Book Review: 'Life of Pi' - Yann Martel

Life of Pi is the story about an Indian boy who is trapped on a lifeboat with a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra and a tiger when the ship he is sailing on is destroyed by a storm. He survived 227 days at sea with only the tiger after the zebra and orangutan are eaten by the hyena (which is then in turn eaten by the tiger).

A central theme explored by the author, Yann Martel, is the human ability to take a leap of faith. Martel gambles on the reader's sense of wonder and challenges us to understand our own preference for acknowledgment of truth over fantasy. Martel does not make this easy. The magical island and the entire tale of Pi himself is constructed to detach further and further from reality so the reader is forced to choose credulity or disbelief.

“I wept like a child. It was not because I was overcome at having survived my ordeal, though I was. Nor was it the presence of my brothers and sisters, though that too was very moving. I was weeping because Richard Parker had left me so unceremoniously.” (Pg 285)

To me, the departure of Richard Parker (the tiger) marked the end of that part of Pi. While he was onboard the lifeboat, Pi developed another personality much like a tiger’s - fierce, resilient, and keen to survive. The fights between him and the tiger were really battles between his two personalities. As his ordeal ends, that personality ends too. This leaves Pi with his only and former personality, the more human one.

In the following extract, the author illustrates the lack of civilization on the lifeboat.

“My clothes disintegrated, victims of the sun and the salt. First they became gauze-thin. Then they tore until only the seams were left. Lastly, the seams broke. For months I lived stark naked except for the whistle that dangled from my neck by a string.” (Pg 192)

Pi lives naked, there is no one to witness his nudity. He has reverted back to the human’s most basic form. There’s a fascinating feeling to his account of the destruction of his clothes. The way it disintegrates seems to mirror the disintegration of Pi’s sanity and civilization. Pi recounts this disintegration with interest, like an outsider. He’s observing the changes outside the metaphorical glass wall. It doesn’t feel like he’s really the one experiencing it all. Note how the clothes were “victims”. This word changes the sun and salt from friends to enemies. Pi sees them as an attacker, a tormentor to be afraid of. He shields himself from them.

“Everything suffered. Everything became sun-bleached and weather-beaten. The lifeboat, the raft until it was lost, the tarpaulin, the stills, the rain catchers, the plastic bags, the lines, the blankets, the net - all became worn, stretched, slack, cracked, dried, rotted, torn, discoloured. What was orange became whitish orange. What was smooth became rough. What was rough became smooth. What was sharp became blunt. What was whole became tattered.” (Pg 238)

I really like this thorough description of everything falling apart. The author starts off the first two sentences in the paragraph with “everything”. Then, he goes on to list all the items that suffered. This is to accentuate that all the items named were everything (there were very limited supplies onboard) and every single thing, no matter how small, didn’t escape the suffering. I think the use of contrast in the second half of the extract is especially effective. When you place them side by side, you experience just how different they look and feel from what they were before. The comparison enriches the colour of the description. There’s a reversion of everything - including Pi’s nature - on the accursed boat.

One of the most interesting things was the chapters of the book. The author has exactly one hundred chapters. Some chapters were long, others were short: a paragraph or even just a sentence. In that way, I thought it was rather like a diary entry of the mind. Pi remembers things in chunks, and the different lengths of the chapters reflect it as such.

This book was extremely enjoyable to read. It is smoky with flavour with its unexpected descriptions in some places and blunt retellings in others. The variety of sentence structure kept things real and appealing to read. When I read this book, I actually felt that Pi was sitting beside me, telling me about his adventures. In the end, the best part about the novel is its ability to induce a personal journey inside the readers themselves as they live emotionally through Pi's own passage. We leave the novel more certain and simultaneously unsure about ourselves.

I was ecstatic when I realized that not only was Life of Pi being adapted for a film, but it was my favourite director, Ang Lee, who would be directing it. I have never been a fan of 3D, but Lee insisted he had shot it that way specifically and I knuckled under. Lee was right. There are some depths of beauty in the movie that can only be brought out by the 3D effects. The movie was beautiful and very well made. I recommend it almost as passionately as I recommend the novel.

 - Calista