Review

Life of Pi
by Yann Martel

What would you like to have the most if the ship that you travel in sinks and you have to
stay in a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific, waiting for someone to save you? Maybe food or fresh
water, but more than that, someone to be with you in the boat. But what happens if that someone is
not a human beeing, but a Bengal tiger? Whell, this is the story of Pi Patel.
Life of Pi is a fantasy adventure novel, best selling book of Yann Martel.
The man character of this story is Piscine Molitor Patel, known as Pi. His name has a very
interesting story, which is told in the first part of the story.
Pi is an Indian boy,son of a zoo owner, who growns up with the animals from his father's
zoo. Pi is also a religious person. He is a Hindu, Christian and Muslim, all at the same time. This
fact is a verry important feature of the main character, present during the whole story. The story has
a theological function. The book itself starts with an episod that said that the story will make you
believe in God.
The most important part of the story is the second one, which is also the largest part. This
part begins with the decision of Pi's family to emigrate in Canada and to bring with them most of
the animals.
The ship wich they cross the Pacific in sinks and Pi lands into a lifeboat with 4 wild
animals: a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena and a Bengal tiger. From that point a terrifying story begins.
Pi is forced to push himself out of the limits and to fight with death.
The novel is a frame story. In the first story a writter wants to create a book and hears
from someone that Piscine Patel has a very interesant story. In that way, Pi becames the narrator of
his own story, being, at the same , the main character of the story.
The author managed to create two diferent narrators. One of them, the writter, is an
atheist, who doesn't use to believe stories like Pi's one and the second one is Pi, who is an religious
person. The narrative perspectives are different, and makes the impresion that the two narrators are
the voices of two different person.
The technique of description is also incredible, but not necessarly in the description of
the people and the places, even that this one has a great accuracy too, but, more than that, in the
description of the animals behavior and in the survival techniques that Pi used. The author should
have done a lot of researches to know about this survival tactics. The animal behavior and the way
they reacts also needs some researches.
The author managed also very well to create conection between past events and what
happens on the sea. Nothing is accidental. The Bengal tiger is chosen as Pi's partner because a event
that happened when he was younger. Pi's father showed him that the Bengal tiger is the most
dangerous animal in a terifiant way. Knowing how dangerous he is, for Pi was terrible to stay in the
same boat with such a predator. Relying on this aspect, the author made the story more frightfull,
but also more atractive for the reader, because you want to know how this terifiant story will end.
Another fact which the author relied on to made the situation more dramatic was that Pi
was a vegetarian and also a religious person. For a person like him to kill animals and to eat them
was also something terrible.
The author doesn't want to make Pi a superhero, who has the power to fight with all the
impediments and to make a tiger his slave. Even if he was very inteligent and determined, he would
never be able to overcome all the obstacles without the help of some lucky chances like flying fish,
rainfalls which gives him fresh wather, an island with edible seaweeds or Richard Parker's(the
Bengal tiger) seasick. All of this were atributed by the author to divinity.
That made from this novel a realistic story of a simple boy, traped in a terrifiant
situation, who escape from it without any superpower except his religion.
Even if in some situations the narrator is a liitle bit unreliable, the quality of the narration
and of the description makes you think if the related events are not only fiction and if Pi Patel does
exist in reality. The truth is that the story is just fiction, fact that proves Martel's narrative and
descriptives skills.
The final of the story is unexpected. The narrator presents two differents story with some
similarities. To find out these two stories and the similatities between them and to tell which one do
you like the most and which one do you believe in, you should read this great book before you
watch the moviel, wich is also a cinematic masterpiece awarded with 4 Oscars.