Know the following characters and any other identifying names:

• Richard Parker: The Royal Bengal tiger with whom Pi shares his lifeboat. His captor, Richard Parker, named him Thirsty, but a shipping clerk made a mistake and reversed their names. From then on, at the Pondicherry Zoo, he was known as Richard Parker. Weighing 450 pounds and about nine feet long, he kills the hyena on the lifeboat and the blind cannibal. With Pi, however, Richard Parker acts as an omega, or submissive, animal, respecting Pi’s dominance.

• Pi Patel: Protagonist of the story. Piscine is the narrator and he accounts the seven months at sea in the story. Pi gets his name from the French word for pool from his family friend Francis Adirubasamy. Pi studies zoology and religion and is interested in the habits and characteristics of animals and people.

• Francis Adirubasamy: The elderly man who tells the author Pi’s story during a chance meeting in a Pondicherry coffee shop. He taught Pi to swim as a child and bestowed upon him his unusual moniker. He arranges for the author to meet Pi in person, so as to get a first-person account of his strange and compelling tale. Pi calls him Mamaji, an Indian term that means respected uncle.

• The Zebra: A beautiful male Grant’s zebra. He breaks his leg jumping into the lifeboat. The hyena torments him and eats him alive.

• Orange Juice: The maternal orangutan that floats to the lifeboat on a raft of bananas. She suffers almost humanlike bouts of loneliness and seasickness. When the hyena attacks her, she fights back valiantly but is nonetheless killed and decapitated.

• Father Martin: The Catholic priest who introduces Pi to Christianity after Pi wanders into his church. He preaches a message of love. He, the Muslim Mr. Kumar, and the Hindu pandit disagree about whose religion Pi should practice.

• The Blind Sailor: A fellow castaway whom Pi meets by chance in the middle of the ocean. Driven by hunger and desperation, he tries to kill and cannibalize Pi, but Richard Parker kills him first.

• The Hyena: An ugly, intensely violent animal. He controls the lifeboat before Richard Parker emerges.

• Santosh Patel: Pi’s father. He once owned a Madras hotel, but because of his deep interest in animals decided to run the Pondicherry Zoo. A worrier by nature, he teaches his sons not only to care for and control wild animals, but to fear them. Though raised a Hindu, he is not religious and is puzzled by Pi’s adoption of numerous religions. The difficult conditions in India lead him to move his family to Canada.

• Gita Patel: Pi’s beloved mother and protector. A book lover, she encourages Pi to read widely. Raised Hindu with a Baptist education, she does not subscribe to any religion and questions Pi’s religious declarations. She speaks her mind, letting her husband know when she disagrees with his parenting techniques. When Pi relates another version of his story to his rescuers, she takes the place of Orange Juice on the lifeboat.

• Atsuro Chiba: Okamoto’s assistant. Chiba is the more naïve and trusting of the two Japanese officials, and his inexperience at conducting interviews gets on his superior’s nerves. Chiba agrees with Pi that the version of his ordeal with animals is the better than the one with people.

• Ravi Patel: Pi’s older brother. Ravi prefers sports to schoolwork and is quite popular. He teases his younger brother mercilessly over his devotion to three religions.

• Mr. Kumar the Baker: A plain-featured Muslim mystic with the same name as Pi’s biology teacher. He works in a bakery. Like the other Mr. Kumar, this one has a strong effect on Pi’s academic plans: his faith leads Pi to study religion at college.

• Mr. Satish Kumar: Pi’s atheistic biology teacher at Petit Séminaire, a secondary school in Pondicherry. A polio survivor, he is an odd-looking man, with a body shaped like a triangle. His devotion to the power of scientific inquiry and explanation inspires Pi to study zoology in college.

• Mr. Tomohiro Okamoto: An official from the Maritime Department of the Japanese Ministry of Transport, who is investigating the sinking of the Japanese Tsimtsum. Along with his assistant, Atsuro Chiba, Okamoto interviews Pi for three hours and is highly skeptical of his first account.

*Know the following:

• Author/Date of Publication: Yann Martel, 2001

• Animals and their Human Counterparts: Pi (Richard Parker), his mother (Orange Juice), the cook (the Hyena), and a sailor (the Zebra). The sailor had broken his leg jumping into the lifeboat, and the cook cuts the leg off and tries to use it for bait. The sailor dies and the cook butchers and eats him. Pi and his mother, both horrified, try to stop him. The cook kills Pi’s mother and throws her head in Pi’s direction. Soon after, Pi fights the cook and kills him. He eats his heart and liver and pieces of his flesh.

• Burden and Humiliation of Pi’s original name: Pi's original name, Piscine Molitor Patel, carries the burden of being constantly mispronounced and mocked by his classmates. Feeling humiliated, he decides to adopt the nickname "Pi" after the mathematical symbol π. This new name not only represents his interest in mathematics and science but also serves as a symbol of his resilience and ability to transcend the challenges he faces. By choosing a name that holds personal significance to him, Pi asserts his identity and asserts control over how he is perceived by others.

• Pi’s Evolution of Religion (Hindu, then Christian, then Muslim): Pi's evolution of religion is a fascinating journey that delves into his quest for spiritual fulfillment and understanding. He studies various religions such as Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam, seeking to find common truths and deeper meanings in each belief system. Pi's exploration of multiple religions allows him to embrace different perspectives and teachings, ultimately shaping his own unique spiritual identity. Through his experiences, Pi learns to appreciate the beauty and complexity of diverse faiths, highlighting the universal themes of love, compassion, and faith that connect all religions. His open-minded approach to spirituality reflects his deep curiosity and thirst for knowledge, leading him on a transformative path of self-discovery and enlightenment.

• Most Dangerous Animal: But, according to a sign in the zoo, the most dangerous animal of all is man. Growing up at the zoo, Pi thinks it's like paradise. He appreciates the miracle of animal life. He realizes that many are critical of zoos, but he disagrees that zoos are restrictive. Pi compares that to the argument about religion.

• Significance of Flesh Eating Island: The carnivorous island in Life of Pi is a paradoxical symbol that illustrates the balance between paradise and purgatory. The island appears to offer resources for Pi. However, after further investigation, Pi realizes that the island eats living creatures.

• Pi Wanted? A praying mat.

• Richard Parker’s Name: Richard Parker was named Thirsty before the workers mixed up his name. This becomes self-fuffiling later in the story

• Days at Sea: 227

• Pi Stops Writing Because? His pen has run out of ink for him to document.

• Reason for Canadian Move: Pi’s father is not happy with the 1970 policial issues and wants to relocate his family to Canada.

Identify the following quotations and the circumstances surrounding them.

•  “What if Piscine had stuck this hand through the bars of the cage one day to touch the pretty orange fur? Better a goat than him, no?”

  • Pi's father said this while Pi was being taught not to play with wild animals. To teach this he made the boys watch Richard Parker eat a goat. His mother is mad at his dad for doing this.

• “Something in me did not want to give up on life, was unwilling to let it go, wanted to fight to the very end. Where that part of me got the heart, I don’t know.” (chapter 37)

  • The Tsimtsum just sank and Pi is on the boat
    He sees richard parker in the water and throws a lifebouy for him
    Pi said this

•  “I don’t believe in religion. Religion is darkness”

  • Mr. Kumar says this. He is discussing religion with Pi and Pi says religion will save the world from politics, and Mr. Kumar responded with this while they were at the zoo

• “Richard Parker has stayed with me. I’ve never forgotten him. Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart.” 

  • Pi has fallen head over heels in love with his captor, Pi's admission does lay bare the "strangeness of the human heart." Is it some type of madness to love the creature who, at any point during your harrowing 227 days together on a lifeboat, might have mauled you to death? Pi could respond: and so it goes with God. We duly note here that Richard Parker did not maul Pi. Nonetheless, "nightmares tinged with love" border on madness. Pi is in Canada.

• “I have a story that will make you believe in God.”

  • This is spoken by Francis Adirubasamy to the author. At first the reader may think the story is about believing in a religion but it is not. It is not about holding on to the particulars, but about having faith in something beyond what is seen.

•   “Figs! Do you have a fig? Please can I have a piece? I beg you. Only a little piece. I’m starving.”

  • At one point, Pi hallucinates and imagines being approached by a French cook from the ship, who offers him a succulent fig. This fig becomes a symbol of Pi's longing for sustenance and his battle for survival amidst the harsh conditions of the sea. The quote captures Pi's desperate plea for nourishment in the face of adversity.

• “That’s what fiction is about, isn’t it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence?”

• “To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.”

• “Mr. Patel, we don’t believe your story.”

  • Okatoma has just finished listening to the story and is not convinced of his story because of the fiction aspects. Ex: floating bananas, a bengal tiger, etc

•  “Isn’t telling about something – using words, English or Japanese – already something of an invention? Isn’t just looking upon this world already something of an invention?”

  • Pi makes a claim here that no matter how we present the events of our lives, we're always telling a story. That there's no such thing as "just the facts." And when we present "just the facts," we're actually telling a version of events (also known as a story).

• “I know zoos are no longer in people’s good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.” (chapter 4)

  • Do zoos incarcerate animals in confined spaces and make them miserable? Pi doesn't think so: "Certain illusions about freedom" tempt us to this conclusion. In actuality, an animal's life in the wild is more circumscribed than "a knight on a chessboard" (1.4.8). Predator-prey relationships restrict the animal's movement. A zoo enclosure is actually more like a hearth for an animal: a place of comfort and rest. Likewise, most people think of religion as a restrictive cage. Actually, Pi says, it's home and hearth for the believer.

• “And so, in that Greek letter that looks like a shack with a corrugated tin roof, in that elusive, irrational number with which scientists try to understand the universe, I found refuge.” (chapter 5) 

  • Notice how Pi names himself after an elusive and irrational number. When Pi praises science – or math and reason – these tools are never ends in themselves. Science has the workings of faith and combats agnosticism just like religion. Or, as in this passage, math brings us to the mysterious, the irrational and elusive.

• “I come here all the time. One might say it’s my temple.” (chapter 6)

  • Mr.Kumar would come to the zoo not just to look at the animals but he would read every bit of information there and approve of every animal he saw. He would leave the zoo feeling scientifically refreshed.

• “But we should not cling! A plague upon fundamentalists and literalists!” (chapter 16) 

  • Pi remains unattached to any one interpretation of God. Sure, he believes each religion – but he doesn't guard their specific tenets jealously. Pi shares a rich parable: Each time the milkmaids try to possess Krishna he vanishes. Likewise, each time a religious faith tries to claim sole ownership of God, true religion vanishes. This story reveals a few of the workings of Pi's complex religious beliefs. You may have wondered how anyone could ever hold Hindu, Christian, and Muslim beliefs all at once. Pi's answer: without a trace of jealousy.

• “This story has a happy ending.”

  • This line, written by the author, serves two purposes: The words draw a comparison between Pi’s happy life in Canada with the unhappy end to his Indian family, and the line reminds the reader of the author’s beliefs about crafting fiction from reality. In an attempt to create a more compelling narrative, the author may have omitted, enhanced, or modified details of Pi’s story. Therefore, like Pi himself, the author is not wholly trustworthy.

• “ ‘Bapu Gandhi said, “All religions are true.” I just want to love God.’ “

  • Pi says this when being asked to choose a religion. Pi just wants to find and love God, not adhere to a single status.

• “All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive.”

  • This insanity can be a saving grace because it is essential to the capacity for adaptation. No species could exist without it. (Martel 41.) This insanity can be a saving grace because it is essential to the capacity for adaptation. No species could exist without it. Every living creature possesses a certain amount of lunacy that causes them to behave in odd, occasionally mysterious ways.