life of pi

life of pi

As a society, we look for validity and truth. However, this often causes the importance and meaning of a story to be lost. Fictional stories contain a greater likelihood of lingering in the imagination. These stories allow us to understand truths that factual stories are simply incapable of. “If we citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams” (Martel xii).
Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, is a story within a story, describing Piscine Patel’s survival on the Pacific Ocean. Shortly after the Tsimtsum sank, sixteen year old Pi finds himself on a lifeboat with an orangutan, hyena, zebra, and tiger. He realizes that besides for the animals, he is the sole survivor of the ship wreck and he is devastated by the loss of his family. All except Pi and the tiger, named Richard Parker, are eventually killed. Pi and Richard Parker survive seven months at sea. Pi takes it upon himself to tame the tiger and they survive side by side rather peacefully. When the lifeboat finally reaches a beach in Mexico, Richard Parker disappears into the jungle, never to be seen by Pi again.
Pi shares his story of survival with the Japanese Ministry of Transport, as they are trying to shed light on the reasons for the sinking of the Tsiumtsum. The Japanese officials do not believe Pi’s incredible story of survival with a Bengal tiger and encourage him to share the true story to which Pi responds, “you want a flat story. An immobile story. You want a dry, yeastless factuality” (302). He proceeds with a similar story but replaces the orangutan with his mother, the zebra with a sailor, the hyena with a cook, and he becomes the tiger. Following Pi’s reveal of the true account, he tells the officials that neither story explains the sinking of the Tsimtsum, neither story makes a factual difference, and neither can be proven true but in both stories, his entire family dies and he...