LIFE OF PI
by Yann Martel
GROUP DISCUSSION TOPICS
PI’S INCREDULOUS SURVIVAL
• Discuss the factors that contribute to Pi’s
survival.
• Francis Adirubasamy’s swimming lessons
• Pi’s Father’s lessons about wild animals
and Pi’s own knowledge about animals:
(flight distance; social behavior; territorial
behavior; alpha/omega concept; circus
trainer’s behavior) AND
Survival:
Pi’s Ingenuity (Cleverness)
• The temporary prow he builds at first
• The raft he later builds using oars and life
vests
• The solar sills
• The training of Richard Parker
• Discovery that Pi can make Parker seasick
and therefore condition and control him
• Learning to fish and catch turtles
Survival: Richard Parker
• Richard Parker’s contribution to Pi’s Survival:
• Parker gives Pi the will to live. (Parker cannot
survive without Pi; Pi is responsible for
Parker’s life) See page 236.
• Parker distracts Pi from thinking about his
lost family and his tragedy.
• An “idle mind” tends to sink. Parker’s
presence keeps Pi’s mind alert and active.
(Chapter 57)
Survival:
Pi’s Faith and Will to Live
• When Pi is about to give up, he hears a voice in his
heart. The message is a prayer: “I will not die. I refuse
it. I will make it through this nightmare. I will beat the
odds, as great as they are. I have survived so far,
miraculously. Now I will turn miracle into routine. The
amazing will be seen every day. I will put in all the hard
work necessary. Yes, so long as God is with me, I will
not die. Amen” (Chapter 53)
• Pi prays five times every day and practices the devotions
of all three of his religions, Hinduism, Christianity, and
Islam
• “The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and
God would remain, a shining point of light in my heart. I
would go on loving,” Pi says (Chapter 74).
Survival: Zoomorphism
• Zoomorphism is a phenomenon when an animal takes a
human or another species as one of its own
• Pi identifies potential causes for this phenomenon
• One is need for companionship
• Social well being is another; staves off violent anarchy
• Tells of a mouse living with vipers (i.e. snakes)
• A dog serving as surrogate mother for lion cubs
• The rhinos and the goats
• All of this lends credence to his later tale of life with
Richard Parker on the lifeboat
FREEDOM: ZOOS AND RELIGION
•
“I don’t mean to defend zoos. Close them all down
if you want (and let us hope that what wildlife
remains can survive in what is left of the natural
world). I know zoos are no longer in people’s good
graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain
illusions about freedom plague them both.” (19).
• “You have known the confined freedom of a zoo
most of your life, now you will know the free
confinement of a jungle” (Chapter 94). Part of Pi’s
imagined farewell speech to Richard Parker.
Consider these two statements. What do they mean?
Two Approaches to Life:
• Science and Religion/Reason and Faith
• Mr. Kumar, Pi’s Biology Teacher, is an atheist.
He says, There are no grounds for going beyond
a scientific explanation of reality and no sound
reason for believing anything but our sense
experience. A clear intellect, close attention to
detail and a little scientific knowledge will expose
religion as superstitious bosh. God does not
exist” (27). Mr. Kumar had polio as a child and
called out to God for help. He does not think
God heard him. Pi says that polio must be an
awful disease if it “can kill God in a man.”
Two Approaches to Life:
Science and Religion
• The author describes Pi’s faith and spirituality
as: “Words of divine consciousness: moral
exaltation; lasting feelings of elevation, elation,
joy; a quickening of the moral sense, which
strikes me as more important than an intellectual
understanding of things; an alignment of the
universe along moral lines, not intellectual ones;
a realization that the founding principle of
existence is what we call love, which works itself
out sometimes not clearly, not cleanly, not
immediately, nonetheless ineluctably” (63).
Two Approaches to Life:
Science and Religion
• “Bapu Ghandi said, ‘All religions are true.’ I
just want to love God” (69). Pi gives this
response to the three holy men of the
three different religions that Pi embraces.
These men and Pi’s parents insist that a
person can only have one religion. Pi
disagrees.
On Religion
• Pi also says, “The main battlefield for good
is not the open ground of the public arena
but the small clearing of each heart.
Meanwhile, the lot of widows and
homeless children is very hard, and it is to
their defense, not God’s, that the selfrighteous should rush. To me, religion is
about our dignity, not our depravity” (71).
On Religion
• Pi’s father and mother are not religious
people, and they do not understand Pi’s
religious practices. His father says,
“Progress is unstoppable. It is a drumbeat
to which we must all march. Technology
helps and good ideas spread—these are
two laws of nature. If you don’t let
technology help you, if you resist good
ideas, you condemn yourself to
dinosaurhood!” (75).
On “Dry, Yeastless Factuality”
• When Mr. Okamota and Mr. Chiba do not believe
Pi’s story, Pi becomes angry with them. Mr.
Okamota tells Pi, “We believe what we see.”
• Mr. Okamota also tells Pi his story contradicts
the “laws of nature” (i.e. science)
• Pi says, ”If you stumble at mere believability,
what are you living for? Isn’t love hard to
believe?”
“Dry, Yeastless Factuality”
• When they persist in their disbelief, Pi
shouts at them: “Don’t you bully me with
your politeness! Love is hard to
believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to
believe, ask any scientist. God is hard
to believe, ask any believer. What is
your problem with hard to believe?”
(297)
“Dry, Yeastless Factuality”
• Pi also tells Okamota and Chiba, “be
excessively reasonable and you risk
throwing out the universe with the
bathwater” (298). “Tigers exist, lifeboats
exist, oceans exist. Because the three have
never come together in your narrow, limited
experience, you refuse to believe that they
might. Yet the plain fact is that the Tsimtsum
brought them together and then sank.” (299)
Dry, Yeastless Factuality
• Pi finally gets frustrated and tells Okamota
and Chiba, ““I know what you want. You
want a story that won’t surprise you.
That will confirm what you already
know. That won’t make you see higher
or further or differently. You want a flat
story. An immobile story. You want dry,
yeastless factuality” (302).
Pi’s Second, Factual Story
• Pi finally gives the men what they want, a more
believable story.
• When he is finished telling this second story, he
asks them, “So tell me, since it makes no factual
difference to you and you can’t prove the
question either way, which story do you prefer?
Which is the better story, the story with animals
or the story without animals?”
• They agree the story with animals is better and
Pi says, “And so it goes with God.”
Science and Religion:
Mutually Exclusive?
• Mr. Okamota’s report makes reference to
the tiger, so it appears that Pi converts him
to believing what is hard to believe.
• When we study Inherit the Wind, this issue
of a scientific vs. a religious view of life
and knowledge will arise again.
• Pi uses both reason and faith in his life. At
least for Pi, the two approaches to life are
not mutually exclusive.