Intro to Life of Pi (part 2)
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Narrative Perspective
Pi
Richard Parker
The Will to Live
Characters
o Piscine “Pi” Molitor Patel
o Richard Parker
o The Author
o Francis Adirubasamy
o The Two Mr. Kumars
o Mr. Okamoto and Mr. Chiba
Narrative Perspective
As mentioned on Tuesday, Life of Pi is written as a story within a story.
Piscine “Pi” Molitor Patel is the main character and narrates the bulk of the
novel, but he is being interviewed by an unnamed, fictitious author. This
author’s portions of the book are printed in italics to distinguish them from
the sections that are in “Pi’s own words”—as related to us by the author.
The issue of narration becomes even more important at the end of the
novel when the reader is introduced to a third narrative voice, the
transcript of Mr. Okamoto and Mr. Chiba’s interview with Pi in the hospital.
The fact that we hear two we hear two distinctly different accounts of Pi’s
experiences—neither of them from Pi directly—emphasizes Martel’s theme
of the relative nature of truth.
Pi
Pi’s name is a shortening of his given name Piscine (after a popular
swimming pool in Paris, France). As he informs his classmates in Chapter 5,
Pi is also the name of the number used to calculate circumferences and
areas of circles.
One of the earliest approximations of pi was 22/7. Pi floated on the ocean
for 227 days. While in his lifeboat, Pi is in the center of his own circle. He
calls his gaze “a radius.” Think about symbolism associated with circles as
we study this book.
Often notes as 3.14, pi has so many decimal places that the mind cannot
accurately comprehend it. It continues on to infinity, a fact that troubles Pi
because he prefers closure, symmetry, a book with exactly one hundred
chapters. (See the handout page on the blog for a summary of each
chapter)
Richard Parker
The tiger Richard Parker, got his name due to a clerical error when he was
shipped to the Pondicherry Zoo. Yann Martel chose this name as a
reference to a character in Edgar Allen Poe’s only complete novel, The
Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838). The story tells of four
shipwrecked me who after several days at sea, nearly perish and draw
lots to decide which one of them should be killed and eaten. The cabin
boy, named Richard Parker draws the short straw.
Coincidentally, 46 years after Poe’s novel was published, nearly the exact
events actually came to pass. While sailing to Australia, a Captain Dudley
and three sailors were stranded in a skill in the Pacific after their yacht, the
Mignonette, sank. As in Poe’s novel, they were forced to eat one of their
party to survive—a young man named Richard Parker. Yet another
Richard Parker died when his ship, named the Francis Spaight, sank in
January 1846.
Richard Parker symbolizes Pi’s basic animal instincts. While on the lifeboat,
in order to stay alive, Pi must behave in ways that would have been
unthinkable in his normal life. An avowed vegetarian, he must kill fish and
birds and eat their flesh and drink their blood. As time passes, he becomes
more savage about it, stuffing food into his mouth the way Richard Parker
does. After Richard Parker mauls the blind Frenchman, Pi uses the man’s
flesh for bait and even stoops to cannibalism. In the second story Pi tells
the Japanese investigators he is Richard Parker and kills his mother’s
murderer. Richard Parker is the version of himself that Pi has invented to
make his story more acceptable to both himself and his audience. The
brutality of his mother’s death and his own shocking act of revenge are
too much for Pi to deal with, and he finds it easier to imagine a tiger,
rather than himself, as the killer and eater of human flesh.
The Will to Live
Life of Pi is a story about fighting against overwhelming odds to stay alive.
Pi abandons vegetarianism to avoid starving to death. Orange Juice, the
peaceful orangutan, fights the hyena. Even the injured zebra battles to
stay alive. The novel illustrates the extent to which an animal will go—both
heroic and barbaric—to survive. The hyena’s treachery and the blind
Frenchman’s attempt at cannibalism show the extent to which living
creatures will go to save their own lives. At the end of the novel, when Pi
raises the possibility that the fierce tiger, Richard Parker is actually an
aspect of his own personality, and that Pi himself is responsible for some of
the horrific events as he has narrated, the reader is forced to ponder the
extremes of “acceptable” and unacceptable” behaviours on is capable
of in a life-or-death situation.
Characters
Piscine “Pi” Molitor Patel—the narrator and main character of the story. At
the age of 16 while emigrating from India with his family, he is the sole
survivor of a shipwreck in the Pacific Ocean.
Richard Parker—450 pound Royal Bengal Tiger who is stranded on a
lifeboat with Pi. In order to survive, Pi must coexist with Richard Parker.
The Author—an unidentified narrative voice, who begins the novel in the
Author’s Note, explaining the circumstances by which he came to hear
the story of Pi. For a while his impressions of Pi are intermingled with Pi’s
account.
Francis Adirubasamy—A friend of Pi’s parents. Avid swimmer. Suggests the
name of Piscine Molitor for the newborn Pi and teaches him to swim. He is
the one who approaches the author in Pondicherry and promises to tell a
story that will “make [him] believe in God.”
The Two Mr. Kumars—The firs Mr. Kumar is Pi’s biology teacher, an atheist
and a rationalist. It is through him that Pi comes to respect atheists as the
brothers of people of faith. The second Mr. Kumar is the Muslim baker who
introduces Pi to Islam. He is the religious/faithful balance to the atheist and
rational Mr. Kumar. Both Mr. Kumars meet at the zoo and find the zebra a
remarkable creature.
Mr. Okamoto and Mr. Chiba—two officials of the Japanese Ministry of
Transport who interview Pi after his rescue in Mexico. They do not believe
the Richard Parker account of Pi’s story which prompts Pi to tell another
version. Through their interview Martel invites the reader to question Pi’s
reliability as a narrator and the very nature of truth.