give the reader insight into Pi’s personality and also to solidify
his credibility. These author-narrated chapters convey that the conversations with Pi are real events,
not just storytelling.
CHAPTER 31 summary
Pi arranges to meet Mr. Kumar the Sufi at the zoo, but he is afraid he will not recognize him because
Mr. Kumar is physically indistinct. He rubs his eyes as an excuse for not seeing Mr. Kumar approach.
When he hears Mr. Kumar’s voice he greets the Sufi with the traditional Muslim phrase, “Salaam
alaykum.” As they leisurely walk through the zoo, Mr. Kumar marvels at every creature, but especially
the zebras. Just then, the other Mr. Kumar approaches. Pi gives pieces of carrot to each Mr. Kumar to
feed to the zebras. The three enjoy the experience. Mr. Kumar remarks, “ Equus burchelli boehmi.” The
other Mr. Kumar remarks, “Allahu akbar.” Pi simply says, “It’s very pretty.”
Notes
Just as Mr. Kumar the biology teacher’s physical geometry corresponds to his scientism, Mr. Kumar
the Sufi’s lack of physical distinction matches his spirituality. In the chapter, Pi does not have to
distinguish Mr. Kumar from Mr. Kumar because their words and actions differentiate them. The biology
teacher feeds the zebra with a sense of the function of the carrot. The Sufi feeds the zebra with a
sense of wonder. The biology teacher’s remark is the scientific name of a Grant’s zebra, separating it
from other varieties of zebra. The Sufi’s remark means “God is most Great,” including the zebra as part
of the magnificence of God’s work. Pi’s comment is one of perfect contentment because he
appreciates the perspectives of both Mr. Kumars.
This scene is a concrete illustration of the coexistence of science and religion motif. Each of the
Kumars appreciates the perfection of the animals, with science and religion both having a place. While
touring the zoo, the Sufi even quotes a passage from the Qur’an that is not about faith, but about
knowledge. “In all this there are messages indeed for a people who use their reason.”
CHAPTER 32 summary
Pi defines “zoomorphism” as an animal perceiving a different animal to be one of its kind, such as the
lion tamer being the super-alpha lion. He lists several other examples including a mouse that remains
uneaten in the viper enclosure for weeks. Other mice are eaten as expected, but this one seems to
have a non-prey relationship with the snakes. Eventually it is eaten by a young viper.
Uncharacteristically, Pi anthropomorphizes and suggests that upon swallowing a mouse, a viper would
feel regret, taking “an imaginative leap away from the lonely, crude reality of a reptile.”
Notes
Pi is once again preparing the reader with information about animal behaviour that will come into play
later. He refers back to the “measure of madness” (Chapter 10) that motivates animals to buy into
deception if it is in their own best interests. A motherless cub will readily accept a surrogate mother
rather than face the reality of being motherless, “the absolute worst condition imaginable for any
young, warm-blooded life.” This last comment foreshadows Pi’s “measure of madness” yet to come.
CHAPTER 33
Summary
The author is looking through old photos with Pi. Numerous pictures capture many parts of Pi’s adult
life. There are but four pictures from his childhood, mailed to Canada by Mamaji. Richard Parker is in
one of the pictures, but he is oblivious to the camera. There are no pictures of Pi’s parents and Pi
laments, “It’s very sad not to remember what your mother looks like.”
Notes
The author depicts Pi as a man of deep feeling. Though Pi smiles in his photos, his eyes betray that he
has been wounded. The author sees Richard Parker, who has been made reference to before, but the
reader does not yet know who Richard Parker is. It is now also apparent that Pi has experienced “the
absolute worst condition imaginable” that he referred to in the previous chapter.
CHAPTER 34 summary
Pi’s family sells off the zoo animals, mostly to zoos in America. Pi feels as though he and Ravi are zoo
animals being shipped off to Canada. Because of extensive regulations and paperwork, the
preparations take over a year. This at least, gives Pi and Ravi time to get used to the idea of moving.
Three Americans come to examine the animals. Finally the paperwork is complete.
Notes
Pi prepares the reader for a journey. At this point it seems as though it will be a geographic journey,
travelling to a new country. Pi is leaving his wondrous zoo life behind. More than adequate preparation
has been made. What could go wrong?
CHAPTER 35 summary
Pi’s family leaves on June 21, 1977. Mother is especially sad to leave the beautiful familiarity of India.
They board the Japanese cargo ship Tsimtsum accompanied by the caged, sedated animals. Pi is
thrilled. Still, things go wrong.
Notes
This is the last beautiful description of India. The family leaves on a ship that bears the name of a
Kabbalist concept from the cosmogony of Isaac Luria (who was first mentioned in Chapter 1). The
word tsimtsum or zimzum means “contraction” or “withdrawal.” A simple explanation is that before
God could create the universe He had to contract or withdraw Himself so there would be space for His
Creation to fill. Then into that space, a second tsimtsum, or contraction of God’s light entered. From
that light came the entire universe and its imperfect people. There was no imperfection in Pi’s life
before the Tsimtsum.
CHAPTER 36 summary
The author arrives a little early to Pi’s house and at first sees no one. At that moment, Pi’s teenage
son runs out of the house, late for baseball practice. Pi apologizes for the lack of proper introduction.
Then, surprised, the author also meets Pi’s dog, four-year-old daughter, and cat. Pi is a proud and
loving father. “This story has a happy ending.”
Notes
The reader now has the complete picture of the adult Pi’s life. He seems to be living “happily ever
after,” as confirmed by the author’s final remark. Pi has survived whatever obstacles he had to face.
Martel has given away the ending of his own novel. In this case, however, knowing the outcome is not
a “spoiler” because for Martel (and for Pi), it is not about the result, it is about the story - specifically,
the better story.
Pi takes over the narration completely from here. There will be no more interjections from the author
for many chapters.
PART TWO - The Pacific Ocean
CHAPTER 37 summary
The ship sinks and Pi is in a lifeboat with a broken-legged zebra. He exclaims, “Jesus, Mary,
Muhammad and Vishnu,” as he sees Richard Parker in the water and calls to him. Pi is not physically
injured, but is emotionally in ruins. As far as he can tell, his family and the animals they were
travelling with have all drowned. He focuses on getting Richard Parker to the lifeboat. At last, Parker
is within reach. Pi throws him a lifebuoy and pulls him toward the boat. Coming to his senses, Pi tries
to fight Richard Parker off, but Parker is able to climb into the boat. Richard Parker is an adult Bengal
tiger. “His head was the size and colour of the lifebuoy, with teeth.” Pi jumps overboard.
Notes
“The ship sank.” The opening sentence of this chapter is blunt and to the point, yet full of meaning.
The sinking of the Tsimtsum (meaning “contraction” or “withdrawal”) may mean that God has
withdrawn from Pi to make room for Pi to develop as an independent creature, or it may mean that Pi
must withdraw into himself to make room for the development of the better story. During these first
desperate moments as a castaway, Pi ponders the meaning of reason and immortality. He verbalizes
his thoughts to Richard Parker (who the reader finally learns is a tiger). What began as a geographic
journey now becomes a spiritual one.
Giving the tiger the human name Richard Parker challenges the distinctions between humans and
animals that Pi has been describing all along. This humanizes the tiger that is to become a main
character. Pi also slips into anthropomorphizing again, “Don’t you love life?”, “We’re in hell yet still
we’re afraid of immortality.” His religious values are providing the motivation to save himself and
another of God’s creatures.
CHAPTER 38 – 39 summary
Pi describes the first days of the voyage. He is interested in the chimpanzee and her bananas
(complete with large spiders). Ravi is interested in the engine room of the ship, where he thinks
something is wrong. In the middle of the night, Pi hears an explosion. He tries to wake Ravi, but ends
up leaving him and goes out on deck alone. It is stormy, so Pi decides to go back below, but he cannot
because the stairwell is filling with water. He goes back on deck, bewildered, hearing the groans of
the ship and the shrieks of the animals. Up on the bridge, he finds three Chinese crewmembers. They
shove a life jacket with an orange whistle at Pi and throw him overboard.
He lands on the tarpaulin of a suspended lifeboat, losing the life jacket but not the whistle. The
Chinese men are shouting at him. A zebra leaps off the ship and crashes into the bottom of the boat.
The boat breaks free and splashes into the water.
Notes
Pi goes back to describe the sinking of the Tsimtsum and how he ended up in the lifeboat with a zebra.
He does not yet understand why the Chinese crewmen are shouting at him. This is a chapter of
frightening confusion for Pi.
CHAPTER 40 summary
Pi clings to the lifebuoy, relieved that Richard Parker has not jumped in the water to eat him. The
water is black, rough, and there are sharks within reach. He cannot see Richard Parker under the
orange tarpaulin so he wedges an oar under it and pulls himself out of the water. Eventually he slides
the lifebuoy onto the oar and around himself.
Notes
Pi’s only concern is survival. There are frequent references to the colour orange - the whistle, the life
jacket, the lifebuoy, the tarpaulin, and Richard Parker. Orange symbolizes survival. It is also the color
of the second Hindu chakra (energy centre in the body), which is related to water, emotional identity,
and the ability to accept change.
CHAPTER 41 summary
Pi carefully inches his way down the oar toward the boat. He reasons that Richard Parker is under the
tarpaulin and will not come out if Pi is not in view. Pi pulls himself onto the boat remarking at the
exotic beauty of the zebra, and wondering why Richard Parker has not eaten it. Shocked, Pi sees that
there is another animal on board, a male spotted hyena. He surmises that the hyena is the reason the
crewmen threw Pi into the lifeboat - to get rid of the hyena somehow so that they could safely board.
As threatening as the hyena is, though, it is preferable to the tiger, which Pi thinks must have fallen
overboard because the two animals would never coexist. Pi drifts, the immense sea and his immense
pain consuming him.
Notes
Pi is living exclusively in the present. He is not yet considering his future survival, just his immediate
circumstance. He has the beauty if the sea and sky around him, but the pain of loss within.
CHAPTER 42
Summary
Orange Juice, a female Borneo orang-utan (and mother of two sons), drifts toward the lifeboat on a raft
of netted bananas. She climbs aboard, dazed. Pi grabs the net, but does not think of salvaging any
bananas. The hyena screams.
Notes
The variety of animals increases. The reader will soon see the value of Pi’s previous digressions into
the particulars of animal behaviour.
CHAPTER 43 - 44 summary
Pi is optimistic that there is a furor of rescue activities occurring, and he and Orange Juice will be
saved. The hyena jumps on to the tarpaulin briefly, frightening Pi, then discouraged by the expanse of
water, retreats. It remerges, barking and running laps around the zebra. Pi tenses each time it nears
him. The hyena continues this interminably, allowing Pi to digress into describing the repulsive nature
of hyena appearance and behaviour. When it finally stops, the hyena vomits, and then lies in the mess.
Another day dawns and Pi remains suspended on the oar, flies buzzing around him. Toward evening he
becomes frightened of what animal activity the night may bring. In the darkness he hears snarling and
barking from the other end of the boat, and grunts, possibly from Orange Juice, closer to him. Beneath
the boat he could hear even more sounds of predator and prey as they splashed.
Notes
The animals are displaying unpredictable, yet natural according to Pi, behaviours. The zebra is
helpless, yet still exotic and beautiful. The hyena is at once aggressive and cowardly. It expresses
power, and then ends up succumbing to its own involuntary condition. Martel plays on the word
“catholic” which in this case describes the hyena’s wide-ranging, universality of taste rather than one
of Pi’s religions.
Pi passes another day in “breathless boredom,” and a night in fear.
CHAPTER 45 summary
Pi’s hopes rise with the orange sun and he searches the horizon for the rescue ship where he will be
reunited with his family. Within the boat, the hyena is eating the zebra. The piteous zebra is still alive.
The rocking of the boat is making Pi nauseous, so he changes his position and is now able to see
Orange Juice. She appears terribly seasick and her expression causes Pi to laugh. He is amazed that
the hyena has not harmed her, but reasons that they are from such separate origins that they may not
recognize each other as predator and prey. A hawksbill turtle swims past and Pi beckons it to alert a
ship of Pi’s location.
Notes
Pi is still an observer of his situation. He feels rescue is imminent and has no plan for long term
survival. He is frightened, amused, and perplexed at his state of affairs. The sky, the sea, and the
animals are a backdrop to the rescue scene he anticipates.
CHAPTER 46 summary
Though Pi endured many torturous nights, he remembers the second night as particularly wrenching.
After noticing the make sharks in the water, Pi watches Orange Juice. Anthropomorphizing again, he
feels she is searching the horizon hopelessly in search of her sons. The hyena rips the hide from the
zebra. The zebra’s protests enrage the hyena into a tearing and eating frenzy. Pi describes the
gruesome scene as the hyena slides on the blood, right into the zebra, and eats the still conscious
victim from the inside. Orange Juice roars at the sight. They hyena responds with its own roar. The
zebra sputters some blood overboard causing frenzy among the sharks. The violent noise persists.
Finally, the roaring of animals and banging of sharks against the hull stops. Pi is distraught with the
realization that he has lost everything. He deeply mourns the loss of his family, and cries through the
night. The hyena continues eating.
Notes
At the beginning of the chapter, Pi makes it clear that his ordeal was severe. “I have so many bad
nights to choose from that I’ve made none the champion.” He then describes a grisly and emotionally
crushing night. Martel continues to blend physical description with the abstract underscoring the
simultaneous spiritual and scientific motif of the novel.
CHAPTER 47 summary
Horror-struck, Pi sees that the zebra is still alive the next day. “I had no idea a living being could
sustain so much injury and go on living.” It dies by noon, but the afternoon brings another hyena
attack - this time against Orange Juice. Pi is uplifted by Orange Juice’s indomitable spirit as she
whacks the hyena. He recalls that she had been a pet that was donated to the zoo when she got too
large and intimidating. After only a few blows, however, the hyena manages to get to Orange Juice’s
throat. Pi assumes he is the next victim and approaches the hyena. Before he is upon it, he looks
beneath the tarpaulin and sees Richard Parker. He collapses.
Notes
Pi may be referring to himself as well as the zebra with his remark about the endurance of a living
being. He, too, will sustain much injury, physical and emotional. Orange Juice is a maternal symbol. In
the previous chapter she mournfully searches for her sons. Here, she represents to Pi a motherly
defender, but fear and lack of killing experience defeat her.
CHAPTER 48 summary
Pi recounts how Richard Parker came to have a human name. Seven people had been killed in
Bangladesh, presumably by a panther. A hunter is hired. He baits the panther with a goat, but it is a
tiger rather than a panther that appears. The tiger and her cub drink from the river before approaching
the goat. (Pi points out here that thirst is a greater requirement than hunger.) The hunter shoots the
tiger with a tranquilizer. The tiger, and her cub which the hunter names Thirsty, are being sent to the
Pondicherry Zoo. The clerk at the train station, however, transposes the hunter’s name, Richard
Parker, with the tiger cub’s name on the official paperwork. Pi’s father is amused and the name sticks.
Notes
As mentioned in Chapter 37, the human name helps give the tiger “main character” status and blur the
distinction between humans and animals. The name itself, however, was carefully chosen by Martel.
There were several shipwrecked Richard Parkers preceding the tiger. In 1837, Poe wrote his only
novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym about a shipwreck where Pym and another survivor
cannibalize a third survivor named Richard Parker. In 1846, the ship Francis Speight sank leading to
another tale of cannibalism, one victim being Richard Parker. In 1884, in another true story, a yacht,
the Mignonette sank and the cabin boy, Richard Parker, was killed and eaten by the other survivors.
Yet another Richard Parker died in the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. His body was never recovered.
This background information hints at the possibility of cannibalism or that Richard Parker may end up
missing.
CHAPTER 49
Summary
Immobilized by weakness, Pi realizes he has not eaten, drunk or slept for three days. Seeing his
hopeless situation and incapacity to defeat a tiger, Pi ironically perks up and decides to search for
fresh water. Since Richard Parker is the threat now, Pi is no longer afraid of the hyena, and proposes
that the hyena might sense this, perceiving Pi as the super alpha. The presence of the tiger helps Pi
understand the prior unusual behavior of the animals, but he has no basis for Richard Parker’s unusual
inactivity. He guesses that the tiger is either sedated from before the shipwreck, or seasick. Pi
continues to explore the lifeboat for water.
Notes
Pi is finally taking action toward his own survival. Ironically, this comes only after realizing that he has
virtually no chance of survival.
CHAPTERS 50, 51, 52 summary
Pi gives a detailed accounting of the size, shape, and capacity of the lifeboat, paying attention to the
amount of space Richard Parker has under the tarpaulin. He confirms orange, “such a nice Hindu
colour,” as the colour of survival. There are five oars, but Pi does not have the strength to row the
substantial boat.
Finding no containers and driven by thirst, Pi unhooks part of the tarpaulin, exposing Richard Parker’s
hideaway. He is spooked by an orange life jacket, thinking it is Richard Parker, but discovers there are
several life jackets aboard. Behind the jackets lay Richard Parker. “God preserve me!” Pi finds a
compartment in the forward bench and eases it open so that the lid blocks off the space that is open
to the tigers den. The locker is full of survival supplies, including cans of water. Too frazzled to find a
can opener, Pi smashes a hole in the can and feasts on the water. He repeats this again and again
drinking four cans of water. His entire body revels in the experience. His thirst quenched, he is now
aware of his hunger. There are biscuits in the survival locker. Being vegetarian, Pi balks at first at the
animal fat in them, but knows his situation is an extenuating circumstance. He eats more than the
daily allotment and he is rejuvenated. He takes inventory of the contents of the locker and calculates
that he has enough food for 93 days and enough water for 124 days. Each item he finds brings grateful
pleasure.
Pi makes a list of all that he has, including the food, water, ropes, rain catchers, notebook, etc. from
the locker, plus one boy, one hyena, one tiger, one lifeboat, one ocean, and one God. He sleeps
soundly.