Information:
Title: Life of Pi
Writer: Yann Martel
Year of publication: 2001

Summary:
Life of Pi has three parts. The first one is where the protagonist, being an adult now, looks back upon his childhood. How he got named after a swimming pool, being named Piscine Molitor Patel. How he dramatically changed his name to Pi when he started to attend secondary school. How he was born as a Hindu, but as a fourteen-year-old, came into contact with Christianity and Islam and started to follow three religions. How his dad had a zoo, how he knew everything about it and how, due to economical issues, his dad sold the zoo and all the animals and his family went with a boat to Canada to live there.

In the second part, it all goes wrong. The boat sinks and Pi ends up with a tiger, a hyena, a zebra and an orang-utan in a small lifeboat. All the other people and animals are immediately drown. The tiger eats the hyena, who eats the zebra and orang-utan, so there are soon only two left. Food and water supplies are low. Pi starts fishing to get food for him and the tiger, as he doesn’t want him to die, for he would be all alone on the ocean. Pi makes sure, with all his zoo-keeper’s-son knowledge, that the tiger believes Pi is the alpha and therefore doesn’t attack the boy. 227 pass and Pi manages to stay alive, sometimes half in delusion, mostly with thirst and hunger, but after 227 days the lifeboat reaches the coast of Mexico.


The third part is mainly a conversation between two people from the maritime department. Since they want to know what might have gone wrong with the ship and Pi is the only survivor, he is asked to tell the story. He does, but the two people don’t believe him. He tells another story, where the orang-utan was his mother, the hyena was a cowardly cook, who actually ate his mother and a boat mate, who represented the zebra. The tiger being Pi himself. All the things that happened to the animals happened now to the humans and everything was logical, which was obviously not in the other story.

Pi ask the two people which one of the two stories, since they shouldn’t care which one is true, which of the stories they prefer, which is the better story. The people say it’s the story with the animals. Pi thanks them and say this also goes for God.

Main characters:
The only really important character is Pi himself. He is, in the main part of the story, a sixteen-year-old boy who believes religion and life itself is not about the true facts, it is about the stories you believe. This is mainly the idea of the author presented by this boy. He is quite clever and matures fast through the story. He has to, actually. He loves animals and was a vegetarian until he was forced to eat animals to stay alive.

My opinion:
Since some people on the internet were quite enthusiastic about this book, I got it from the school library to see if it was as good as everyone said it was. I have to say, they are quite right.

The true nature of this story only came clear in the third part of it. I thought of it as just a nice fairy tale about surviving, but how wrong I was. At first, I was a little disappointed. I found the story very nice and now the truthfulness was ruined, the story was a little ruined too. But then I realised that it was where this was all about. It’s the story and the believe that matters, not if it is the truth. That was a very pleasing thought and I think that is the same reason why so much people like ancient Greek myths and why people find comfort in reading the bible, Quran or any other religious script.

Overall I found Life of Pi a nice and adventurous story with a deeper meaning which helped me sharpen my looks on life.