Genre: Fiction (Realistic Friction)
Characters: Piscine Molitor Patel (Pi) - The protagonist of the story. Piscine is the narrator for most of the novel, and his account of his seven months at sea forms the bulk of the story. He gets his unusual name from the French word for pool—and, more specifically, from a pool in Paris in which a close family friend, Francis Adirubasamy, loved to swim. A student of zoology and religion, Pi is deeply intrigued by the habits and characteristics of animals and people.
Richard Parker - The Royal Bengal tiger with whom Pi shares his lifeboat. His captor, Richard Parker, named him Thirsty, but a shipping clerk made a mistake and reversed their names. From then on, at the Pondicherry Zoo, he was known as Richard Parker. Weighing 450 pounds and about nine feet long, he kills the hyena on the lifeboat and the blind cannibal. With Pi, however, Richard Parker acts as an omega, or submissive, animal, respecting Pi’s dominance.
The Author - The narrator of the (fictitious) Author’s Note, who inserts himself into the narrative at several points throughout the text. Though the author who pens the Author’s Note never identifies himself by name, there are many clues that indicate it is Yann Martel himself, thinly disguised: he lives in Canada, has published two books, and was inspired to write Pi’s life story during a trip to India.
Francis Adirubasamy - The elderly man who tells the author Pi’s story during a chance meeting in a Pondicherry coffee shop. He taught Pi to swim as a child and bestowed upon him his unusual moniker. He arranges for the author to meet Pi in person, so as to get a first-person account of his strange and compelling tale. Pi calls him Mamaji, an Indian term that meansrespected uncle.
Ravi - Pi’s older brother. Ravi prefers sports to schoolwork and is quite popular. He teases his younger brother mercilessly over his devotion to three religions.
Santosh Patel - Pi’s father. He once owned a Madras hotel, but because of his deep interest in animals decided to run the Pondicherry Zoo. A worrier by nature, he teaches his sons not only to care for and control wild animals, but to fear them. Though raised a Hindu, he is not religious and is puzzled by Pi’s adoption of numerous religions. The difficult conditions in India lead him to move his family to Canada.
Gita Patel - Pi’s beloved mother and protector. A book lover, she encourages Pi to read widely. Raised Hindu with a Baptist education, she does not subscribe to any religion and questions Pi’s religious declarations. She speaks her mind, letting her husband know when she disagrees with his parenting techniques. When Pi relates another version of his story to his rescuers, she takes the place of Orange Juice on the lifeboat.
Satish Kumar - Pi’s atheistic biology teacher at Petit Séminaire, a secondary school in Pondicherry. A polio survivor, he is an odd-looking man, with a body shaped like a triangle. His devotion to the power of scientific inquiry and explanation inspires Pi to study zoology in college.
Father Martin - The Catholic priest who introduces Pi to Christianity after Pi wanders into his church. He preaches a message of love. He, the Muslim Mr. Kumar, and the Hindu pandit disagree about whose religion Pi should practice.
Satish Kumar - A plain-featured Muslim mystic with the same name as Pi’s biology teacher. He works in a bakery. Like the other Mr. Kumar, this one has a strong effect on Pi’s academic plans: his faith leads Pi to study religion at college.
The Hindu Pandit - One of three important religious figures in the novel. Never given a name, he is outraged when Pi, who was raised Hindu, begins practicing other religions. He and the other two religious leaders are quieted somewhat by Pi’s declaration that he just wants to love God.
The Hyena - An ugly, intensely violent animal. He controls the lifeboat before Richard Parker emerges.
The Zebra - A beautiful male Grant’s zebra. He breaks his leg jumping into the lifeboat. The hyena torments him and eats him alive.
Orange Juice - The maternal orangutan that floats to the lifeboat on a raft of bananas. She suffers almost humanlike bouts of loneliness and seasickness. When the hyena attacks her, she fights back valiantly but is nonetheless killed and decapitated.
The Blind Frenchman - A fellow castaway whom Pi meets by chance in the middle of the ocean. Driven by hunger and desperation, he tries to kill and cannibalize Pi, but Richard Parker kills him first.
Tomohiro Okamoto - An official from the Maritime Department of the Japanese Ministry of Transport, who is investigating the sinking of the Japanese Tsimtsum. Along with his assistant, Atsuro Chiba, Okamoto interviews Pi for three hours and is highly skeptical of his first account.
Atsuro Chiba - Okamoto’s assistant. Chiba is the more naïve and trusting of the two Japanese officials, and his inexperience at conducting interviews gets on his superior’s nerves. Chiba agrees with Pi that the version of his ordeal with animals is the better than the one with people.
The Cook - The human counterpart to the hyena in Pi’s second story. He is rude and violent and hoards food on the lifeboat. After he kills the sailor and Pi’s mother, Pi stabs him and he dies.
The Sailor - The human counterpart to the zebra in Pi’s second story. He is young, beautiful, and exotic. He speaks only Chinese and is very sad and lonely in the lifeboat. He broke his leg jumping off the ship, and it becomes infected. The cook cuts off the leg, and the sailor dies slowly.
Setting: 1960-1976. Pondicherry, India; the Pacific Ocean; Mexico; CanadaPlot: Life of Pi is divided into three sections. In the first section, the main character, Pi, an adult, reminisces about his childhood. He was named Piscine Molitor Patel after aswimming pool in France. He changes his name to "Pi" when he begins secondary school, because he is tired of being taunted with the nickname "Pissing Patel". His father owns a zoo in Pondicherry, providing Pi with a relatively affluent lifestyle and some understanding of animal psychology.[8]
Pi is raised a Hindu, but as a fourteen-year-old he is introduced to Christianity and Islam, and starts to follow all three religions as he "just wants to love God."[9][10] He tries to understand God through the lens of each religion and comes to recognize benefits in each one.
Eventually, his family decides to sell their zoo over a land dispute with the government, and sell the animals to various zoos around the world before emigrating to Canada. In the second part of the novel, Pi's family embarks on a Japanese freighter to Canada carrying some of the animals from their zoo, but a few days out of port, the ship meets a storm and sinks, resulting in his family's death. During the storm, Pi escapes death in a small lifeboat with a spotted hyena, an injured Grant's zebra, and an orangutan.
As Pi strives to survive among the animals, the hyena kills the zebra, then the orangutan, much to Pi's distress. At this point, it is discovered that a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker had been hiding under the boat's tarpaulin; it kills and eats the hyena. Frightened, Pi constructs a small raft out of flotation devices, tethers it to the boat, and retreats to it. He delivers some of the fish and water he harvests to Richard Parker to keep him satisfied, conditioning Richard Parker not to threaten him by rocking the boat and causing seasickness while blowing a whistle. Eventually, Richard Parker learns to tolerate Pi's presence and they both live in the boat.
Pi recounts various events while adrift, including discovering an island of carnivorous algae inhabited by meerkats. After 227 days, the lifeboat washes up onto the coast of Mexico and Richard Parker immediately escapes into the nearby jungle.
In the third part of the novel, two officials from the Japanese Ministry of Transport speak to Pi to ascertain why the ship sank. When they do not believe his story, he tells an alternative story of human brutality, in which Pi was adrift on a lifeboat with his mother, a sailor with a broken leg, and the ship's cook, who killed the sailor and Pi's mother and cut them up to use as bait and food. Parallels to Pi's first story lead the Japanese officials to believe that the orangutan represents his mother, the zebra represents the sailor, the hyena represents the cook, and Richard Parker is Pi himself.
After giving all the relevant information, Pi asks which of the two stories they prefer. Since the officials cannot prove which story is true and neither is relevant to the reasons behind the shipwreck, they choose the story with the animals. Pi thanks them and says, "and so it goes with God".
Theme: The Will to Live: Life of Pi is a story about struggling to survive through seemingly insurmountable odds. Symbolism:
1. What does the title mean in relation to the film as a whole? A conscious choice between hopelessness and faith is the spine of the story.
2. Among the characters, to whom can you relate to? I can relate to Pi, it is because like him, I am faced with different problems in life but I choose not to give up and continue living life to the fullest.
3. Which part of the presentation struck you the most? Why? It is when Pi gave his caught fish to Richard Parker even if he's hungry too.
4. What is the movie’s message? That in life, we could be facing a lot of challenges but these challenges are just tests. To test our faith in ourselves and faith in God.
5. Did I like this in general? Why? Yes, i like this. It is because it shows optimism and hope. And when you get into a difficult situartion and evrything goes wrong, never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.
6. Did I agree with the main theme/purpose? Why or why not? Yes, because it tells us that Life is going to find way to test you. At times, you may feel that life is unfair. The urge to quit during these times are the highest but don’t give in.
7. What specifically did I like/dislike? Why?
I like Pi's strenghth, hope and faith in facing nature's calamities. And what i saw in Pi is that, If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
9. How does this film relate to the things that are happening in your life?
As a human being, it's just normal to face problems and downfalls but these are not hindrances to stop savoring life. Such problems are given by God to test our faith in Him. Giving up can't help you attain your goals in life neither it won't help you go to places you wish to visit nor it won't help you to reach your dreams. Life is going to find way to test you. At times, you may feel that life is unfair. The urge to quit during these times are the highest but don’t give in. Never giving up doesn’t mean you keep doing the wrong things over and over, it means, be smart and figure out the correct actions to take and then taking them until you achieve your dreams. "Fall seven times, stand up eight.”
