Life of Pi
SPARK
W W W. S PA R K N O T E S . C O M
Yann Martel
Copyright ©2006 by SparkNotes llc.
ARKNOTES
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or distributed in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, any file sharing system, or any
information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of SparkNotes llc.
sparknotes is a registered trademark of SparkNotes llc.
This edition published by Spark Publishing
Spark Publishing
A Division of SparkNotes llc
120 Fifth Avenue, 8th Floor
New York, NY 10011
USA
, Context
SPARK
W W W. S PA R K N O T E S . C O M
ARKNOTES
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
Yann Martel was born on June 25, 1963, in Salamanca, Spain, to Canadian parents. When Martel was a
photocopy, recording, any file sharing system, or any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of SparkNotes LLC.
young boy, his parents joined the Canadian Foreign Services, and the family moved frequently, living in
Alaska, France, Costa Rica, Ontario, and British Columbia. Martel went on to study philosophy at Trent Uni-
versity in Ontario, where he discovered a love for writing. After graduating in 1985, Martel lived with his
parents and worked a number of odd jobs while continuing to write fiction. He published a collection of short
stories, The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, in 1993 and a novel, Self, in 1996, but neither book received
much critical or commercial attention. In 2002, however, Martel’s international literary reputation was sealed
with the publication of Life of Pi, a runaway bestseller that went on to win the prestigious Man Booker Prize
(awarded each year to the best English-language novel written by a Commonwealth or Irish author) and had
since been translated into thirty languages. Fox 2000 pictures bought the screen rights to Martel’s novel, and a
feature film is expected in 2008.
Life of Pi is set against the tumultuous period of Indian history known as the Emergency. In 1975, Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi was found guilty of charges related to her 1971 election campaign and was ordered to
resign. Instead—and in response to a rising tide of strikes and protests that were paralyzing the govern-
ment—Gandhi declared a state of emergency, suspending constitutional rights and giving herself the power
to rule by decree. The Emergency lasted for eighteen months and was officially ended in March 1977 when
Gandhi called for a new round of elections. The historical legacy of the Emergency has been highly contro-
versial: while civil liberties in this emerging democracy were severely curtailed and Gandhi’s political oppo-
nents found themselves jailed, abused, and tortured, India’s economy experienced a much-needed
stabilization and growth. In Life of Pi, Piscine (Pi) Molitor Patel’s father, a zookeeper in Pondicherry, India,
grows nervous about the current political situation. Speculating that Gandhi might try to take over his zoo
and faced with depressing economic conditions, Pi’s father decides to sell off his zoo animals and move his
family to Canada, thus setting the main action of the novel into motion.
Though only a relatively brief section of Life of Pi is actually set in India, the country’s eclectic makeup is
reflected throughout the novel. Pi is raised as a Hindu but as a young boy discovers both Christianity and
Islam and decides to practice all three religions simultaneously. In the Author’s Note, an elderly Indian man
describes the story of Pi as “a story that will make you believe in God,” and Life of Pi continuously grapples
with questions of faith; as an adherent to the three most prominent religions in India, Pi provides a unique
perspective on issues of Indian spirituality. India’s diverse culture is further reflected in Martel’s choice of
Pondicherry as a setting. India was a British colony for nearly two hundred years, and consequently most of
the nation has been deeply influenced by British culture. However, Pondicherry, a tiny city in southern India,
was once the capital of French India and as such has retained a uniquely French flavor that sets it apart from
the rest of the nation. Perhaps reflecting Yann Martel’s own nomadic childhood, Pi Patel pointedly begins his
life in a diverse cultural setting before encountering French, Mexican, Japanese, and Canadian characters
along his journey.
Life of Pi can be characterized as a postcolonial novel, because of its post-Independence Indian setting as
well as its Canadian authorship. Like many postcolonial novels, such as those of Salman Rushdie and Gabriel
García Márquez, Life of Pi can also be classified as a work of magical realism, a literary genre in which fantas-
tical elements—such as animals with human personalities or an island with cannibalistic trees—appear in an
otherwise realistic setting. Martel’s novel could equally be described as a bildungsroman (a coming-of-age
tale) or an adventure story. Life of Pi even flirts with nonfiction genres. The Author’s Note, for example,
claims that the story of Piscine Molitor Patel is a true story that the author, Yann Martel, heard while back-
packing through Pondicherry, and the novel, with its first-person narrator, is structured as a memoir. At the
end of the novel, we are presented with interview transcripts, another genre of nonfiction writing. This mix-
ing of fiction and nonfiction reflects the twist ending of the novel, in which the veracity of Pi’s fantastical story
is called into doubt and the reader, like Pi’s Japanese interrogators, is forced to confront unsettling questions
about the nature of truth itself.
Copyright 2006 by SparkNotes LLC.
2
, Copyright 2006 by SparkNotes LLC.
Many critics have noted the book’s resemblance to Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Old Man and the Sea.
Both novels feature an epic struggle between man and beast. In The Old Man and the Sea, a fisherman strug-
SPARK
gles to pull in a mighty marlin, while in Life of Pi, Pi and Richard Parker struggle for dominance on the life-
W W W. S PA R K N O T E S . C O M
boat. Both the fisherman and Pi learn to respect their animal counterparts; each pair is connected in their
mutual suffering, strength, and resolve. Although they are opponents, they are also partners, allies, even dou-
ARKNOTES
bles. Furthermore, both novels emphasize the importance of endurance. Because death and destruction are
inevitable, both novels present life as a choice between only two options: defeat or endurance until destruc-
tion. Enduring against all odds elevates both human characters to the status of heroes.
Another, less flattering comparison has been drawn between Life of Pi and acclaimed Brazilian author
Moacyr Scliar’s 1981 novel Max and the Cats. In a 2002 interview with Powells.com, Martel discusses reading
an unfavorable review of Scliar’s novel in the New York Times Book Review penned by John Updike and,
despite Updike’s disparagement, being entranced by the premise. As was later reported, no such review
existed, and John Updike himself claimed no knowledge of Scliar’s novel. The similarities between the two
novels are unmistakable: in Max and the Cats, a family of German zookeepers sets sail to Brazil. The ship goes
down and only one young man survives, stranded at sea with a wild jaguar. Martel claims never to have read
Max and the Cats before beginning to write Life of Pi. He has since blamed his faulty memory for the Pow-
ells.com gaffe and has declined further discussion on the topic. Scliar considered a lawsuit but is said to have
changed his mind after a discussion with Martel. Whatever the real story, Martel mentions Scliar in his
Author’s Note, thanking him for “the spark of life.”
context
3
, Plot Overview
SPARK
W W W. S PA R K N O T E S . C O M
ARKNOTES
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
In an Author’s Note, an anonymous author figure explains that he traveled from his home in Canada to India
photocopy, recording, any file sharing system, or any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of SparkNotes LLC.
because he was feeling restless. There, while sipping coffee in a café in the town of Pondicherry, he met an
elderly man named Francis Adirubasamy who offered to tell him a story fantastic enough to give him faith in
God. This story is that of Pi Patel. The author then shifts into the story itself, but not before telling his reader
that the account will come across more naturally if he tells it in Pi’s own voice.
Part One is narrated in the first person by Pi. Pi narrates from an advanced age, looking back at his earlier
life as a high school and college student in Toronto, then even further back to his boyhood in Pondicherry. He
explains that he has suffered intensely and found solace in religion and zoology. He describes how Francis
Adirubasamy, a close business associate of his father’s and a competitive swimming champion, taught him to
swim and bestowed upon him his unusual name. Pi is named after the Piscine Molitor, a Parisian swimming
club with two pools that Adirubasamy used to frequent. We learn that Pi’s father once ran the Pondicherry
Zoo, teaching Pi and his brother, Ravi, about the dangerous nature of animals by feeding a live goat to a tiger
before their young eyes. Pi, brought up as a Hindu, discovers Christianity, then Islam, choosing to practice all
three religions simultaneously. Motivated by India’s political strife, Pi’s parents decide to move the family to
Canada; on June 21, 1977, they set sail in a cargo ship, along with a crew and many cages full of zoo creatures.
At the beginning of Part Two, the ship is beginning to sink. Pi clings to a lifeboat and encourages a tiger,
Richard Parker, to join him. Then, realizing his mistake in bringing a wild animal aboard, Pi leaps into the
ocean. The narrative jumps back in time as Pi describes the explosive noise and chaos of the sinking: crew-
members throw him into a lifeboat, where he soon finds himself alone with a zebra, an orangutan, and a
hyena, all seemingly in shock. His family is gone. The storm subsides and Pi contemplates his difficult situa-
tion. The hyena kills the zebra and the orangutan, and then—to Pi’s intense surprise—Richard Parker
reveals himself: the tiger has been in the bottom of the lifeboat all along. Soon the tiger kills the hyena, and Pi
and Richard Parker are alone together at sea. Pi subsists on canned water and filtered seawater, emergency
rations, and freshly caught sea life. He also provides for the tiger, whom he masters and trains.
The days pass slowly and the lifeboat’s passengers coexist warily. During a bout of temporary blindness
brought on by dehydration, Pi has a run-in with another blind castaway. The two discuss food and tether
their boats to one another. When the blind man attacks Pi, intending to eat him, Richard Parker kills him.
Not long after, the boat pulls up to a strange island of trees that grow directly out of vegetation, without any
soil. Pi and Richard Parker stay here for a time, sleeping in their boat and exploring the island during the day.
Pi discovers a huge colony of meerkats who sleep in the trees and freshwater ponds. One day, Pi finds human
teeth in a tree’s fruit and comes to the conclusion that the island eats people. He and Richard Parker head
back out to sea, finally washing ashore on a Mexican beach. Richard Parker runs off, and villagers take Pi to a
hospital.
In Part Three, two officials from the Japanese Ministry of Transport interview Pi about his time at sea,
hoping to shed light on the fate of the doomed ship. Pi tells the story as above, but it does not fully satisfy the
skeptical men. So he tells it again, this time replacing the animals with humans: a ravenous cook instead of a
hyena, a sailor instead of a zebra, and his mother instead of the orangutan. The officials note that the two sto-
ries match and that the second is far likelier. In their final report, they commend Pi for living so long with an
adult tiger.
Copyright 2006 by SparkNotes LLC.
4
SPARK
W W W. S PA R K N O T E S . C O M
Yann Martel
Copyright ©2006 by SparkNotes llc.
ARKNOTES
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or distributed in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, any file sharing system, or any
information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of SparkNotes llc.
sparknotes is a registered trademark of SparkNotes llc.
This edition published by Spark Publishing
Spark Publishing
A Division of SparkNotes llc
120 Fifth Avenue, 8th Floor
New York, NY 10011
USA
, Context
SPARK
W W W. S PA R K N O T E S . C O M
ARKNOTES
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
Yann Martel was born on June 25, 1963, in Salamanca, Spain, to Canadian parents. When Martel was a
photocopy, recording, any file sharing system, or any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of SparkNotes LLC.
young boy, his parents joined the Canadian Foreign Services, and the family moved frequently, living in
Alaska, France, Costa Rica, Ontario, and British Columbia. Martel went on to study philosophy at Trent Uni-
versity in Ontario, where he discovered a love for writing. After graduating in 1985, Martel lived with his
parents and worked a number of odd jobs while continuing to write fiction. He published a collection of short
stories, The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, in 1993 and a novel, Self, in 1996, but neither book received
much critical or commercial attention. In 2002, however, Martel’s international literary reputation was sealed
with the publication of Life of Pi, a runaway bestseller that went on to win the prestigious Man Booker Prize
(awarded each year to the best English-language novel written by a Commonwealth or Irish author) and had
since been translated into thirty languages. Fox 2000 pictures bought the screen rights to Martel’s novel, and a
feature film is expected in 2008.
Life of Pi is set against the tumultuous period of Indian history known as the Emergency. In 1975, Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi was found guilty of charges related to her 1971 election campaign and was ordered to
resign. Instead—and in response to a rising tide of strikes and protests that were paralyzing the govern-
ment—Gandhi declared a state of emergency, suspending constitutional rights and giving herself the power
to rule by decree. The Emergency lasted for eighteen months and was officially ended in March 1977 when
Gandhi called for a new round of elections. The historical legacy of the Emergency has been highly contro-
versial: while civil liberties in this emerging democracy were severely curtailed and Gandhi’s political oppo-
nents found themselves jailed, abused, and tortured, India’s economy experienced a much-needed
stabilization and growth. In Life of Pi, Piscine (Pi) Molitor Patel’s father, a zookeeper in Pondicherry, India,
grows nervous about the current political situation. Speculating that Gandhi might try to take over his zoo
and faced with depressing economic conditions, Pi’s father decides to sell off his zoo animals and move his
family to Canada, thus setting the main action of the novel into motion.
Though only a relatively brief section of Life of Pi is actually set in India, the country’s eclectic makeup is
reflected throughout the novel. Pi is raised as a Hindu but as a young boy discovers both Christianity and
Islam and decides to practice all three religions simultaneously. In the Author’s Note, an elderly Indian man
describes the story of Pi as “a story that will make you believe in God,” and Life of Pi continuously grapples
with questions of faith; as an adherent to the three most prominent religions in India, Pi provides a unique
perspective on issues of Indian spirituality. India’s diverse culture is further reflected in Martel’s choice of
Pondicherry as a setting. India was a British colony for nearly two hundred years, and consequently most of
the nation has been deeply influenced by British culture. However, Pondicherry, a tiny city in southern India,
was once the capital of French India and as such has retained a uniquely French flavor that sets it apart from
the rest of the nation. Perhaps reflecting Yann Martel’s own nomadic childhood, Pi Patel pointedly begins his
life in a diverse cultural setting before encountering French, Mexican, Japanese, and Canadian characters
along his journey.
Life of Pi can be characterized as a postcolonial novel, because of its post-Independence Indian setting as
well as its Canadian authorship. Like many postcolonial novels, such as those of Salman Rushdie and Gabriel
García Márquez, Life of Pi can also be classified as a work of magical realism, a literary genre in which fantas-
tical elements—such as animals with human personalities or an island with cannibalistic trees—appear in an
otherwise realistic setting. Martel’s novel could equally be described as a bildungsroman (a coming-of-age
tale) or an adventure story. Life of Pi even flirts with nonfiction genres. The Author’s Note, for example,
claims that the story of Piscine Molitor Patel is a true story that the author, Yann Martel, heard while back-
packing through Pondicherry, and the novel, with its first-person narrator, is structured as a memoir. At the
end of the novel, we are presented with interview transcripts, another genre of nonfiction writing. This mix-
ing of fiction and nonfiction reflects the twist ending of the novel, in which the veracity of Pi’s fantastical story
is called into doubt and the reader, like Pi’s Japanese interrogators, is forced to confront unsettling questions
about the nature of truth itself.
Copyright 2006 by SparkNotes LLC.
2
, Copyright 2006 by SparkNotes LLC.
Many critics have noted the book’s resemblance to Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Old Man and the Sea.
Both novels feature an epic struggle between man and beast. In The Old Man and the Sea, a fisherman strug-
SPARK
gles to pull in a mighty marlin, while in Life of Pi, Pi and Richard Parker struggle for dominance on the life-
W W W. S PA R K N O T E S . C O M
boat. Both the fisherman and Pi learn to respect their animal counterparts; each pair is connected in their
mutual suffering, strength, and resolve. Although they are opponents, they are also partners, allies, even dou-
ARKNOTES
bles. Furthermore, both novels emphasize the importance of endurance. Because death and destruction are
inevitable, both novels present life as a choice between only two options: defeat or endurance until destruc-
tion. Enduring against all odds elevates both human characters to the status of heroes.
Another, less flattering comparison has been drawn between Life of Pi and acclaimed Brazilian author
Moacyr Scliar’s 1981 novel Max and the Cats. In a 2002 interview with Powells.com, Martel discusses reading
an unfavorable review of Scliar’s novel in the New York Times Book Review penned by John Updike and,
despite Updike’s disparagement, being entranced by the premise. As was later reported, no such review
existed, and John Updike himself claimed no knowledge of Scliar’s novel. The similarities between the two
novels are unmistakable: in Max and the Cats, a family of German zookeepers sets sail to Brazil. The ship goes
down and only one young man survives, stranded at sea with a wild jaguar. Martel claims never to have read
Max and the Cats before beginning to write Life of Pi. He has since blamed his faulty memory for the Pow-
ells.com gaffe and has declined further discussion on the topic. Scliar considered a lawsuit but is said to have
changed his mind after a discussion with Martel. Whatever the real story, Martel mentions Scliar in his
Author’s Note, thanking him for “the spark of life.”
context
3
, Plot Overview
SPARK
W W W. S PA R K N O T E S . C O M
ARKNOTES
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
In an Author’s Note, an anonymous author figure explains that he traveled from his home in Canada to India
photocopy, recording, any file sharing system, or any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of SparkNotes LLC.
because he was feeling restless. There, while sipping coffee in a café in the town of Pondicherry, he met an
elderly man named Francis Adirubasamy who offered to tell him a story fantastic enough to give him faith in
God. This story is that of Pi Patel. The author then shifts into the story itself, but not before telling his reader
that the account will come across more naturally if he tells it in Pi’s own voice.
Part One is narrated in the first person by Pi. Pi narrates from an advanced age, looking back at his earlier
life as a high school and college student in Toronto, then even further back to his boyhood in Pondicherry. He
explains that he has suffered intensely and found solace in religion and zoology. He describes how Francis
Adirubasamy, a close business associate of his father’s and a competitive swimming champion, taught him to
swim and bestowed upon him his unusual name. Pi is named after the Piscine Molitor, a Parisian swimming
club with two pools that Adirubasamy used to frequent. We learn that Pi’s father once ran the Pondicherry
Zoo, teaching Pi and his brother, Ravi, about the dangerous nature of animals by feeding a live goat to a tiger
before their young eyes. Pi, brought up as a Hindu, discovers Christianity, then Islam, choosing to practice all
three religions simultaneously. Motivated by India’s political strife, Pi’s parents decide to move the family to
Canada; on June 21, 1977, they set sail in a cargo ship, along with a crew and many cages full of zoo creatures.
At the beginning of Part Two, the ship is beginning to sink. Pi clings to a lifeboat and encourages a tiger,
Richard Parker, to join him. Then, realizing his mistake in bringing a wild animal aboard, Pi leaps into the
ocean. The narrative jumps back in time as Pi describes the explosive noise and chaos of the sinking: crew-
members throw him into a lifeboat, where he soon finds himself alone with a zebra, an orangutan, and a
hyena, all seemingly in shock. His family is gone. The storm subsides and Pi contemplates his difficult situa-
tion. The hyena kills the zebra and the orangutan, and then—to Pi’s intense surprise—Richard Parker
reveals himself: the tiger has been in the bottom of the lifeboat all along. Soon the tiger kills the hyena, and Pi
and Richard Parker are alone together at sea. Pi subsists on canned water and filtered seawater, emergency
rations, and freshly caught sea life. He also provides for the tiger, whom he masters and trains.
The days pass slowly and the lifeboat’s passengers coexist warily. During a bout of temporary blindness
brought on by dehydration, Pi has a run-in with another blind castaway. The two discuss food and tether
their boats to one another. When the blind man attacks Pi, intending to eat him, Richard Parker kills him.
Not long after, the boat pulls up to a strange island of trees that grow directly out of vegetation, without any
soil. Pi and Richard Parker stay here for a time, sleeping in their boat and exploring the island during the day.
Pi discovers a huge colony of meerkats who sleep in the trees and freshwater ponds. One day, Pi finds human
teeth in a tree’s fruit and comes to the conclusion that the island eats people. He and Richard Parker head
back out to sea, finally washing ashore on a Mexican beach. Richard Parker runs off, and villagers take Pi to a
hospital.
In Part Three, two officials from the Japanese Ministry of Transport interview Pi about his time at sea,
hoping to shed light on the fate of the doomed ship. Pi tells the story as above, but it does not fully satisfy the
skeptical men. So he tells it again, this time replacing the animals with humans: a ravenous cook instead of a
hyena, a sailor instead of a zebra, and his mother instead of the orangutan. The officials note that the two sto-
ries match and that the second is far likelier. In their final report, they commend Pi for living so long with an
adult tiger.
Copyright 2006 by SparkNotes LLC.
4
