Life of Pi

Life of Pi

by Yann Martel

Sixteen-year-old Piscine “Pi” Patel spends 227 harrowing days adrift in the Pacific Ocean in a 26-foot lifeboat. His only companions are a a few zoo animals – a wounded zebra, a spotted hyena, an orangutan named Orange Juice, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. Every minute of every day is a struggle to survive. Not only do the animals pose immediate and unrelenting threat, but the wind and the rain, the waves and the calm, hunger, thirst, and loneliness each present ever-changing challenges. Through it all, Pi resolves that it is in his best interest to preserve and protect his greatest enemy – the tiger Richard Parker.

My perception of a gentle laughing hyena has been dashed by Pi’s description of a beast that is “ugly beyond redemption.” However, beauty being only skin deep and potentially transformable by inner redemptive qualities, its most unpleasant appearance is apparently surpassed by its grossly disgusting feeding and grooming habits. The hyena is “an animal to pain the eye and chill the heart,” explained Pi.

After many months of seafaring woes, and with only two survivors now, both on the brink of death, the lifeboat finally meets land, an island inhabited only by algae, carnivorous trees, and hundreds of thousands of small, adorable meerkats. It is there that Pi and Richard Parker are restored to health and from where Pi realizes he must leave.

Life of Pi is a fantastic story superbly told by a truly creative mind and talented writer.