Life of Pi: A Story to Make You Believe in God

Life of Pi is an extraordinarily beautiful tale of a young shipwreck survivor on a lifeboat with a tiger named Richard Parker. If this sounds silly, it is to author Yann Martel's credit that the feel this story has is far from it.

That's not to say that there isn't a healthy dollop of humor throughout the novel's pages. At a very young age Pi witnesses his parents confronted with a Muslim imam, a Catholic priest and a Hindu pandit on the streets of Pondicherry, India, there to discuss their son's religious studies. Poignant commentary on interfaith dialogue aside, the way these three come to realize that Pi has been searching for God via three different religions reads like a barroom joke. Later, while contemplating how best to handle his predicament at sea, Pi soberly lists his Plans Number One through Seven in such a calm, rational manner as to force the reader into chuckling over the ridiculousness of the predicament.

Martel walks this line between his character's longing faith in the face of despair and hilarious farce wonderfully. While keeping his story entertaining, he does not stray long from depicting the agony Pi must face over 227 days at sea. Between storms, lack of regular food and fresh water, sun and rain, heat and cold, sickness, loneliness, boredom - and throughout it all, constant vigilance in the presence of Richard Parker - Pi looks to his faith in a loving God to keep him alive.

Right from the start Martel reveals that Pi survives when narrator becomes fictional interviewer of the adult Piscine Molitor Patel. So this is not a story of suspense, in the normal sense. It is never in doubt that Pi will stand again on solid ground; instead, the questions the author grapples with are why and how does a man survive the ordeals this danger-ridden life presents him?

Pi says, "... I discovered at that moment that I have a fierce will to live. It's not something evident, in my experience. Some of us give up on life with only a resigned sigh. Others fight a little, then lose hope. Still others - and I am one of those - never give up. We fight and fight and fight. We fight no matter the cost of battle, the losses we take, the improbability of success. We fight to the very end. It's not a question of courage. It's something constitutional, an inability to let go. It may be nothing more than life-hungry stupidity."

In this statement we discover that Pi is not a Hemmingway hero, the kind of stalwart character who looks into the face of danger and is unmoved. Quite to the contrary, the way Pi describes himself is more akin to a barnacle on the side of a ship than to a self-made hero. He simply had something within him that made him stick to life.

Perhaps we all have this trait within us. Unless we have trained ourselves to believe that we no longer deserve to live because of the sins we've committed or the abuses we've taken, we are all barnacles clinging desperately to a lifeboat. The metaphor couldn't be more simple.

What Pi has in this story is just what Martel is searching for throughout these pages: a sense that there is always meaning, always hope, so long as we believe it. This is what is so beautiful about this story. In the face of impossible challenges we as human beings can always be survivors if we know that such tenacity is within us. As human beings we will suffer. We will know pain, and loss - right in tandem with humor and joy - but we will always, always come through our suffering if we have faith.

Here's a joke: A priest, an imam and a pandit walk into a bar. The bartender points to a man who appears to be choking on an olive and shouts, "Who can save this man?" to which the three religious men reply together, "Oh, God!" The man who had been pretending to choke swallows the olive, holds his hand out to the patron next to him as if to accept payment and says, "See? I told you I could get them to agree on something."