Life of Pi

“If you come upon a sleeping three-toed sloth in the wild, two or three nudges should suffice to awaken it; it will then look sleepily in every direction but yours. Why it should look about is uncertain since the sloth sees everything in a Magoo-like blur.”

Pi’s undergraduate thesis on the three-toed sloth is his second thesis, the first being on the Jewish mystic Isaac Luria. What is interesting about this passage is how its somnolent tone is consistent with Pi’s hazy, dream-like narration. That somnolence is not associated with Lurian cosmogony, but a zoological topic is significant. Zoology is supposed to be grounded in scientific, rational, and empirical inquiry, but here it is associated with a “Magoo-like blur.”

“I know zoos are no longer in people’s good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.”

Pi comments on what he perceives to be a false notion that zoos and religion constrain freedom. In philosophy, there is a distinction between positive and negative liberty, the latter of which enjoys predominance in Enlightenment thought. Negative liberty refers to freedom from external restraints as opposed to positive liberty, which refers to acting upon free will to fulfill one’s potential. Pi, a likely adherent of positive liberty, rejects the notion that freedom is constrained externally through religion, as religion offers stability and free will. In this articulation, zoos are essentially a metaphor for religion.

“To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.”

Pi is referring to the arch-nemesis of religious belief: agnosticism. In this chapter, Pi’s atheist biology teacher, Satish Kumar, refers to religion as a “darkness” and “superstitious bosh” (27). But Pi admires atheism for its commitment to belief, unlike agnosticism, which lacks the same dynamic qualities. Pi consistently remarks that belief in anything requires a proverbial leap of faith.

“We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.”

The predatory nature of humankind is evident in Pi’s second version of his story. The human capacity for violence and savagery is not unlike animal violence, but it also reflects a self-centeredness. Using zoos as a metaphor for religion, it might also be said that the dangers in religion stem from human error and ego, or poor gatekeeping.

“All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt.” 

The context here refers to what Pi calls “escape-prone” animals. Although both humans and animals share an inherent desire for protection and stability, they both possess a madness, or flexibility, that is necessary for survival. This flexibility might entail a moral sacrifice that is possible precisely because of a primal quality that resides within us.

“Memory is an ocean and he bobs on its surface.” 

The author is describing Pi’s state of mind and mood as he tells his story. Memory is vast, seemingly infinite, and fragmented. Its vastness creates difficulties in how it is reconstructed. Pi’s memory is consistently portrayed as flawed and fleeting. The image evoked here also resembles the Piscine Deligny, or floating pool on the Seine upon which Pi gets his name, as well as the image of Pi on his lifeboat.

“We are all born like Catholics, aren’t we—in limbo, without religion, until some figure introduces us to God?” 

In Catholic theology, limbo refers to a border place between heaven and hell where unbaptized souls are sent. It developed specifically as a theological hypothesis for the unknown destination of unbaptized infants who die prematurely. Pi acknowledges that we learn about religion from our elders, but we can also be led astray through narrow-minded teaching at the risk of reentering limbo.

“But religion is more than rite and ritual. There is what the rite and ritual stand for.” 

Pi is describing his religious beliefs, which are more about the spirit of religion than particular rites and rituals. This comment reflects his perennialism, or a belief in a universal essence and singular truth that encompasses all religions. It also reflects an orthodoxy, or salvation through belief, as opposed to orthopraxy, or salvation through adherence to law and action.

“The feeling, a paradoxical mix of pulsing energy and profound peace, was intense and blissful. Whereas before the road, the sea, the trees, the air, the sun all spoke differently to me, now they spoke one language of unity. Tree took account of road, which was aware of air, which was mindful of sea, which shared things with sun. Every element lived in harmonious relation with its neighbour, and all was kith and kin. I knelt a mortal; I rose an immortal. I felt like the centre of a small circle coinciding with the centre of a much larger one. Atman met Allah.” 

Pi’s pantheism is on full display in this quote. Pantheism holds the universe to be a manifestation of God. Reality, in all its diverse particulars, is identical to a singular divine. In pantheistic thought, there is also great emphasis on nature and its harmonious relations as evoked in this passage.

“I can well imagine an atheist’s last words: ‘White, white! L-L-Love! My God!’—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 of the b-b-brain,’ and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story.” 

Pi scorns agnosticism for its neutrality and stubborn refusal to believe in anything. His anti-agnostic sentiment is a natural extension of his philosophical objection to the notion of objectivity, particularly in language and storytelling. “Dry, yeastless factuality” does not just evoke a blandness or unimaginative quality, but an ontological rejection of objective language or experience.

“My greatest wish—other than salvation—was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story. One I could read again and again, with new eyes and a fresh understanding each time. Alas, there was no scripture in the lifeboat.” 

Literature and storytelling is a key theme of Life of Pi. Pi’s comment here underscores a hermeneutic that emphasizes interpretive vastness. This interpretive vastness can be applied to stories, such as Pi’s, or religions, which, in Pi’s view, contain sufficient dynamism to accommodate new realities and circumstances.

“Progress is unstoppable. It is a drumbeat to which we must all march.” 

Pi’s father, Santosh Patel, makes this comment in relation to Pi’s religious obsessions. Santosh Patel considers his family modern and progressive and thus somewhat at odds with Pi’s religious attachments. In liberal thought, the doctrine of Progress (with a capital “P”) is all-powerful. In this light, progress is viewed as an ontology, a way of living in the world, which moves with a quasi-divine intent.

“Jesus, Mary, Muhammad and Vishnu, how good to see you Richard Parker!” 

At this point in the novel, readers don’t yet know who Richard Parker is exactly. However, Pi’s invoking of three separate religious figures is an expression of his syncretism. If we are to view Richard Parker as Pi’s bestial alter ego, this comment reflects Pi’s subtle recognition of his primal self.

“Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low.” 

Pi is not opposed to reason, but he recognizes its limitations. Reason is elevated in liberalism as the most important human attribute, one in which Enlightenment thinkers, such as Kant, regarded it as epistemologically above religion itself. Pi, however, understands that reason itself is insufficient for understanding the universe or God or love.

“Without Richard Parker, I wouldn’t be alive today to tell you my story.” 

In Pi’s original account, Richard Parker literally saves his life on multiple occasions. In Pi’s amended story, Pi is Richard Parker. Pi must make moral choices that compromise his humanity in order to survive. One such sacrifice is his deviation from vegetarianism and pacifism, which does actually occur in the original story.

“It is simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything, even to killing.” 

The idea that humans can become desensitized to and accommodating of evil is unsettling. However, it also recognizes the existence of free will. The problem of theodicy, or the vindication of God in the face of evil, is answered through free will and fallible, if not brutal, human decision-making.

“Time is an illusion that makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time.” 

Time in modern secular thought is viewed as sequential, homogeneous, and unidirectional. In premodern and non-secular thought, time was viewed as heterogeneous and subjective. Importantly, Pi recognizes one source of modern anxiety: rational, calculative time. Surviving his ordeal required a radical reorientation of time as a contingency, and not a fixed order of events.

“Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love—but sometimes it was so hard to love.” 

Pi equates religious belief to love. This is in line with his orthodoxic, as opposed to orthopraxic, conception of religion as belief-centric. This belief is intense and all-penetrating, not superficial. Moreover, for Pi, a “letting go” entails a suspension of reason, as love is outside its scope. Therein lies its difficulty, which is augmented by dogmatic practitioners and leaders of religion who violate its love-based spirit.

“To be a castaway is to be a point perpetually at the centre of a circle. However much things may appear to change—the sea may shift from whisper to rage, the sky might go from fresh blue to blinding white to darkest black—the geometry never changes. Your gaze is always a radius. The circumference is ever great. In fact, the circles multiply. To be a castaway is to be caught in a harrowing ballet of circles.” 

Pi routinely sees himself in the middle of multiplying circles. This image is disorienting for the reader, but it adds ambiguity to Pi’s narrative, which is itself enclosed within multiplying narratives. Pi’s referencing of mathematical concepts such as circumference, radius, and geometry are, in part, because he sees himself through the mathematical constant, pi, which is incomputable like religion. This passage in particular is also among the most explicit indicators of pantheistic doctrine.

“It came as an unmistakable indication to me of how low I had sunk the day I noticed, with a pinching of the heart, that I ate like an animal, that this noisy, frantic, unchewing wolfing-down of mine was exactly the way Richard Parker ate.” 

Here, Pi acknowledges his animalistic capacities. Until Pi reveals his alternative version, readers are unaware that Richard Parker might, in fact, be Pi. Evaluating the veracity of each story might be beside the point, but it is unclear whether Pi concocts two uncannily similar versions merely to satisfy Chiba and Okamoto or because of profound psychological trauma.

“The sea turned to white and all colour disappeared. Everything was either pure white light or pure black shadow. The light did not seem to illuminate so much as to penetrate.” 

This passage also lends itself to Lurian metaphysics. Penetration of light refers to the paradox of God’s simultaneous presence and absence in “empty space” post-contraction, or tzimtzum. The white-black imagery is also reminiscent of Manichean philosophy, which emphasizes a cosmic battle between good and evil. In the Lurian theory of cosmogony, this cosmic battle is possible because of the creation of “empty space” which the primordial man (possibly Pi) seeks to reharmonize through esoteric rituals.

“But the dream rag gave a special quality to my daze. It must have been the way it restricted my air intake. I would be visited by the most extraordinary dreams, trances, visions, thoughts, sensations, remembrances. And time would be gobbled up.” 

The question of Pi’s believability is tested stringently throughout the novel. Readers question his credibility, in part because of Martel’s rhetorical moves, but also because of moments like this. Pi uses a dream rag to asphyxiate himself and distort his sense perceptions, inducing surreal thoughts. Yet, for Pi, strict believability is less important than survival and the valuable lessons and truths learned along the way.

“This was the terrible cost of Richard Parker. He gave me a life, my own, but at the expense of taking one. He ripped the flesh off the man’s frame and cracked his bones. The smell of blood filled my nose. Something in me died then that has never come back to life.” 

Pi’s description of this event is intimate and visceral, suggesting personal culpability. Considering Pi has already witnessed and experienced death, including of his family, it is curious why this death impacted him so profoundly. After all, the man who Richard Parker kills was intent on cannibalizing Pi.