86 pages • 2 hours read
Yann MartelLife of Pi
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
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BetaAuthor’s NoteChapter Summaries & Analyses
Author’s Note Summary
Prior to Chapter 1, there is an italicized section entitled “Author’s Note.” Throughout the novel, Martel incorporates narrative breaks which appear in italics as isolated chapters. A fictional Canadian author, who resembles Yann Martel himself, narrates these interruptions. The author informs the readers that after the failures of his two previous publications, he went to Bombay, India, on a writing retreat for a new novel about Portugal in 1939. However, after yet another faltering, the author abandons his novel about Portugal and travels to southeast India to the state of Tamil Nadu, where he lands at Pondicherry, a former seaside French colonial city in the self-governing Union Territory. Pondicherry is unique in India’s colonial history as France controlled it, unlike the rest of India, which was colonized by the British.
At an Indian Coffee House, the author meets an elderly man named Francis Adirubasamy. Mr. Adirubasamy tells the author that he has a story “that will make you believe in God” (x). Dubious, the author asks whether the tale takes place in the Roman Empire or seventh-century Arabia. To his surprise, Mr. Adirubasamy informs him that the story took place right there in Pondicherry just a few years prior, and the protagonist resides in the author’s home country of Canada. After compiling notes on Mr. Adirubasamy’s story, the author returns to Canada to locate the protagonist, Mr. Patel, who is living in Toronto. The author begins interviewing Mr. Patel and confirms his story through old newspaper clippings and a report from the Japanese Ministry of Transport. The author then affirms that Mr. Patel’s story will, in fact, make one believe in God. The unnamed author ends his prelude with some acknowledgments, including the novelist Moacyr Scliar.
Author’s Note Analysis
Yann Martel immediately sets up the theme of truth and storytelling in the “Author’s Note” by blurring the line between himself and the unnamed fictional author. The mentioning of the Jewish Brazilian author, Moacyr Scliar, is particularly noteworthy. Scliar’s 1981 novel, Max and the Cats, serves as “the spark of life” for Martel’s novel (xii). In fact, Martel was accused of plagiarism due to overwhelming similarities between Life of Pi and Scliar’s book, which revolves around a young Jewish man who escapes Nazi Germany in a small boat with a jaguar in the cargo hold, eventually landing in Brazil. While the plagiarism allegations caused some consternation in the literary world, Scliar later recanted his claim. However, the obvious parallels between the fictional author and Martel function stylistically as a means to obscure fact from fiction.
The blurring of fantasy and reality and questions over the narrator’s reliability manifests in multiple ways in Life of Pi’s complex narrative framework. The credibility of Pi’s story is repeatedly cast into doubt as is the trustworthiness of the author. The author writes on turning Portugal into a fiction: “that’s what fiction is about, isn’t it, the selective transforming of reality?” (viii). Moreover, Life of Pi’s fundamental claim is that its story will make us believe in God. Religion, likewise, is not just constituted by symbols and rituals, but it is an explanation of existence. The story’s setting in Pondicherry adds further mystique due to its unique colonial history in the “functioning madness of India” (vii). The author further emphasizes that Indians have a proclivity for words like “bamboozle,” which the author adopted to great success. Thus, through both form and content, Martel employs clever rhetorical devices to create an enigmatic narrative about religion, storytelling, and survival.
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