The Life of Pi is a great story but will it make you believe in God?
A boy. A tiger. And the vast Pacific Ocean. This is a novel of such rare and wondrous storytelling that it may, as one of the characters claims, make you believe in God. Can a reader reasonably ask for anything more?…
Article comments
76 - AlexB
This book was great. I understood both views, but
I would have to go with the one with Richard. It was more in detail (obviously), and also, Before he told it (being the second one), he said something like "If you can't understand what you didn't see, then I'll tell you one that you may be able to believe. One that you can envision. Here's one more believable..." Also, how do you explain the giving of food, water, and basically total salvation to R.P. when he didn't exist and he was only himself (that was sure a mouthful). The whistle could be for self awareness, but I can't get much further then that. I do, however think that he made up some of it. Meercat island, for example. He could have found some algae and some dead fish, but carnivorous trees?! I could go on forever. The thing is, although we have our opinions that we opt to convince is an objective thing, but this never happened, so it is absolutely your total subjective opinion. I didn't really think that this made me think of God, but makes me think about even when you may not neccesarily have the will to live, by instinct, you try to survive, perhaps bringing us to be less of a dominant species as we are (and who gets free food and medical attention and who pays?). especiaally at the end when it turns out that he is perhaps R.P., you see how we are really animals too. This book really makes you think.
77 - amy arden
heyy can ne 1 help me explore the significance of pi's name to the overall message of the novel?
and add sum quotes along the way im doing and essay and it'll rele help
thanxx...mwah!!
78 - Sam
A story that will make you believe in God...
Whether or not it does this is debateable but Martel's protagonist makes you believe in Richard Parker and the hope that he represents and Pi's survival echo of a power greater than Pi or yeastless factuality. It has been said that God does not need to exist in order to save us and whether he does or not, Pi's survival hinges on the hope intrinsic to religion; whether fact, fiction or somewhere in between, even as an idea, God is one powerful enough to carry a boy over the ocean. Martel's greatest gift is perhaps not a story that will MAKE you believe in God, but one that at its climax can make you believe that an idea can save those who keep faith and believe in it.
79 - Linus
I am surprised that the majority seems to give credence to Pi's second version as being the factual account.
I'm not so sure. The only thing that leads me to truly believe that the animals were purely metaphorical was Pi's insistence of how you could turn Tokyo upside down with the result of dozen's of wild animals falling out.
This story has definitely left me with a lot to think about.
80 - ferdinand
it was a delicious read
81 - Kris
This story has nothing to do with making the reader believe in God. Yes, it is stated that the story will in fact, do just that, but we forget. That is also part of the story.
82 - me
this book sucked,
i had to read it for a summer project and i dont even remember half of what i read.
boringggg!
83 - yeeee.
number 36 needs a life.
84 - John the Libertarian
okay, I sought out this blog because I'm deep into the book, but have a problem no one seems to have addressed yet: does anyone else feel that Martel has pegged agnostics wrongly? The agnostics I know of believe wholeheartedly in God, but with a humility that God is too immense for humans to describe, and especially for the major religions to try and monopolize. Martel seems to think agnostics would explain away "the white light" as a chemical imbalance, and posits them much more like atheists. Margaret Atwood, a declared agnostic, would likely have a conniption if her belief were painted this way.
85 - Grant
I read this article, everything except the spoiler. then read some blogs on this page. I have never read this book in my life, but how many times have I read this book?
86 - maegan
this book suckes i had to read it for english class i dont get it
87 - lifeofpiisfkngay
the book was fkn gay.
88 - archanom
I just finished this book and read the above comments. I have to believe that the second story is the true story. Pi is Richard Parker. His mother is the orang-utang (think of the loving comments Pi has for this orang-utang mother of two). The sailor is the zebra. The chef is the hyena (ugly and a born killer). Pi had to create a story for himself to take him away from the reality of the situation and give him hope during his ordeal. The made-up story is what helped him survive.
As for the island:
When Pi is blind and meets a french cook who is blind, this is the french chef who is actually on the boat with him (the hyena). Richard Parker (Pi) kills the chef. Pi's eye sight comes back because he was able to feast on the chef and gain nutrients. I believe that his feasting on the chef (cannibalism) represents the island where he gains strength and then finds the cannibal tree with teeth.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The one fault I have with it is that it hints that facts do not matter, what matters is a good story. For an atheist, that doesn't cut it. Here's a good story: the creator of the universe is a flying spaghetti monster. I could come up with other, more fanciful and endearing stories. Should the best story be the one believed or the story which is factual? In The Life of Pi, the author seems to hint that the true story is not important. I strongly disagree. Truth and facts are something we can all agree on. Made up stories create uncertainty and disagreement. This book did not make me believe in God, but it is a good story.
89 - archanom
I'd like to add a couple more insights to my entry above.
A previous blogger brought up the conversation on page 87 (of the paper back). The conversation takes place between the author and Pi as a grown man. Pi is showing the author four photographs from his childhood in India:
-On the same page there's another group shot, mostly of schoolchildren. He taps the photo.
"That's Richard Parker," he says.
I'm amazed. I look closely, trying to extract personality from appearance. Unfortunately, it black and white and a little out of focus. A photo taken in better days, casually. Richard Parker is looking away. He doesn't even realize his picture is being taken.-
This is all told before the author knows Richard Parker is a tiger. The author is describing the photo of Richard Parker as a human and not someone looking at the photo of a tiger. The photo of Richard Parker is most likely a photo of Pi.
The other point I'd like to make is that it was thought the tiger was not on the life boat in the beginning. Richard Parker does not appear to Pi until after Orange Juice (Pi's mother) is killed. Pi's alter ego - a 450 bengel tiger - emerges from beneath him. His tiger, his fight, was there all the time. Most of the story is the struggle for Pi to tame the tiger - tame the animal inside him.
90 - fred
i thought the story was pretty good but it only gets better to the second part of the story.
91 - Sarah
My memory's a bit shaky as I read this book about a year ago but I still wanted to comment from this perspective since no one else seemed to have done so. Being agnostic, I find all of this attack a little over critical. Grnated, religion is a major part of the book and belive me I loved the book, but I believe that as an agnostic my mind is more open to others beliefs and I'm not tied down to, and hindered by, a strict religion. I see God when I see him and feel like he's not there at all a lot as well. But, by no means do I believe that this is akin to someone choosing immobility as a means of transportation. It's more like picking a vanilla cupcake over chocolate or strawberry and that's to say it doesn't matter much. i believe that's the point of this book, just to tell people to be happy with what they believe or don't and just have fun and accept things.
92 - Frure
archanom ... I rather like your take on Richard Parker being Pi, and this also gives me an interpretation of the island that doesn't leave me cold.
93 - Joe
archanom, you're a genius and a Godsend.
Its funny how both religious people and atheists dislike Martel's dismissal of objective truth in favour of a good, a "better", story. His is a truly intellectually lazy standpoint.
94 - love
omg i hated your book it was the most dumbest book ever i had to read it for english blahhhhh this book
95 - tonyo
any connection between Pi and the number of days (227) that he was at sea? Pi = 22/7
96 - Bob Schneider
it was alirght I expected more from Yann MArtel but; I guess i kinda enjoyed it
97 - Billy Dessen
sup yo this book sucked sooooooo bad!!!!!!!!!!!!1
98 - Chelsie D
why did you pick the Pacific Ocean?
99 - unknown
it's very very very srtange in the beginning. sorry guys. but i liked the middle and the end.
100 - Andy
The survival adventure in Life of Pi, while compelling, is not the point. The animal parable is just a vehicle to show that truth is revealed to those who have ears to hear and eyes to see--but not to those whose hearts are hard or who can see only reason. (cf. Jesus's Parable of the Seeds thrown onto even fertile ground.) Pi's animal story was as hard for the interviewers to believe as is God's Story told in the parables of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, etc.--but those stories contain the truths of all those religions. The interviewers at the end of the book thought the story without animals, with people substituted for the animals, was more likely to be true. Afterall, they were 'reasonable' men. In the context of the novel, the harder-to-believe story was the true one.
How is your heart?
101 - Jeremy
Okay I've just finished the book and love the work. I found it as thought provoking as The Dice Man - I'd seen LofP mentioned in the same web-page somewhere so it led me there. The book is sort of like a Road Dahl type story, with a twist at the end.
The hardest part to deal with is that I believe the second story. When humans are in extremis they behave in extreme ways, resorting to cannibalism if it means survival - hear the story of that plane crash in Chile in the 70s where the survivors ate the dead.
Richard Parker is the dark side of Pi, his dark side which we all have within. When Pi was alone on the boat his dark animal side was given free reign which he had to bury once again inside his personality once he had reached civilisation. That dark side we all possess, not in such an extreme form as to eat people - but in some such mild forms as to hurt others feelings or put others down. An awareness of such badness or "evil" is a mark of growing up and leaving childlike views of the world behind.
Richard Parker exists in all of us. We have to learn to accept and love him too.
102 - Adam
i believe the animal story... just sayin
103 - Fawzia
As others have pointed out: All the animals represent the different people in the boat. RP is the "animal" side of Pi. He seemed to have come onboard, yet "disappears" during the hyena's killing orgy. Pi finds he was "hiding" under the tarp, too sick to react. The tiger kills the hyena (Pi's animal side kills the cook). Yet his human side is frightened by his own animalistic instincts.
The other blind castaway: It was his inner self. His true self, or the one he thought of as his real self, is the vegetarian one dreaming of masala and puri. The new self is the one dreaming of tripe and brain and frogs. The old self recognizes the new self as a brother, but the new self wants to kill the old self. What is the difference between the tiger (carnivorous) and the blind French? The tiger represents a natural instinct while the castaway is unnatural. Finally, natural instinct for feeding wins over sick/ abnormal cannibalistic urges.
His wish to live forever on the island seems to mean he was content to stay on the lifeboat forever. The island was a floating mass of algae (so was the lifeboat). He had water (from the solar stills, remember, the ponds were all round and equal in size), he had abundance of food (turtles, fish) but at night (during his darkest periods, or in his own darkness) this heavenly island became a killer (acidic)that was carnivorous (he had turned to cannibalism). So he decided to leave the island (floating on the sea). Did no one notice that the minute he decided to leave the island, suddenly he lands in Mexico? When he lands, his own wilder side disappears.
Which begs a question? Did he stay on the sea by choice? Remember the ship that bore down on him and never saw him? Did he avoid going back to live with humans?
The point about which is the better story. We cannot accept the killing of humans by other humans, yet we naturally accept the killing of animals by other animals, even if we are put off by the gory details. If a human tames a tiger, we applaud. Yet if a human tames his own darker side, we shudder.
So, better tell it as an allegory. Pi tells us, doesn't God tell us parables and allegories too?
104 - Meko
THANK YOU FOR YOUR INSIGHT!!!!
Writing an essay on which version I believe is real, and you've convinced me.
105 - No body Nobody
I don't see how anyone can think the animal story is the real one. Two blind castaways bumping into each other in the ocean is at the edge of being impossible. Following that up with an Eden by day, acidic by night carnivorous big island full of thousands to millions of meerkats floating around in the ocean is well over the edge of possibility.
I found it interesting and unfortunate that there was no explanation to the island in Pi's second story of what happened.
And can anyone explain how (if you believe zebra = sailor, orangutan = mom, hyena = French cook, tiger = Pi) the tiger kills the hyena early on but the French cook from the other boat gets killed much later? He killed the guy twice at two completely different parts of the story? Seems like a flaw in the story but perhaps it has some hidden meaning.
As for the book that helps you find God. The way I read the book is that there is no God but it makes people feel better to have a good story so everyone should find the religion that has the story they like best and believe it even though it is false. Certainly not what I expected when I started but it was thought provoking.
Overall I very much enjoyed the book and found many things to ponder which is the surest sign for me that a book was good. Was it perfect? Not in my mind, but the good easily outweighed the bad.
106 - idiomsyncrasy
Pascal's Wager rewritten in a zany fashion.
107 - Name
Just finished reading this book. It really made me believe that God really does exist! Amazing Book by Yann Martel!
108 - JR99
To the reviewer: You got it, but you also missed the point entirely. The point is: GOD IS THE BETTER STORY.
Pi chooses ALL religions as a way of reconciling the inevitable TRUTH about religions, which is that none of them are "actually true." They are all "better stories" than the hard realities they replace... though "replace" is not entirely accurate: "enhance" is a bit closer. The best term is both: religions both replace and enhance the realities of life. Just like the life of Pi... as told to all who would believe it, by Pi.