The last
time I read the book, the year was 2005 and I was hooked. This time round, armed with foresight,
I made sure I paid particular attention to detail. The island still baffles me. I have heard people say they believe the island’s purpose is
simply as a reprieve for Pi and “Richard Parker”. I tend to agree.
I fall
firmly in the camp that the ‘people’ version was true, and Pi created the
animal version in his head to allow himself to deal with the horrors he
faced. Not that I am
professionally qualified, but I would say it is possibly similar to when a
personality splits in order to cope with severe trauma and tragedy. If you saw someone being killed and
devoured by another human being, wouldn’t you want to have an alternative
reality to retreat to? I know I
would. And I’m glad that Martel
gave us this alternative for the entire story, only revealing a glimpse of the
truth in the last ten pages.
Fantastic. Most of the
appeal in this book lies in those last few pages for me.
Why do I
believe the ‘people’ version? A
number of reasons really. Pi’s
father had the keys to the animals’ cages and he went down with the ship. If the father had the keys, and he
died, then no animals escaped from the cages. If no animals escaped from the cages, there were no animals
in a lifeboat. And frankly, being
adrift at sea for seven months would be enough for anyone’s reality to be
skewed, specifically after witnessing heinous acts such as murder and
cannibalism. For Pi, a devout
vegetarian and God-worshipping young man, the act of killing another human and
eating their flesh, whether for survival or not, would simply be too much to
bear and I understand why he would prefer to live with the ‘animal’
version. How else would you carry
on?
As a side
note and a point of interest, Richard Parker is the name of several people in
real life and fiction who became shipwrecked, with some of them subsequently
being cannibalised by their fellow seamen.
