Yann Martel's Life of Pi - An Introduction "A story to make you believe in the soul-sustaining power of fiction and its human creators, and in ...

Yann Martel’s Life of Pi
                                  An Introduction...
"A story to make you believe in the soul-sustaining power of fiction and its human creators, and
in the original power of storytellers like Martel." —Los Angeles Times Book Review

Yann Martel
                                             - Born in 1963 to Canadian parents
                                                while living in Spain

                                             - Travelled to Iran, Turkey and India
                                             - Started writing at the age of 27

                                            To write Life f Pi:
                                             - Six months spent in India visiting
                                                temples, churches and zoos.
                                             - An entire year reading religious texts
                                                and castaway stories
                                             - actual writing took 2 more years
- Writing career took off with Life of Pi
- Won the Mann Booker prize awarded each year to the best English
  language novel written by a Commonwealth or Irish author
- Translated into thirty languages
- Screen rights purchased by Fox

Background of the novel
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 government—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

Brief introduction...
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.”

Setting...
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, most of the nation has been deeply
influenced by British culture.

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.

Pi Patel begins his life in a diverse cultural setting
before encountering French, Mexican, Japanese,
and Canadian characters along his journey.

Route: India (Pondicherry) to Canada

Life of Pi is a story about struggling to survive
 through seemingly insurmountable odds

The novel can be categorised as...

  postcolonial novel, because of its post-
                                                an adventure story
    Independence Indian setting as well as
    its Canadian authorship
                                                It even flirts with nonfiction genres
  a work of magical realism, because            - the Author's Note claims that the story of Pi is a
     fantastical elements—such as animals           true story that the author heard while
     with human personalities or an island          backpacking through Pondicherry
     with cannibalistic trees—appear in an
                                                - and the novel, with its first-person narrator, is
     otherwise realistic setting
                                                    structured as a memoir

  a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age tale (a      - at the end of the novel, look for interview
    novel dealing with one person's formative       transcripts, another genre of nonfiction
    years or spiritual education.)                  writing

Characters
               Piscine Molitor Patel (Pi)
- Protagonist
- Narrator for most of the novel
- His account of 7 months (227 days) at sea (Pacific Ocean)
 - His unusual name is the French word for ‘pool’
 - A pool in Paris in which a close family friend, Francis Adirubasamy, loved to
   swim
 - He is a student of zoology and religion
 - Deeply intrigued by the habits and characteristics of animals and people.
- Older brother: Ravi
   Father: Santosh Patel
   Mother: Gita Patel

Themes...
                                                       Religion
At times, Life of Pi reads like a defense of religion. Has science proved religion wrong? Here's a protagonist who
believes passionately in both zoology and religion. What about the fact of multiple faiths? Don't these faiths
contradict each other, cause wars, and other problems? Here's a protagonist who is Muslim, Christian, and Hindu –
all at the same time. The book defends not only the common spirit behind these three religions, but the rituals and
ceremonies of each. It's as if all three religions find harmonious common ground in this character. Seems unlikely,
but then again, the protagonist argues passionately that the miraculous happens in our darkest moments.

                                                      Spirituality
 This theme often brings to mind more ethereal subjects like the soul or the soul's rebirth. You'd be both right and
 wrong applying such lofty thoughts to Life of Pi. In this book, spirituality grounds itself in the everyday. The
 most ordinary activities take on a level of spiritual intensity (granted they happen in an extraordinary setting).
 Often, the protagonist describes – perhaps with a little jealousy – animals engaging their surroundings with an
 almost yogic discipline. Of course, this is not to say spirituality is always fun and games. Sometimes suffering
 and duress actually bring about the protagonist's spiritual insights. In fact, except for the protagonist's suffering,
 spirituality might have a more limited role in the novel.

Suffering
Suffering brings out the best and the worst in Life of Pi's characters. On the one hand, the characters care for each other when
they very well could have killed each other. On the other hand, suffering drives a few characters to murder and cannibalism.
There's a moment in the book when the protagonist catches a dorado fish. To subdue it, he beats it with a hatchet. He says, "I
felt like I was beating a rainbow to death" (2.60.31). Whoever or whatever causes suffering in this novel – God or a bizarre
sequence of events – the characters' musings and fortitude through it all recall the sheen and flash of a rainbow.

                                                            Science
  The protagonist of Life of Pi loves science. Science, along with reason, helps us control and manipulate the world. It's
  how we survive in the world. But Pi points out that like religion, science has an element of faith in it. Unlike
  agnosticism, where the person doesn't commit to either faith or disbelief, the scientist often commits to a worldview of
  atheism and to the methods of his discipline. For the protagonist of Life of Pi, though, this isn't enough. We have to
  embrace the irrational and miraculous if we're to have a full picture of our universe. Science can explain the world up to
  a certain point, but its usefulness ends. According to Pi, when things get really hairy, religion has to step in with a good
  old-fashioned story.

                                                               Fear
  If we have nothing to fear but fear itself, what about the fear of fear itself? Does that count as two fears or is it still one
  fear? It's this type of mind game our protagonist has to avoid on the lifeboat. Pi has to fight against being crippled by fear,
  as he goes about the everyday business of survival. He definitely has a lot of things to be afraid of – bone-crunching
  waves, man-eating sharks, and conniving tigers, to name a few. Of course, fear also takes on an existential component in
  the novel, meaning that Pi also has to deal with the terror of isolation, meaninglessness, and boredom. When faced with
  the latter types of emptiness, maybe fighting off sharks and tigers doesn't sound so bad.