| Genre: Drama (I think) Main characters: Piscine “Pi” Molitor Patel, Richard Parker (the Bengal tiger) Time and place: mostly between July 2, 1977 and February 14, 1978; Pondicherry (India) plus the Pacific Ocean Summary: Pi Patel was a normal boy, living with his family in Pondicherry, India, where his father was the head and owner of a Zoo. Due to political changes, the family decides to sell their animals and move to Canada. They (together with the animals they had sold to Canadian Zoos) get aboard a ship, Tsimtsum, already missing their past life but also trusting that their new one will be good. But the ship sinks and only Pi manages to get into a boat (together with a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena and a tiger, Richard Parker). This is how Pi’s journey, going to span no less than 227 days floating on the Pacific, begins. |
Pi Patel (actual name Piscine Molitor, the name of the best swimming pool in Paris) is nothing but a boy when his adventure commences. But he is smart and his life in the Zoo has taught him many things about animals, and most of all he has an amazing will to survive. So far nothing out of the ordinary, but what made Pi special for me was his ability to love: he loved Richard Parker, the ocean, every bit of the hostile nature surrounding him. A rare feeling for someone in the circumstances. There is also a scene, at the end of the book, when he is interviewed by two people who want to find out how the ship sunk. Pi, after his seven months spent floating on the ocean with no actual food, has become quite a food hoarder so one by one he takes all their cookies (they had a bag of cookies with them) and hides them. Nevertheless, as they leave he offers each of them some cookies to have on the way. Might seem a meaningless gesture but to me it was yet another symbol of Pi’s generosity and love for others (parting with some of his hoard for the sake of others, in his state and with his attachment for food).
The first part, where Pi (now an adult living in Canada) remembers his childhood at the Zoo was both magical and very instructive. Magical because that is the only word I can find for a childhood spent in the middle of so many and various animals (I have to say I envied Pi a bit back then). Instructive because Pi knows a lot of things about the animals he grew up with and doesn’t hesitate to share them with the reader. For example, I ended up having a whole new perspective on Zoos after reading what Pi had to say about them: animals love having a space to call (and mark as) their own. It is not necessary for it to be a huge space, it just has to be theirs. Which means that, as Pi puts it, the animals in the Zoos are actually happier than the ones that are roaming free, because they have their space, just as they would have had had they been free, and they are also well fed and well taken care of. Happy thoughts for me as I’ve always disliked Zoos because they deprive animals of their freedom; it’s good to know they are as happy there as can be.
It is perhaps interesting to notice where Richard Parker’s name came from (in the book, Richard Parker is the name of the guy who captured the tiger, then a cub, but the papers for its admission to the Zoo were filled out wrong, so the tiger ended up with that name). Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about how the author has came up with the name:
Richard Parker was named after an Edgar Allan Poe character from The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838). The book tells of four shipwrecked men who, after many days’ privation, drew lots to decide who should be killed and eaten. One Richard Parker, a mutinous sailor, draws the short straw and is eaten. [...] oddly enough, 46 years after Poe’s story was published, similar events would happen in reality. Captain Dudley and three sailors were stranded in a skiff in the Pacific after the sinking of their yacht Mignonette on the way to Australia. They are forced to eat one of the party to survive, and feast on his body for 4 days — a sailor boy named Richard Parker. Yet another Richard Parker died when his ship, named the Francis Spaight, sank in January 1846. [...] As Yann Martel said “So many Richard Parkers had to mean something.”
You know, this book is on every “books one must read” list I run into, but I always shied away from it because I thought it would be boring, in an “how-many-interesting-things-can-happen-to-a-boy-floating-on-the-ocean-with-a-tiger” kind of way. But now that I read it I am glad I did. It is true, very few actual things happened to poor Pi (other than his fight for survival). But every bit, every chapter of the book felt real to me. When Pi was on his float, scorched by the sun, salted by the sea and afraid of what Richard Parker might do I was there with him, sharing his hope or lack of it. This is probably one of the best things I can say about a book (that it made me feel there), and I am happy each time I discover a book I can say that about.
One of my favorite quotes:
I can well imagine an atheist’s last words: “White, white! L-L-Love! My God!”—and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying, “Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain,” and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story.
(the quote is taken from the beginning of the book, but the idea of choosing (and thus not missing) the better story is mentioned at the end too, when the two Japanese people interrogate Pi)
And another one:
What a terrible thing it is to botch a farewell. I am a person who believes in form, in the harmony of order. Where we can, we must give things a meaningful shape. For example – I wonder – could you tell my jumbled story in exactly one hundred chapters, not one more, not one less? I’ll tell you, that’s one thing I have about my nickname, the way the number runs on forever. It’s important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse.
(and before you ask yes, the book does have precisely 100 chapters :) )
Question:
******************SPOILER********************
Was the whole story nothing but a creation of Pi’s mind to help him cope with seeing his mother killed and the rest of the bad experiences he had after the ship sunk? Is he the “tiger” and Richard Parker just a figment of his imagination?
Pros: the part about the carnivorous island and his meeting the blind Frenchman were kinda hard to believe, they are more likely to be invented rather than real
Cons: the meerkat bones in the ship (but were there actually meerkat bones in the ship?)
In the end, I want to believe everything was real (thus choosing the better story), but reason compels me to find the other story as what must truly have happened. And yet Pi seemed so unwavering and so convinced…
****************END SPOILER*****************
What I liked most: The part in the beginning where Pi discovers religion. I was born in a Christian family and in a Christian country, and as such I find it very interesting to see Christianity through the eyes of a Hindu (non-Christian) person. Not only that but Pi’s view on religion is a very original one (striking me as perhaps the only sincere and true one): despite the fact that no one in his family is interested in religion he becomes a practicing Hindu, a Christian and a Muslim, all at once, because, as he explains when his parents find out about it and confront him, he just wanted to love God (thus getting the point lots of people miss, that religion is not about the form is about loving God).
What I liked least: The graphic parts. I understand the necessity as it was a eat or be eaten situation but I really find it difficult to read about animals getting hurt. And what happened to the poor zebra and the poor orangutan was very very sad. Necessary to the book but nevertheless sad.
Recommend it? Yes, I loved it :)
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