Life of Pi

The novel begins with Pi reflecting on his life and declaring that his suffering had left him dejected. It is not yet clear the reason for Pi’s suffering and despondent state, but Pi tells us that his academic studies and the “mindful practice of religion” rejuvenated him (3). He attended the University of Toronto, where he double majored in religious studies and zoology. His thesis for religious studies centered on the cosmogony theory of Isaac Luria, a 16th-century Jewish mystic from the Levant region of Ottoman Syria. His zoology thesis, meanwhile, was an anatomical analysis of the thyroid gland of the three-toed sloth. He says that he chose the sloth for its “calm, quiet, and introspective” manner, which “did something to soothe [his] shattered self” (3). Seemingly opposites, Pi believes religion and zoology are closely related.

Pi informs us that he recovered from his ordeal at a hospital in Mexico, where he was well treated. He suffered significant injuries and ailments, including fluid retention, anemia, swollen limbs, dark urine, and skin abrasions. Within a week, he was relatively healed. Pi tells us, however, that the first time he turned on a water tap, he lost consciousness. When he finally arrived in Canada, he visited an Indian restaurant, where a waiter reproached him for eating with his hands.

After a brief interlude that switches back to the author’s point-of-view, and where we learn that Pi is a fast-talking and expressive middle-aged man, the narrative resumes as Pi reminisces on his childhood. Pi’s full name is Piscine Molitor Patel, which derives from a famous swimming pool, the Piscine Deligny, the oldest swimming pool in Paris dating to 1796. The Piscine Deligny had a unique floating design that sat atop the Seine River. It was also the site of the 1900 Paris Olympics. While Pi’s parents did not like water, they were friends with a former champion swimmer named Francis Adirubasamy, who Pi calls Mamaji. Pi developed a love for swimming from Mamaji, particularly its ritualistic elements.

Pi’s father, Santosh Patel, was the founder and director of Pondicherry Zoo. Pi reflects fondly on his childhood and adolescence spent in the zoo, referring to it as “paradise on earth” (14). He objects to conventional wisdom that views zoos as inherently oppressive institutions that deprive animals of freedom. Contrarily, Pi believes that zoos offer much-desired predictability to creatures that are deeply “conservative” and “reactionary” (16).

Pi describes his schooling journey in Pondicherry in prophetic terms. He begins at St. Joseph’s School, where he is persecuted like the Prophet Muhammad in Mecca before his “Hejira” to Medina. Pi’s Medina is Petit Seminaire, the best English-medium private school in Pondicherry. At Petit, Pi meets a biology teacher named Mr. Satish Kumar. Mr. Kumar is an atheist and communist with a wiry, “geometric” body shape (25). While initially bemused by Mr. Kumar’s atheism, Pi grows to admire atheism as a worldview for its certitude, unlike agnosticism, which is indecisive, noncommittal, and anarchic.

The narrative pivots back to the Pondicherry Zoo as Pi ruminates on his upbringing there with his brother, Ravi. Realizing that the boys have developed a closeness to the animals, Pi and Ravi’s father decides to teach them a lesson about the savage nature of wild animals. He takes the boys to a Bengal tiger’s cage to watch it devour a live goat. This experience traumatizes the boys, but Pi realizes he tends to anthropomorphize, not unlike humans who claim that captivity impinges on the animals’ freedom. Pi’s reflection on anthropomorphism further blurs the line between humans and animals. Pi’s father goes so far as to paint a message on a wall in bright red letters reading, “DO YOU KNOW WHICH IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL IN THE ZOO?” with an arrow pointing to a curtain with a mirror behind it (31). While Pi clearly believes animals relish the stability of zoo life, he does note that wild animals are “escape-prone” due to an intrinsic madness that is also essential to their survival. He provides an anecdote about a black leopard who escaped the Zurich Zoo in 1933 and lived within the city undetected for 10 weeks. According to Pi, most zoo animals that escape are horrified by the “unknown,” but are primarily products of bad zookeeping.