The Life of Pi

The Life of Pi

by Yann Martel

c. 2001

Harcourt, Inc.: Orlando

319 pages

Ryan Pipkie gets credit for leading me to this one, even though it has been on my list of things needing reading for quite some time. Sitting in my room on the Wednesday evening when he and Heather randomly came to visit, he said that this was one of the books that made him get lost, made him sit down and read for hours on end. And then, like so many other good books, it was on the Summer Reading table at Barnes and Noble... which made it even easier to keep it in mind when I was looking for things to keep me reading.

This book has three parts, and all three of them are beautiful. In the first, Piscine Patel tells of growing up in India as the son of a zookeeper. Along the way, he learns to fear tigers, changes his name to Pi (as in 3.14...) and discovers the wonders of religions, simultaneously practicing Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam.

The most powerful parts of this first section are Pi's comments on faith and doubt. One of my favorites.

"I'll be honest about it, it's not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We all must pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we... But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation." (page 28).

The conflict between Pi's three religions makes an appearance when the leaders of all three groups simultaneously converge on Pi and his family as they are out in the city. They all begin by complimenting Pi on his piety, but quickly switch to demanding that he "pick one."

I found these passages particularly interesting, because of my own view on God and religion, my belief that in many ways, all religions are true as long as you are using them as a means of striving for a truth based on love and compassion. Pi takes this idea, and allows it to and his faith to lead him to the practice of multiple religions, whereas I have taken it to allow me to talk to God and try to find reasons and faith on my own... the politics that come with organization can be so daunting when all that really matters is faith.

In the second section, Pi and his family depart for a new life in Canada aboard a ship with many of the animals from their zoo. Tragically the ship sinks, leaving Pi the sole human survivor aboard a lifeboat with a zebra with a broken leg, an orangutan, a hyena and a tiger named Richard Parker. Soon only he and Richard Parker remain, and Pi must survive a long and challenging period at sea with only the tiger as a companion. He decides to tame the tiger, to assert himself as the alpha male. At the point of this decision, there is a particularly wonderful passage about the nature of fear, which I'll quote in part, just because I like it.

"I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. ... It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy... You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons and technology. But to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread.... Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you've defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you." (page 161-162).

They survive and land in Mexico. (That's not a spoiler, the story is told from the perspective of an author who writes during a series of interviews with an adult Pi.) This second section of the book is the longest, and beautifully written. It's the reason that you should read the book yourself, because it is a wonderful story, and nothing that I can say here will do it justice.

The third section of the book consists of interviews with employees of the shipping company that owned the ship that sank and left Pi to his ocean adventure. In this section, Pi tells his story and is met with disbelief. And the reader is left to choose between two options, faith and doubt. Because in the end, this is a book about faith, and not only the faith of Pi and the moments of doubt that go through his ordeal, but also the faith of the reader. The reader is left to struggle with their own willingness to suspend doubt and accept things that seem totally absurd and impossible. They are left to choose between faith and doubt, between a greater and a lesser story.

The choice of the reader is the same as the deathbed choice that is presented in Chapter 22.

"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 f-f-falling oxygenation of the b-b-brain,' and to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story." (page 64).

In the beginning, it is claimed that this is "a story that will make you believe in God" (page x). But I still don't think that any story can really do that in an unwilling heart. There are stories that can for many people, but we have all heard these stories, and two are among the first that the author supposes when he asks if the story he is about to hear takes place "two thousand years ago in a remote corner of the Roman Empire" or "in seventh century Arabia." If those stories, and all of the smaller stories that we're all faced with every day, the stories where we find ourselves surrounded by love, aren't going to do it for you, I doubt that this one will either.

But here, as with everywhere else, if you choose doubt, you are left with something much much less: with death, with darkness, human weakness and evil, with falling oxygenation of the brain.

As for me, I choose the better story.