What It’s About

After Pi’s ship sinks he is left as a castaway in the most unlikely of scenarios. A young Indian boy, a Bengal tiger, a hyena, a zebra and an orangutang are trapped in close quarters on a small lifeboat. Natural instincts kick in, it’s a battle of survival that Pi must win if he wants to make it t land. The book explores religion and spirituality through a most unique lens.

My Thoughts

Two things really stuck out to me.

1. The Writing Style

Yann Martel’s use of aesthetic language is superb. He creates the most vivid, realistic and immersive imagery I have ever read. The attention to detail is exceptional, he focuses on tiny details and seemingly irrelevant descriptions to paint an astonishing picture. Martel has the ability to describe an entire landscape, while never directly mentioning the actual landscape, he focuses on glimpses of the image, snapshots of the scene and allows the reader to fill in the blanks.

Another example of the author’s attention to detail is that the book is exactly 100 chapters long, giving it a sense of closure.

An example of Martel’s descriptive language:

“Daybreak came. It happened quickly, yet by imperceptible degrees. A corner of the sky changed colours. The air began filling with light. The calm sea opened up around me like a great book. Warmth came only when the sun, looking like an electrically lit orange, broke across the horizon.”

However effective this language might be, it can get tiresome at some points, especially when you are reading three pages worth of a description about rain. This could just be a fault of my own though, as I felt the same way when reading “The Old Man and The Sea”.

2. The Ending

The book’s finale caught me off guard. The author lures the reader into a false sense of security through pages of tireless descriptions of Pi’s journey. By chapter ninety five one feels that the book is over and that there can’t be much more to be said. Martel finds a way. The counter-narrative that Pi offers to the Japanese investigators eerily mirrors his original story.

It’s impossible to know for certain, but I prefer to reside on the Bengal tiger side of the ship, willing to believe the more adventurous tale instead of the other bleak and depressing story.

But whichever version you believe in is somewhat irrelevant, the key is to be able to zoom out and examine both stories. Wether you believe the far fetched, creative floating zoo rendition or the dark human survival tale, they both end up with the same outcome; the ship sank, nobody knows how and Pi survived.

The power of storytelling is clear here. One story offers hope, beauty and meaning. The other offers darkness and despair.

The moral of the story is that the stories we choose to believe shape how we experience reality and find meaning in suffering. This is a metaphor for faith, and one of Martel’s biggest values;

believing in something greater doesn’t change the facts of life, but it changes how we carry them.

Who Would Like It

People who enjoy books that make you think, question and consider the fundamentals of life.