In case you weren't aware, Life of Pi is about a boy named Pissing Patel, nicknamed Pi due to the humorous bodily function teasings that come with his God-given name. Pi's family owns a zoo and after an election that his father disagrees with, Pi's family decides to move from India to Canada and sell off the animals that currently live in their zoo. They board a large cargo ship, which spoiler sinks. Pi is saved when he is thrown by the sinking ship's crew into a lifeboat. To Pi's amazement, a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and a tiger are also on the life boat.
In short, Life of Pi is about an orphaned Indian boy who finds God - well, many Gods; Hindu, Christian, Islamic - and still continues to believe in a higher being while stranded in a lifeboat with a Bengal Tiger for 227 days.
1. Watch the movie first.
Normally, I wouldn't say this. Normally I would be like "Oh yeah! Don't even bother watching the movie! The books are always 100 times better than the movie ever could be!" But for this one, I'm going to have to say watch the movie first.
The reason being is that Pi is on a lifeboat for 227 days. He goes into detail about the sea, the lifeboat manual, the food, fishing, and all other life-saving/philosophical facets of such an ordeal in such pristine ways that I think the next time I see a Bengal Tiger, I could describe the sounds it is making and correlate them with how it feels. - Yeah. That much detail.
Watch the movie first so that you feel encouraged to keep going through the skinny and know that it is going somewhere. Trust me.
However, be warned that the movie does leave out some things that are in the book and of course adds in other things, like romance.
2. The story-telling was great. The writing was unbelievable.
This is such a weird thing to say about such a novel as Life of Pi however Yann Martel did an excellent job at writing about the "unknown".
"To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation."
"The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity; it's envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can."
Only two examples from a book dripping with metaphorical beauty. (I just went nerd, I know)
3. It leaves you questioning (Which I will rant about in a minute!)
The ending of the book, not to spoil too much, is so... confusing! I literally sat there for 10 minutes after the movie was over and thought "What?!" but once I finished the book it was entire hours that I sat in thought about what I should believe!
-Spoiler-
In the ending of the novel, Pi is speaking with two men who work for the company that owned the Tsimstum, the ship that sank. They ask Pi to relate his story for insurance reasons and when he tells them about the Tiger, Hyena, Zebra, and Orangutan, they do not believe him. In his frustration, he tells them another story where his mother, a sailor, himself, and the ship's cook were all on the life boat, however the two stories have chilling similarities; such as the zebra AND the sailor both breaking a leg. The Orangutan slaps the Hyena, as does Pi's mother, who slaps the cook. The Hyena breaks off the Zebra's broken leg and eats it. The cook convinces everyone that they must amputate the sailors leg to save his life. Later, Pi says that he and his mother caught the cook eating the meat from the sailors leg. The Tiger kills the Hyena in a fit of rage after the Hyena kills the Orangutan. Pi kills the cook with such ferocity after the cook kills his mother in a bloody and gruesome way.Therefore, as a reader, you pretty much gather that Pi is the tiger, the cook is the hyena, Pi's mother is the orangutan, and the sailor is the zebra.
This leads to the resounding question of which story is true! And it drives me crazy! No matter how badly I want to believe the animal version of the story, I can't accept it now! Is Pi telling the insurance men what they want to hear or what actually happened? Did he make up the animal version of the story to accept the carnal side of human nature? The side that kills others without another thought because it is easier to accept when it is animals rather than humans?
Even typing this right now is making me want to find Yann Martels number, call him up, and demand what version of the story is true even though I know what his answer will be!
And that answer is, of course, up to what the reader wants to accept.
... But it still makes me angry and I want more!
- Alex
First picture found here
Second picture by David Campbell here
