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"I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both."
- spoken by Pi
- Mr. Patel, Pi has recently told us, runs the Pondicherry Zoo, a place that Pi considered paradise as a boy. Pi has heard many people say negative things about zoos—namely that they deprive noble, wild creatures of their freedom and trap them in boring, domesticated lives—but he disagrees. Wild animals in their natural habitat encounter fear, fighting, lack of food, and parasites on a regular basis.
- Given all these biological facts, animals in the wild are not free at all—rather, they are subject to a stringent set of social and natural laws that they must follow or die. Since animals are creatures of habit, zoo enclosures, with abundant food and water, clean cages, and a constant routine, are heaven for them. Given the chance, Pi says, most zoo animals do not ever try to escape, unless something in their cage frightens them.
- We have already learned that Pi studied zoology and religion at the University of Toronto, and the above quote demonstrates just how closely aligned the two subjects are in his mind. He is quick to turn a discussion of animal freedom into a metaphor for people's religious inclinations.
- Just as people misunderstand the nature of animals in the wild, they also misunderstand what it means for a person to be "free" of any religious system of belief. The agnostic (someone who is uncertain about the existence of god and does not subscribe to any faith) may think he is at liberty to believe or disbelieve anything he wants, but in reality he does not allow himself to take imaginative leaps. Instead, he endures life's ups and downs the way an animal in the wild does: because he has to.
- A person of faith, on the other hand, is like an animal in an enclosure, surrounded on all sides by a version of reality that is far kinder than reality itself. Pi embraces religious doctrine for the same reason he embraces the safety and security of a zoo enclosure: it makes life easier and more pleasurable.
"To choose doubt as a philosophy of life akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation."
Agnosticism is when you are unsure if you believe in God or not. Just like immobility in the way that you're stuck between a sate of belief and disbelief with no idea of where to go. You do not take a "leap of faith" or even a "leap of disbelief" to one side; you remain stuck in indecision.
"This house is more than a box full of icons. I started noticing small signs of conjugal existence. They were there all along, but I hadn't seen them because I wasn't looking for them." (Chapter 30)
The write is in Pi's house, but it takes him a long time to see that Pi is married. The narrator is therefore surprised by the family life Pi leads because this didn't fit the mental picture and assumptions that he had made about Pi and the kind of way he would live his life now, so many years after his experience. It is only when he knows of Pi's wife that he is able to reassess and begins to see what was in front of him all the time. This enforces the idea that sometimes even when we think we're paying attention, there are still things that go surprisingly unnoticed by the human eye.
"I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life.” (ch.56)
Pi explains that fear is life's only enemy. If Pi let his fear of Richard Parker take control he would have not survived on the ocean, because he wouldn't have the courage to train Richard Parker or he would have attempted to kill RP and end up losing the fight.
‘‘I put my full weight on my foot. Still I did not sink. Still I did not believe.’’
When Pi reaches the island, he is so taken aback that even with the proof right in front of him, he's in disbelief. This is very similar to what's been mentioned earlier with an agnostic, they're so adapted to not believing in anything that even if they were staring directly into the face of God, they still might not believe what's right in front of them. Pi had spent over 200 days losing hope so it was difficult for him to believe it when he found it.
"Life on a lifeboat isn't much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn't be more simple, nor the stakes higher" (Chapter 78).
This passage was chosen for its power and ability to really give the reader a sense of the quality of life in Pi's situation. The explanation and description of the constant presence of multiple emotions that Pi experiences on the lifeboat allow the reader to somewhat relate to and understand what he was going through. That last two sentences of this passage really say it all, when everything is so bad, anything seems great.
"To be a castaway is to be a point perpetually at the centre of a circle. However much things may appear to change...the geometry never changes. Your gaze is always a radius. The circumference is ever great"
Pi describes the feeling, at sea, of being the absolute center. No matter where he is, the distance to the horizon remains the same. But the phrase "perpetually at the centre," for Pi, also suggests loneliness and spiritual abandonment. And such utter and extreme isolation, for Pi and anyone else, leads to madness.
"Nothing distracted the meerkats from their little lives of pond staring and algae nibbling" (Chapter 92).
The meerkats, of course, are the followers of religion. They have given up rational thought, allowing Richard Parker to kill them, "devouring one meerkat after another, blood dripping from his mouth, and they, cheek to jowl with a tiger, were jumping up and down on the spot, as if crying, 'My turn! My turn! My turn!'" They had accepted the religion entirely.
"The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar" (Chapter 93).
Pi narrates these words in chapter 93, toward the end of his ordeal at sea and as he is reaching the depths of his despair. As Pi mentions just before this, his situation seems "as pointless as the weather." Up to now, Pi's tedious life at sea has been alleviated somewhat with sporadic new activities: killing fish, taming Richard Parker, creating drinkable water using the solar stills, and so on. More notably, the blind French castaway and the days spent on the floating island gave Pi a change in routine. But now the novelty has worn off. This section, in which nothing is expected to happen, drives Pi into utter hopelessness, yet he must continue living.
At this point Pi turns to God and, Martel implies, invents the story that we have just read. His mind is desperate to escape the physical reality of continued existence on the lifeboat, and so it soars into the realm of fiction. At his lowest point, Pi reaches for the only remaining sources of salvation available to him: faith and imagination. Through the plot's remaining action, Martel emphasizes that such a strategy for self-preservation can actually be astonishingly effective. Immediately after this moment in the text, Pi lands on a beach in Mexico. Like a deus ex machina suddenly offering resolution in an ancient Greek play, the religion of storytelling is Pi's escape hatch, rescuing him from the depths of his misery.
"'So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?' Mr. Okamoto: 'That's an interesting question?' Mr. Chiba: 'The story with animals.' Mr. Okamoto: 'Yes. The story with animals is the better story.' Pi Patel: 'Thank you. And so it goes with God'" (Chapter 99).
Mr. Pi Patel moves pretty quick here. Pi has said plenty already about how we interpret reality anyway and how we might as well choose the better story. But Pi - our clever sampler of world religions - takes it a step further. He argues a world with God makes a better story than a world without God. In cases where we have no definite proof, Pi says the best fiction is the best reality. Is Pi pulling a fancy trick? Or does he have a point?
“It was the first sentient being I have killed. I was now a killer.”
Pi resorts to fishing to survive.
Pi was vegetarian and this was his first time consuming another being.
“I want you to remember this lesson for the rest of your lives.” (Chapter 8)
The lesson here is the vicious nature of tigers.
This shows the influence of Pi’s father on his understanding of zoology.
This foreshadows Pi’s later experiences with Richard Parker.
“I had to tame him. It was at that moment I realized.” (ch.57)
In reference to RP.
Links to how his father taught him to be cautious around tigers and how deeply rooted that lesson is in Pi.
“I just want to love God” (ch.23)
This sums up Pi’s feelings towards religion.
He feels the duty to love God more heavily than the duty to believe in a particular religion - ultimately presenting religion as a tool to love God.
‘‘This was the terrible cost of Richard Parker. He gave me a life, my own, but at the expense of taking one. He ripped the flesh off the man’s frame and cracked his bones. The smell of blood filled my nose. Something in me died then that has never come back to life.’’
Shorter sentences increase intensity.
This correlates with the version of the story where Pi kills the Frenchman himself.
RP here (a symbol of survival instincts) shows how savagery entirely wins out in the end.
“Ravi teased me mercilessly, but he always made me laugh.”
Ravi is Pi’s brother who also died during the main event.
Pi had a warm sibling relationship with Pi.
This is a man part of his childhood.
“I was alone and orphaned, in the middle of the ocean, with a tiger.”
Pi had lost his parents and expresses that clearly.
The short clause at the end of the quote to add the detail of the tiger indicates that the presence of RP makes this already massively tragic situation, even worse.
“The sound would disappear but the hurt would linger,”
In reference to being called “pissing” which shows how deeply this impacted him even after his childhood ended - after the “sound” had disappeared.
‘I will not die. I refuse it. I will make it through this nightmare. I will best the odds, as great as they are. I have survived so far, miraculously. Now I will turn miracle into routine.’ (ch.53)
Just as religious faith can transcend reason, the will to live sometimes defies logic.
Although survival seems hopeless, Pi chooses to keep struggling.
Pi’s mindset plays a crucial part in his survival and is an example of choosing ‘‘the better story’’
‘Some of us give up on life with only a resigned sigh. Others fight a little, then lose hope. Still others—and I am one of those—never give up. We fight and fight and fight, We fight no matter the cost of battle, the losses we take, the improbability of success. We fight to the very end. It’s not a question of courage. It’s some-thin constitutional, an inability to let go. It may be nothing more than life-hungry stupidity’ (ch.53)
Persistence vs. Despair: The quote highlights how people respond to crises—some give up, while others, like Pi, fight relentlessly, regardless of losses or the improbability of success.
Survival Instinct: Pi’s determination to survive isn’t about courage but an instinctive inability to quit, even calling it “life-hungry stupidity.”
Faith and Survival: Like faith, his struggle defies logic, showing that survival efforts persist even when reason suggests no hope.
Ambiguity of Survival: The quote hints at the moral cost of survival, reflecting Pi’s struggle to fight onwards as an uncertain process and yet a necessary one.
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Flashcard (32)