Plot Overview
In an Author's Note, an anonymous author figure explains
that he traveled from his home in Canada to India because he was
feeling restless. There, while sipping coffee in a café in the town
of Pondicherry, he met an elderly man named Francis Adirubasamy who
offered to tell him a story fantastic enough to give him faith in God.
This story is that of Pi Patel. The author then shifts into the story
itself, but not before telling his reader that the account will come
across more naturally if he tells it in Pi's own voice.
Part One is narrated in the first person by Pi. Pi narrates
from an advanced age, looking back at his earlier life as a high
school and college student in Toronto, then even further back to
his boyhood in Pondicherry. He explains that he has suffered intensely
and found solace in religion and zoology. He describes how Francis Adirubasamy,
a close business associate of his father's and a competitive swimming
champion, taught him to swim and bestowed upon him his unusual name.
Pi is named after the Piscine Molitor, a Parisian swimming club
with two pools that Adirubasamy used to frequent. We learn that
Pi's father once ran the Pondicherry Zoo, teaching Pi and his brother,
Ravi, about the dangerous nature of animals by feeding a live goat
to a tiger before their young eyes. Pi, brought up as a Hindu, discovers
Christianity, then Islam, choosing to practice all three religions
simultaneously. Motivated by India's political strife, Pi's parents
decide to move the family to Canada; on June 21, 1977,
they set sail in a cargo ship, along with a crew and many cages
full of zoo creatures.
At the beginning of Part Two, the ship is beginning to
sink. Pi clings to a lifeboat and encourages a tiger, Richard Parker,
to join him. Then, realizing his mistake in bringing a wild animal
aboard, Pi leaps into the ocean. The narrative jumps back in time
as Pi describes the explosive noise and chaos of the sinking: crewmembers
throw him into a lifeboat, where he soon finds himself alone with
a zebra, an orangutan, and a hyena, all seemingly in shock. His family
is gone. The storm subsides and Pi contemplates his difficult situation.
The hyena kills the zebra and the orangutan, and then—to Pi's intense
surprise—Richard Parker reveals himself: the tiger has been in the
bottom of the lifeboat all along. Soon the tiger kills the hyena,
and Pi and Richard Parker are alone together at sea. Pi subsists
on canned water and filtered seawater, emergency rations, and freshly
caught sea life. He also provides for the tiger, whom he masters
and trains.
The days pass slowly and the lifeboat's passengers coexist
warily. During a bout of temporary blindness brought on by dehydration, Pi
has a run-in with another blind castaway. The two discuss food and
tether their boats to one another. When the blind man attacks Pi,
intending to eat him, Richard Parker kills him. Not long after,
the boat pulls up to a strange island of trees that grow directly
out of vegetation, without any soil. Pi and Richard Parker stay
here for a time, sleeping in their boat and exploring the island
during the day. Pi discovers a huge colony of meerkats who sleep
in the trees and freshwater ponds. One day, Pi finds human teeth
in a tree's fruit and comes to the conclusion that the island eats
people. He and Richard Parker head back out to sea, finally washing
ashore on a Mexican beach. Richard Parker runs off, and villagers
take Pi to a hospital.
In Part Three, two officials from the Japanese Ministry
of Transport interview Pi about his time at sea, hoping to shed
light on the fate of the doomed ship. Pi tells the story as above,
but it does not fully satisfy the skeptical men. So he tells it
again, this time replacing the animals with humans: a ravenous cook
instead of a hyena, a sailor instead of a zebra, and his mother
instead of the orangutan. The officials note that the two stories
match and that the second is far likelier. In their final report,
they commend Pi for living so long with an adult tiger.
