The first half of the first chapter of 'Life of Pi' is dedicated to the habits of three-toed sloths more than any other topic, before the narrator, Piscine (Pi) Molitor Patel, begins talking about his personal background. As the plot of the book is revealed to be potentially allegorical, Pi surviving months out at sea after a shipwreck with a number of zoo animals, it becomes more clear that Pi's understanding of his world helps him make sense of what happened to him.
The first major climax, the boat sinking that puts Pi in a life raft in the middle of the Indian ocean, does not happen until chapter 37, over 100 pages into the story. Because it is so miraculous that a 16 year old kid could survive for so long at sea, the author Yann Martel takes the first part of the novel to hint at how Pi's survival was even possible.
Raised as the son of a zoo owner, Pi learns a number of life lessons from his encounters with the zoo animals. When the ship carrying the zoo's animals sinks, a 16 year old Pi ends up on a lifeboat with a zebra, tiger, hyena, and an orangutan. Tangents about the various animals of the zoo that seemed only relevant in the first part of the story slowly make sense when Pi grapples with unforeseen struggles on his lifeboat, namely the 450 pound tiger named Richard Parker.
In chapter 8 a younger Pi learns from his father just how murderous tigers can be: "I'm going to show you how dangerous tigers are," [father] continued. "I want you to remember this lesson for the rest of your lives." Because Pi does remember, he uses this instance to train Richard Parker away from killing him in the lifeboat. The real lesson that Pi learned as a child was about respect and awareness of danger, both of which are useful to him later in the story.
As shown by the details, Pi's animal lessons are human lessons. Despite being mentioned in a number of early chapters by the name 'Richard Parker,' there isn't a detail that identifies him as an actual tiger until chapter 37 when Pi's world takes on a new reality. The mentioning of different animals' lifestyles in the first part help Pi piecemeal his survival skills in the second half of the book.
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The novel begins as an adult Pi discusses his life after the sinking of Tsimtsum, the loss of his family, and his months at sea as a boy. In university, Pi had pursued religious studies and zoology, in which he did his thesis on three-toed sloths. He studied sloths in their natural habitat in Brazil and describes them as a "beautiful example of the miracle of life". Despite their slow nature, sloths are able to blend into their environment and survive against jungle predators. This parallels how Pi had survived for 227 days at sea. After experiencing such traumatic events in his childhood, Pi found the sloths comforting with their peaceful lifestyles. He describes the sloths as wise, content, and meditative, and the animals remind him of God. This is crucial to the novel's central theme of faith and spirituality.
In Chapter 1, Pi also expresses that he misses a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. In his subsequent narrative, Pi tells the story of how he survived at sea with Richard Parker. The tiger kept him alert to danger and was a companion on his journey. Toward the end of the novel, the representatives investigating the sinking of the Tsimstum do not believe his lifeboat story. Pi tells a different tale in which the animals are instead passengers of the ship, and it is left to the readers to decide which story is true. If Richard Parker had not actually been with him on his journey, readers can interpret the tiger as God, a figure Pi loves and fears. Richard Parker contributes to the story's magical realism and overarching theme of faith and spirituality.
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