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Life of Pi tells the fantastical story of Piscine Molitor Patel, also known as Pi, a sixteen-year-old South Indian boy who survives at sea with a tiger for 227 days. Pi grows up in the South Indian city of Pondicherry, where his father runs the zoo. He is a precocious and intelligent boy who considers himself a pious devotee to three religions: Hindu, Christianity, and Islam.
Because of government upheaval, the Patels close the Pondicherry Zoo and move to Canada when Pi is sixteen. Pi, his mother, father, and brother Ravi all board the Tsimtsum along with the zoo’s animal inhabitants (who are on their way to be sold around the world).
An unexplained event causes the Tsimtsum to sink, and Pi is the only human to make it onto the lifeboat and survive. Along with Pi, the lifeboat contains a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan named Orange Juice, and a bengal tiger named Richard Parker. The hyena kills and devours both the zebra and Orange Juice, before Richard Parker kills the hyena. Pi is left alone on a lifeboat with an adult male tiger.
There is no land in sight and the ocean is shark-infested, so Pi builds a raft which he attaches to the lifeboat, to keep himself at a safer distance from Richard Parker. But Pi realizes that if Richard Parker gets hungry enough, he will swim to the raft and kill him. Pi decides he must tame the tiger. Using a whistle, seasickness, and a turtle-shell shield, Pi manages to assert his authority over Richard Parker and delineate his own territory on the lifeboat, where he is comparatively safe from the tiger.
While at sea, Pi and Richard Parker face many challenges, traumas, tragedies, and miracles. They never have sufficient food and fresh water, and the constant exposure to the sun is highly painful. One day, a school of flying fish rushes past the boat, and against the beliefs of his religion, Pi cries as he is forced to behead a fish to survive. Then, a severe storm destroys the raft. Pi’s struggle to survive gradually alters him, and he starts to see all living things as food, including a bird he manages to capture and kill. Hope seems to arrive when an oil tanker approaches, but it passes by without seeing them and nearly crushes their boat.
During an especially severe period of starvation, Pi and Richard Parker both go blind and begin hallucinating. Pi hears a voice, and realizes they are approaching another lifeboat with a similarly starving and blind Frenchman. Eventually, The Frenchman climbs onto Pi’s boat, and attacks him, planning to kill and eat him. But the tiger attacks and kills the Frenchman instead. Pi describes this as the beginning of his true moral suffering.
Pi and Richard Parker come upon a strange island made of algae with trees protruding from it, teeming with meerkats but no other life. They stay on the island for weeks, eating the algae and the meerkats, growing stronger, and bathing in and drinking from the freshwater ponds. They never stay on the island at night, however, Pi because he feels safer from the tiger in his delineated territory, and Richard Parker for a reason unknown to Pi. Pi eventually starts to sleep on the island, and while doing so realizes that the island is carnivorous-it emits acid at night that dissolves anything on its surface. Greatly disturbed by this, Pi takes Richard Parker, and they leave the island.
Pi and Richard Parker eventually land on a Mexican beach. Richard Parker immediately runs off into the jungle without acknowledging Pi, which Pi finds deeply hurtful.
Pi is found, fed, bathed, and taken to a hospital. There, two Japanese men come to question Pi about what caused the Tsimtsum to sink. He tells his story, which they do not believe, so he offers them a more plausible version, replacing the animals in his story with humans: the zebra as a crewman, the hyena as a cook, the orangutan as Pi’s mother, and the tiger as Pi himself. Pi retells the story with gruesome details, full of decapitation, cannibalism, and murder. The two men are left wondering which version is the true story.
The final report concludes that Pi’s story is unreliable and the cause of the Tsimtsum’s sinking is impossible to determine. Pi continues on with his life, studying religion and zoology in Canada. He eventually gets married and has two children. However, he is still hurt by his unceremonious departure with Richard Parker. Pi keeps Richard Parker close to his heart, and will forever remember the 227 days he spent at sea with a Bengal tiger.
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