My Response to "Life of Pi"

I have read the book Life of Pi, written by Yann Martel is the story of a young boy who is stranded in the middle of the ocean on a lifeboat accompanied only by a tiger whom he forms a strong connection with. This young boy’s name is Piscine Molitor Patel, also known as Pi as in the edible pie or mathematical term for 3.14. this young boy was religious and by religious, I mean that he practiced Hinduism, Christianity, and Islamism, he was not the most social kid at school but he had a lot of knowledge about animals as his father owned the Pondicherry zoo in Tamil Nadu.

As the Pondicherry zoo was not attracting customers the Pi’s family decided to close it down and sell their animals while they also moved to Canada. They went there on a ship along with the animals, unfortunately, the ship had sunk. Pi was thrown off by the workers on the ship saving him from drowning, he could safely get on the lifeboat but he was accompanied by a zebra, hyena, and an orangutan. Pi had thought that the tiger was still on the lifeboat but he was nowhere to be seen but I think later the tiger would turn up from inside the boat. Maybe later the tiger would kill the hyena, orangutan and the zebra and leave Pi to be there as he needs someone to serve it food.

As I was reading I noticed Pi said “But I'd seen that on other days and the ship hadn't sunk. A cargo ship is a huge and stable structure, a feat of engineering. It's designed to stay afloat under the most adverse conditions” (Martel 58). Then how is it that the ship sunk? And why didn’t the workers warn Pi’s family and release the animals into the lifeboats?

Pi often connects the zoos with gods, this helped me realize that the misunderstandings people have about zoos are like the way people misunderstand the concept of religion. People believe that zoos take away the freedom of animals and they would be free in the wild but they are still restricted by their survival needs and instincts. The same goes with the misunderstanding of how people see the practice of different religions as people think one is better than the other or neither religion makes sense.

As I was reading the book I noticed that Pi spoke a lot about religion in the first part of the book. The different practices of Hinduism he talks about reminds me of my religion and as I also have a Tamil background I can relate to them. An example, when Pi’s mother says “"Hmmm. I don't mean it that way. Listen, my darling, if you're going to be religious, you must be either a Hindu, a Christian or a Muslim. You heard what they said on the esplanade" (Martel 42). This reminds me of when my mother said that you can be a Hindu, a Christian, a Muslim or even an atheist but you cannot be all of them. I have always wondered why they say that because respecting religions is considered a good habit but why is practicing all of them a bad habit.

Piscine Moritol Patel practices Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam