Life Of Pi Survival Essay

In the film Life Of Pi, Pi Patel’s adventure ends in a hospital bed where he is interviewed by two Japanese investigators about the shipwreck of the Japanese cargo ship. Pi tells them about how he survived with multiple animal companions in the lifeboat and his discovery of the carnivorous island. The Japanese men refused to believe his story simply because it is unrealistic. Pi then retells the shipwreck without the animals and instead puts himself as Richard Parker, his mother as the orangutan, the cook as the hyena, and the sailor as the zebra. In both accounts, Pi’s family, along with a number of their zoo animals travels in a Japanese cargo ship from India to Canada, in an effort to escape political upheaval in their native country. The
two stories are identical up until Pi climbs aboard the lifeboat. I think that the true story of Pi’s survival is the one without the animals simply because it is more logical and believable.
I feel like Pi made up the story of being in the company of Richard Parker, the Bengal tiger, because the experiences he had while being lost at sea were very traumatic to him. This was his way to cope with the ugly truth and to forget incidents such as seeing his mother die in front of his own eyes and killing the cook in a moment of self-preservation and revenge for his mother’s death. The tiger not coming out until the hyena began to attack Pi signifies that the tiger represents the cruel/animal side of Pi which was brought on by the atrocities of the cook that led him to kill a man. On the contrary, I prefer the version where Pi was in the company of Richard Parker because it is more interesting and less tragic and heartbreaking. The story was also full of amazing feasts that I really liked. Thinking that the only one who left Pi in that lifeboat was a tiger is essentially a happier story than the brutal one wherein his mother was killed by the cook and in revenge he killed the cook as well. The tiger story also blocks out the harsh reality of Pi’s life that’s why I like it
better. I believe that what Pi meant by “so it goes with God” in response to the writer’s preference of the animal story, is that believing in God is a choice that if taken makes the life more pleasant. Basically, believing in Richard Parker is the same as believing in God. Just like the two versions of Pi’s story on the shipwreck, the viewers are also left with the same question on which version of the world they prefer – the one where we make our own way and suffer through the darkness, or the one where we are aided by something greater than ourselves, regardless of which version of “God” we may accept. In the film, the choice is an allegory about religion on which “reality” leads to a happier life. It does not matter what is “true” but what is important is it leads to greater happiness. It made me realize that we all have control of the story/our lives where we can either choose to believe in god (mystical animal story) or decide that he does not exist (horrifying human story). Faith is believing in something you feel in your heart even if your head says it cannot be true. We believe in God because we want to not because we have to; just like we want to believe in the first story of the mystical animal story even if the second story of the horrifying human story is more believable.