Booker winner makes you believe in God… but which one?
“… atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will take them – and then they leap.”
- Life of Pi
The notion of faith is the essence of Yann Martel’s Booker winning novel, Life of Pi. A tale of courage and survival, this story comes with a promise – it “will make you believe in God”.
The novel begins with an author’s note. After penning a doomed story, the narrator decides to travel to India to write another. This one he determines to be worthless also – ‘emotionally dead’ is his description.
So he journeys to the town of Pondicherry on the coast of Tamil Nadu.
It is in Pondicherry that he meets Francis Adirubasamy, a man who tells him “a story that will make you believe in God”. Intrigued by Mr Adirubasamy’s account, the narrator returns to Canada to meet the hero of the story, a man named Pi.
Born in Pondicherry, Pi Patel is the son of a zookeeper. Named after a Parisian swimming pool, Pi’s full name is Piscine Molitor Patel. On his first day of high school Piscine renamed himself Pi to escape the nominal persecution he had endured in primary school.
Part way through his senior education, Pi’s parents decide to sell the zoo and relocate to Canada. It’s not a decision welcomed either by Pi or his older brother Ravi. For starters, Canadians don’t play cricket.
It’s on their journey to Canada that calamity occurs. The cargo vessel carrying the Patel family, and some of their zoo animals, sinks. Sixteen-year-old Pi finds himself floating across the ocean with a 450 pound Royal Bengal Tiger for company.
Surviving at sea with limited provisions would be arduous enough, however sharing a lifeboat with a very large, very dangerous predator makes survival virtually inconceivable. It’s the very impossibility of enduring such an ordeal that directs this novel.
The introductory author’s note and commentary inserted throughout the narrative are literary devices which reinforce the impression that the story we’re hearing is true. It’s a technique that serves the novel well.
Truth and fiction, reality and belief are at the heart of Life of Pi. It’s Pi’s unusual faith that distinguishes him as a youth and it’s his faith that enables his survival during 227 days at sea. Intrinsic to belief is faith in something unproved or unprovable. The dynamics of religion are such that they require faith. So it is with Pi’s story. Logically speaking, it’s unreasonable to think that a 16-year-old boy could survive 227 days at sea in a lifeboat with a large Bengal Tiger in tow. But as with religious faith, reason and logical can only take us so far.
Reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Life of Pi is absorbing and hypnotic. With touches of whimsy and elements of magical realism this story is at times gritty and harrowing but never devastating.
While Pi’s intense and prolonged journey is the focus of the narrative, his take on religion undergirds the structure. Martel shows both insight and obfuscation in his depiction of Christianity.
When Pi first learns of Christ’s death for humanity he is horrified. “That a god should put up with adversity, I could understand…. But humiliation? Death?” And later, “Why would God wish that upon himself? Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? Love.”
But Pi’s fascination with Christ doesn’t preclude him from maintaining his Hindu practices and developing an interest in Islam. He is, at heart, a pluralist. He believes it perfectly reasonable to embrace the three religions simultaneously.
But Pi’s faith is in a God of his own creation. His part Hindu, part Muslim and part Christian God is really no God at all.
The novel issues a gentle plea for pluralism. Indeed in the face of such good-natured devotion, insisting on monotheism seems a little churlish. While Martel might dance around the nature of fact and fiction, teasing his readers with what is real and what isn’t, ultimately the truth does matter.
Sarah Barnett
