Life of Pi

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Life of Pi  
Author Yann Martel
Original title Life of Pi
Country Canada
Language English
Genre(s) Novel
Publisher Alfred A. Knopf Canada
Publication date September 2001
Pages 356
ISBN ISBN 0-676-97376-0 (first edition, hardcover)

ISBN 0-15-602732-1 (US paperback edition)

ISBN 1-565-11780-8 (audiobook, Penguin Highbridge)
Preceded by Self
Followed by We Ate the Children Last

Life of Pi is a fantasy adventure novel written by Canadian author Yann Martel. In the story, the protagonist Piscine "Pi" Molitor Patel, an Indian boy from Pondicherry, explores issues of spirituality and practicality from an early age. He survives 227 days after a shipwreck, while stranded on a boat in the Pacific Ocean.

First published by Knopf Canada in September 2001, the UK edition of the novel won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction the following year.[1] It was chosen for CBC Radio's Canada Reads 2003, where it was championed by author Nancy Lee. It won the 2003 Boeke Prize, a South African novel award. Its French translation, L'Histoire de Pi, was also chosen in the French version of the reading competition, Le combat des livres.

Contents

[edit] Plot

The novel begins with an author’s note describing a journey to India, where he meets a man named Francis Adirubasamy in a coffee house in Pondicherry. His response to the author’s claim that he needs inspiration is “I have a story that will make you believe in God.” After which he refers the author to Piscine Patel in Toronto, who immediately begins to tell his own story, starting in Chapter 1.

As a teenager in Pondicherry, India, Pi Patel describes his family – himself, his parents, and his brother Ravi. He is constantly exploring new opportunities and learning many odd and exciting things. His father is the proprietor of the Pondicherry Zoo, where Pi learns much of the workings and raising of animals. Pi’s mother is an avid reader and introduces to him numerous literary works from which he learns the joys of numerous schools of thought. His school is filled with amazing teachers, one of whom, Mr. Kumar, the biology teacher, is an inspiration to Pi.

Pi Patel derives his full name (Piscine) from a world famous swimming pool in France; his parents are good friends with Francis Adirubasamy (from the author’s note), a world class swimmer who often goes on about the Piscine Molitor in Paris. Piscine goes by Pi because his schoolmates mock his name and call him “Pissing” as it sounds similar to Piscine. They all take to the name and from that point on, his name is no longer Piscine, but Pi.

Pi grew up as a Hindu, but discovered the Catholic faith at age 14 from a priest by the name of Father Martin. He is soon baptized. He then meets Mr. Kumar, a Muslim of some standing and converts to Islam. Therefore, he openly practices all three religions avidly. When the three religious teachers meet up with his parents at the zoo, they demand that he choose a single religion, to which he announces he cannot. Throughout this section, Pi discusses numerous religious matters as well as his thoughts on culture and zoology.

When Pi is 16, Pi’s father decides that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's ("Mrs. Gandhi") political actions are unsavory and decides to close up the zoo to move to Toronto. He sells off a majority of the zoo animals to various zoos in America and the animals are loaded onto the same boat that the family will take to reach Winnipeg, Canada. On the journey the boat sinks.

As the only survivor of the shipwreck, he is stuck in a lifeboat with a dying zebra and a hyena. Pi sees another survivor floating in the water and only after throwing them a life preserver and pulling them aboard does he realize that it is “Richard Parker”, the 450 pound Bengal tiger from his father’s zoo. He immediately jumps overboard and stays there until he realizes that there are sharks nearby.

Upon re-entering the boat, he wedges the tarpaulin up with an oar and decides he might survive if he can stay on top and keep Richard Parker beneath it. An orangutan is found floating on a large mass of bananas and climbs aboard the lifeboat. Over the next week, the zebra and orangutan are eaten by the hyena, which is in turn eaten by the tiger.

Over the course of the next 7 months aboard the lifeboat, Pi hides on a makeshift raft behind the boat and begins the process of taming Richard Parker with a whistle and treats from the sea, as well as by marking his portion of the boat. He begins to get close to the tiger, developing the kind of bond a zookeeper does with his menagerie. After a while, Pi learns to kill and eat from the sea, sharing with the tiger. However, the two do not eat nearly enough and as time passes, they become quite ill.

At a certain point, the two become very hungry and ill and Pi loses his sight. They then come across another blind man who is stranded in his lifeboat on the Pacific. The two talk for a bit about food and eventually the blind man tries to board Pi’s boat, intent on eating him. However, when he boards the boat, Richard Parker attacks and eats the man. Pi's tears over the man's death help clear his vision and after washing his eyes, he eventually regains his sight completely. Small portions of food on the other boat give Pi the strength to continue.

Still floating along alone and desperate, the two come across an island made of algae and populated with Meerkats. They disembark and Pi begins eating the algae, regaining his strength during the day and sleeping on the boat at night. Richard Parker regains his strength from eating the meerkats who live on the island and returns to the boat to sleep every night. Eventually, Pi finds a set of corroded human teeth wrapped in tree leaves and is horrified. He realizes that during the night the algae become acidic and the island becomes 'carnivorous', which is the reason why the Meerkats sleep in trees and why Richard Parker returns to sleep on the boat. More importantly, Pi's discovery awakens him to the hopelessness of remaining on the island, where he will eventually but inevitably give up hope of being found, and immediately leaves the next day with Richard Parker.

Finally, after more time spent floating along in the ocean, Pi sights land in Mexico and disembarks. Richard Parker immediately runs off into the woods and Pi is recovered by villagers who take him to a hospital. The shipping company that owned the sunken ship interview Pi about what happened. Pi relates to them the story of his 227 days on the boat, but they do not believe his tale of surviving with a Bengal Tiger and its fantastic events.

Upon being asked to tell them a story without animals, Pi relays to them a second story where his mother, a sailor with a broken leg and a cook were aboard the lifeboat instead of the animals. The two men realize that Pi's second story closely parallels the first, but without any fantastical elements. Pi then asks the two men which story they like most since both stories lead to the same outcome. They both agree they like the first story most and that is the one they use in their report.

[edit] Yann Martel

Yann Martel is a Canadian author who won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction award for his novel Life of Pi. On November 11, 2002, in an interview with PBS,[2] Martel revealed his inspiration and motives for his novel. He said, "I was sort of looking for a story, not only with a small ‘s’ but sort of with a capital ‘S’ – something that would direct my life." He spoke of being lonely and needing direction in his life. This novel became that direction and purpose for his life.[3]

[edit] Characters

[edit] Piscine Molitor Patel

"Pi" is the narrator and main character of the story. The story is told as a narrative when Pi is much older and living in Canada. He recounts the story of his life and thus the 227-day journey on a lifeboat when his boat sinks.

[edit] Richard Parker

Richard Parker is the Bengal tiger that is stranded on the lifeboat with Pi Patel when the ship sinks. Upon returning to land, Pi is devastated when Richard Parker, who had become his sole companion, leaves him unceremoniously and without a backward glance. However, in light of the more 'accurate' account of the journey that Pi provides in the final section of the novel, it is possible that Richard Parker is actually a symbol of the savagery that overtook Pi in his desperation. Where Richard Parker dispatched the hyena in the original account, so Pi killed the merciless cook in the alternate story. Upon Pi's return to humans and humanity, it was no longer necessary to fight for survival and he had no more need for his inner-animal, who simply 'disappeared'.

Martel named the tiger after an Edgar Allan Poe character from his The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838). The book tells of four shipwrecked men who, after many days privation, drew lots to decide who should be killed and eaten so the others could survive. Richard Parker, a mutinous sailor, drew the short straw and was eaten.

Tales of cannibalism by shipwrecked sailors were not uncommon in the 19th century. For instance, in December 1835, the ship Francis Spaight was wrecked in the north Atlantic. Some survivors of that wreck were known to have lived by cannibalism. In January 1846 a man named Richard Parker died when his ship, another Francis Spaight, sank.

In 1884, forty-six years after Poe's novel was published, a new shipwreck reflected many similarities with that story. After the sinking of their yacht Mignonette on the way to Australia, Captain Tom Dudley and three sailors were stranded in a dinghy in the Pacific Ocean. They believed they had no choice but to eat one of the party to survive. The victim was a 17 year old cabin boy named Richard Parker.[4] A.W. Brian Simpson's book on the subject mentions the Francis Spaight and also, interestingly, refers to a boat called Tiger on which a youth was cannibalized in 1766. Having read about these events, Yann Martel said, "So many Richard Parkers had to mean something." (See also Richard Parker (shipwrecked))

[edit] Setting

The novel is a work of fiction that draws from historical events and places in India. The Patel household's discussions of the political situation refer to historical events. Pondicherry is a former French colony in India. It does have an Indian Coffee House and Botanical Gardens. The Botanical Garden has a toy train track. It does not have a working train, nor does the garden have a zoo, although it does have a small aquarium. Munnar, the destination for the Patel family's vacation, is a small but popular hill station in Kerala. The town has a church. Madurai, also referenced in the novel, is a popular tourist/pilgrimage site in Tamil Nadu.

[edit] The illustrated edition

In October 2005 a worldwide competition was launched to find an artist to illustrate Life of Pi. The competition was run by Scottish publisher Canongate Books, UK newspaper The Times, Australian newspaper The Age and Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail. Croatian artist Tomislav Torjanac was chosen as the illustrator for this new edition, which was published in September 2007.[5][6][7]

[edit] Film and theatrical adaptations

Directors were interested in creating a movie based on the novel. M. Night Shyamalan, writer and director of The Sixth Sense, became interested in a proposed film based upon the novel, but dropped the project due to its twist ending (a common feature of Shyamalan's films). He told Entertainment Weekly magazine:

"I was concerned that as soon as you put my name on it, everybody would have a different experience. Whereas if someone else did it, it would be much more satisfying, I think. Expectations, you've got to be aware of them."

Alfonso Cuarón, director of the third Harry Potter movie, also expressed interest in making a film from the novel. In 2006 Jean-Pierre Jeunet was signed to direct the movie, but pulled out due to budget reasons.

Keith Robinson, artistic director of the youth-oriented Twisting Yarn Theatre Company, received the exclusive UK rights from Yann Martel to adapt the novel into a play. The Twisting Yarn promotes theatre in education, with funding by the Bradford Council in England. Andy Rashleigh wrote the adaptation, with was directed by Keith Robinson. The play was produced at the Alhambra Theatre, Bradford, England in 2003. The company toured England with the play in 2004 and 2007.

Keith Robinson also directed a second version of the play. He brought some of his company to work with students of the Ba Drama, Applied Theatre and Education Course at the Central School of Speech and Drama in Cornwall, England. The joint production was performed at the Minack Theatre in late June 2008. It was well received by the press and community.

Ang Lee will be directing the adaptation as per his comments on the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.

[edit] Allegation of plagiarism

When the Booker Prize was awarded to Martel in 2002, Brazilian author Moacyr Scliar claimed he considered taking legal action for plagiarism against the Canadian. He contended there was too much similarity between the premise of Life of Pi and that of his own 1981 novel Max e os Felinos. Published in Brazil in Portuguese, it told of a Jewish-German refugee who crossed the Atlantic Ocean while sharing his boat with a jaguar. In 1990 it was published in English as Max and the Cats, translated by Eloah F. Giacomelli. Scliar said he was perplexed that Martel "used the idea without consulting or even informing him." After talking with Martel, however, Scliar elected not to pursue the matter.[8]

Martel said he did not read Scliar's book, but he did read a review of it many years prior to writing Life of Pi. A dedication to Scliar "for the spark of life" appeared in the Author's Note of Life of Pi.

[edit] See also

  • Poon Lim, who holds the actual world record as a solo sea survivor (133 days)
  • Book trailer; Life of Pi has the record for being the first of the winners of the Booker Prize to have its own book trailer

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ "The Life of Pi", The Man Booker Prize website
  2. ^ Ray Suarez, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, November 11, 2002
  3. ^ Yann Martel, "How I wrote Life of Pi", Powells Bookstore, Retrieved Jan 20, 2007
  4. ^ The Queen v. Dudley and Stephens; L.R. 14 Q.B.D. 273
  5. ^ Life of Pi: The Illustrated Edition by Yann Martel and Tomislav Torjanac, The Times, 15 September 2007
  6. ^ A brush with the art of Pi, The Times, 15 April 2006
  7. ^ In Pictures: The Illustrated Life of Pi, The Guardian, 27 September 2007
  8. ^ Scliar, Moacyr. Interview with Eleanor Wachtel. Writers & Company. CBC Radio 1. July 16, 2006. (Interview [.ram]).

[edit] References

 This article includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (April 2009)

[edit] External links

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Preceded by
True History of the Kelly Gang		 Man Booker Prize recipient
2002		 Succeeded by
Vernon God Little
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