Life of Pi is a fantasy adventure novel by Yann Martel published in 2001. The protagonist, Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, an Indian boy from Pondicherry, explores issues of spirituality and practicality from an early age. He survives 227 days after a shipwreck while stranded on a boat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.
The novel was rejected by at least five London publishing houses[1] before being accepted by Knopf Canada, which published it in September 2001. The UK edition won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction the following year.[2][3][4] It was also chosen for CBC Radio's Canada Reads 2003, where it was championed by author Nancy Lee.[5] The French translation, L'histoire de Pi, was chosen in the French version of the contest, Le combat des livres, where it was championed by Louise Forestier.[6] The novel won the 2003 Boeke Prize, a South African novel award. In 2004, it won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in Best Adult Fiction for years 2001–2003.[7] In 2012 it was adapted into a theatrical feature film.
| Life of Pi | |
|---|---|
 Life of Pi cover | |
| Author(s) | Yann Martel |
| Original title | Life of Pi |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fiction |
| Publisher | Knopf Canada |
| Publication date | September 2001 |
| Pages | 401 |
| ISBN |
ISBN 0-676-97376-0 (first edition, hardcover) ISBN 0-15-602732-1(US paperback edition)
ISBN 1-56511-780-8 (audiobook, Penguin Highbridge) |
| OCLCNumber | 46624335 |
| Preceded by | Self |
| Followed by | We Ate the Children Last |
Plot
Life of Pi is divided into three sections. In the first section, the main character, Pi, an adult, reminisces about his childhood. He was named Piscine Molitor Patel after a swimming pool in France. He changes his name to "Pi" when he begins secondary school, because he is tired of being taunted with the nickname "Pissing Patel". His father owns a zoo in Pondicherry, providing Pi with a relatively affluent lifestyle and some understanding of animal psychology.[8]
Pi is raised a Hindu, but as a fourteen-year-old he is introduced to Christianity and Islam, and starts to follow all three religions as he "just wants to love God."[9][10] He tries to understand God through the lens of each religion and comes to recognize benefits in each one.
Eventually, his family decides to sell their animals and move to Canada due to political concerns in India. In the second part of the novel, Pi's family embarks on a Japanese freighter to Canada carrying some of the animals from their zoo, but a few days out of port, the ship meets a storm and capsizes, resulting in his parents' death. After the storm, Pi regains consciousness in a small lifeboat with a spotted hyena, an injured zebra, and an orangutan.
As Pi strives to survive among the animals, the hyena kills the zebra, then the orangutan, much to Pi's distress. At this point, it is discovered that a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker had been hiding under the boat's tarp; it kills and eats the hyena. Frightened, Pi constructs a small raft out of flotation devices, tethers it to the boat, and retreats to it. He delivers some of the fish and water he harvests to Richard Parker to keep him satisfied, conditioning Richard Parker not to threaten him by rocking the boat and causing seasickness while blowing a whistle. Eventually, Richard Parker learns to tolerate Pi's presence and they both live in the boat.
Pi recounts various events while adrift, including discovering an island of carnivorous algae inhabited by meerkats. After 227 days, the lifeboat washes up onto the coast of Mexico and Richard Parker immediately escapes into the nearby jungle.
In the third part of the novel, two officials from the Japanese Ministry of Transport speak to Pi to ascertain why the ship sank. When they do not believe his story, he tells an alternate story of human brutality, in which Pi was adrift on a lifeboat with his mother, a sailor with a broken leg, and the ship's cook, who killed the sailor and Pi's mother and cut them up to use as bait and food. Parallels to Pi's first story lead the Japanese officials to believe that the orangutan represents his mother, the zebra represents the sailor, the hyena represents the cook, and Richard Parker is Pi himself.
After giving all the relevant information, Pi asks which of the two stories they prefer. Since the officials cannot prove which story is true and neither is relevant to the reasons behind the shipwreck, they choose the story with the animals. Pi thanks them and says, "and so it goes with God".
Inspiration
In a 2002 interview with PBS, Martel revealed his inspiration for his novel, "I was sort of looking for a story, not only with a small 's' but sort of with a capital 'S' – something that would direct my life."[11] He spoke of being lonely and needing direction in his life. The novel became that direction and purpose for his life.[12]
Martel also stated that his inspiration for the book's premise came from reading a book review of Brazilian author Moacyr Scliar's 1981 novella Max and the Cats, about a Jewish-German refugee who crossed the Atlantic Ocean while sharing his boat with a jaguar.[13][14] Scliar said that he was perplexed that Martel "used the idea without consulting or even informing me," and indicated that he was reviewing the situation before deciding whether to take any action in response.[15][16] After talking with Martel, Scliar elected not to pursue the matter.[17] A dedication to Scliar "for the spark of life" appears in the author's note of Life of Pi.
Literary reviews have described the similarities between Life of Pi and Max and the Cats as superficial. Reviewer Peter Yan wrote, "Reading the two books side-by-side, one realizes how inadequate bald plot summaries are in conveying the unique imaginative impact of each book,"[18] and noted that Martel's distinctive narrative structure is not found in Scliar's novella. The themes of the books are also dissimilar, with Max and the Cats being an allegory for Nazism.[19] InLife of Pi, 211 of 354 pages are devoted to Pi's experience in the lifeboat, compared to Max and the Cats, in which 17 of its 99 pages depict time spent in a lifeboat.[19]
Narrative structure
According to reviewer Peter Yan, "Life of Pi is told from two alternating points of view, the main character Pi in a flashback and Yann Martel himself, who is the "visiting writer" (Martel 101) interviewing Pi many years after the cat in the boat story. This technique of the intrusive narrator adds the documentary realism to the book, setting up, like a musical counter-point, the myth-making, unreliable narrator, Pi. The reader is left to ponder at the end whether Pi's story is an allegory of another set of parallel events or vice versa."[18]
Characters
Piscine Molitor Patel
He acquires layer after layer of diverse spirituality and brilliantly synthesizes it into a personal belief system and devotional life that is breathtaking in its depth and scope. His youthful exploration into comparative religion culminates in a magnificent epiphany of sorts.
“
”
—Phoebe Kate Foster of PopMatters[20]
Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel is the narrator and protagonist of the novel. He was named after a swimming pool in Paris, despite the fact that neither his father nor his mother particularly liked swimming. The story is told as a narrative from the perspective of a middle-aged Pi, now married and with his own family, and living in Canada. At the time of main events of the story, he is sixteen years old. He recounts the story of his life and his 227-day journey on a lifeboat when his boat sinks in the middle of the Pacific Ocean during a voyage to North America.
Richard Parker
Main article: Richard Parker (shipwrecked)
Richard Parker is a tiger that is stranded on the lifeboat with Pi when the ship sinks. The tiger lives on the lifeboat with Pi and is kept alive with the food and water Pi delivers. Richard Parker develops a relationship with Pi that allows them to coexist in their struggle.
In the story the hunter who captured the tiger was named Richard Parker. He intended to name the tiger Thirsty because of the tiger's long time drinking when he was found. In a confusion when it was time for Richard Parker to catch a train ride to find Thirsty a home, the woman at the ticket counter confused the tiger's name to be Richard Parker, and the hunter's name to be Thirsty with his last name being "None Given." Pi and his father found the story so amusing, the name stuck.
In reality, Martel named the tiger after a character from Edgar Allan Poe's nautical adventure novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838). However, there were a number of other men named Richard Parker who are relevant to Martel's choice, and that are linked to tales of cannibalism by shipwrecked sailors. Such tales abounded in the 18th and 19th centuries. For instance:
In December 1835, the ship Francis Spaight was wrecked in the north Atlantic. Survivors of the wreck were known to have practiced cannibalism in order to survive.
In January 1846, a second ship named "Francis Spaight" sank, and took a man named Richard Parker down with it.
In 1884, 46 years after Poe's novel was published, a new shipwreck shared many similarities with that story: after the sinking of their yacht Mignonette on the way to Australia, Captain Tom Dudley and three sailors were stranded in a dinghy in the Pacific Ocean. They believed they had no choice but to eat one of the party to survive. The victim was a 17-year-old cabin boy named Richard Parker.[21] [22]
A.W. Brian Simpson's book on the subject mentions the Francis Spaight and also refers to a boat called Tiger on which a youth was cannibalized in 1766.
Having read about these events, Yann Martel thought, "So many victimized Richard Parkers had to mean something."[23][24]
Setting
The novel is a work of fiction set in the summer of 1977 that draws on real places and events in India. The Patel household's discussions of the political situation refer to historical events. Pondicherry is a former French colony in India. It does have an Indian Coffee House and Botanical Gardens. The Botanical Garden has a toy train track. The garden does not have a zoo, and while it did have one in the 70s it never had animals bigger than deer. The Botanical Garden does have a small aquarium. Munnar, the destination for the Patel family's vacation, is a small but popular hill station in Kerala. Madurai, also referenced in the novel, is a popular tourist and pilgrimage site in Tamil Nadu.
Reception
In a letter directly to Martel, Barack Obama described Life of Pi as "an elegant proof of God, and the power of storytelling".[25]
Brian Bethune of Maclean's describes Life of Pi as "[a] head-scratching combination of dense religious allegory, zoological lore and enthralling adventure tale, written with warmth and grace".[26] Master Plots suggested the "[c]entral themes of Life of Pi concern religion and human faith in God".[27]
Adaptations
Illustrated edition
In October 2005, a worldwide competition was launched to find an artist to illustrate Life of Pi. The competition was run by Scottish publisher Canongate Books and UK newspaper The Times, as well as Australian newspaper The Ageand Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail. Croatian artist Tomislav Torjanac was chosen as the illustrator for the new edition, which was published in September 2007.[28][29][30]
Film adaptation
Main article: Life of Pi (film)
A 2012 adaptation directed by Ang Lee and based on an adapted screenplay by David Magee was given a wide release in the United States on 21 November 2012.
Theatrical adaptations
This novel has also been adapted as a play by Keith Robinson, artistic director of the youth-oriented Twisting Yarn Theatre Company. Andy Rashleigh wrote the adaptation, which was directed by Keith Robinson. The premier/original cast contained only six actors—Tony Hasnath (Pi), Taresh Solanki (Richard Parker), Melody Brown (Mother), Conor Alexander (Father), Sanjay Shalat (Brother) and Mark Pearce (Uncle).[31] The play was produced at the Alhambra Theatre in Bradford, England, in 2003.[32] The company toured England and Ireland with the play in 2004 and 2007.
Keith Robinson also directed a second version of the play. He brought some of his company to work with students of the BA (Hons) Drama, Applied Theatre and Education Course at the Central School of Speech and Drama. The joint production was performed at the Minack Theatre, in Cornwall, England, in late June 2008.[33] It was well received by the press and community.
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