Life of Pi (blog 2)

The Next section is pretty much from when he is cast into the ocean until he is finally rescued. I won't do all of the section in this blog but that is what happens. There are several things that are pretty interesting to me about this section.

The first one is how Richard Parker relates with the three different religions that Pi follows. It's not so much Richard Parker as it is the different types of relationships that exist between Pi and R.P. First of all you have the Christian angle. Both rp and Pi are saviors to each other. Pi to rp by giving him fish and water and even initially getting him onto the life boat. Then you have the more abstract part of that with rp. RP kept Pi alive by giving him motivation he had to keep moving and thinking and doing not only to keep himself from a particularly gruesome death but also to keep his only friend alive. That transitions nicely into how the relate similarly to how Pi views Islam. Pi finds Islam so interesting because of the brotherhood he sees in it. In many ways Pi and rp support each other in that way and are ultimately able to come out of it alive. Lastly you have the Hindu angle. Pi loved Hinduism because of the massive scale of it and the incredible and incomprehensible gods. There are many ways to look at it that clearly show how Pi at times is completely incapable of understanding rp (the animal part mostly), and obviously rp will never be able to understand much about Pi or why he does what he does most of the time. Not that I think rp really cared as long as he was reasonably well fed.

The next thing that I noticed was smaller but still significant to the story I think. From the very beginning you know that Pi lives through this. Obviously, he's telling the story. So because of this you have this kind of forced faith that no matter what happens in the story he will make it out and survive. this is pretty important to the the story being so deeply rooted in religion and the Promise to give "a story that will make you believe in God." (page 10).