my name is Richard Parker

// life of pi by yann martel //

This book has been sitting on my "to read" list for far too long. And by long, I mean ever since the eighth grade when my middle school best friend delivered an oral report on a book about a tiger, a raft, and God.

Better late than never.

I'm no book critic, but because I want you to know that I am literate, here are my thoughts.

Particularly with the recent film adaptation, the plot line is familiar to many: 15-year old Piscine "Pi" Molitor Patel of Pondicherry finds himself in the harrowing struggle for survival following the sinking of a cargo ship. The lone survivor, Pi finds himself in the company of an orangutan, hyena, crippled zebra, and one gargantuan Bengal tiger Richard Parker. Unfortunate circumstances soon leave Pi with no traveling companion other than the tiger, and the pair endure a 227-day ordeal.

I quickly realized that to reduce it to the tale of just a "tiger, a raft, and God" serves injustice to the complexities of the novel. The many juxtapositions--of the rational and irrational (3.1415926535 ... ), empirical and theoretical, scientific and philosophical--made for a well-crafted story. Furthermore, the book's structure serves to be an allegory of sorts. We are initially presented with a note from the author, who relates his experience in stumbling across Pi's incredible tale. The novel then launches into a first-person account in the eyes of Pi, who tells reveals that he has a story to "make you believe in God." His experience that began with the ill-fated cargo ship turns out to be more than just a story of human survival; it becomes an exploration of the resilience of the human spirit and reconciliation of beliefs and reality, and throughout the novel we are drawn to Pi's inclination to find the "better story". In a distant similarity to Big Fish, the book examines the value of differentiating between truth and imagination and the merit of storytelling. Pi asserts that he spent 227 days aboard a tarpaulin with a tiger; the Japanese investigation crew asserts that such a story is ridiculous. Readers are confronted with the decision to choose to believe the far-fetched but "better story," or be satisfied with the mundane.

I saw the movie first. I loved it. I loved the book more. The novel is able to delve further into the theology and ironies that make Pi's account so captivating. Squeamish readers should probably take note, however. Martel's writing, though lyrical and fluid, spares few details, and I found myself resorting to speed-reading skills that I learned in Mr. Ross's seventh grade Language Arts to save my stomach.

I worried that the novel would quickly fall flat (Castaway, anyone?) but found the theological bend to be thought-provoking and led me to reassess my own faith. Though my personal experience did not find the novel so faith-promoting, this isn't necessarily a criticism as it led me to reconsider the roots of my own faith and was therein faith-building. A simultaneous subscriber to the beliefs of Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam, Pi finds appealing elements of each religion, chiefly a belief in a higher being. He also finds some admiration in atheism, as it requires a commitment to not believe in God in spite of lacking evidence for such a conclusion. In his mind, however, agnosticism is "unimaginative" and analytical to a fault.

One of my favorite passages:

"I can well imagine an atheist's last words: "White, white! L-L-Love!"--and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying, "Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation fo the b-b-brain," and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story.'"