"Life of Pi"

So I was looking around my room to find something (that had a possibility of being) rhetorical and I finally settled on the shelf next to my bed. On it are some of my favorite books, a sort of way to calm me down were I to be feeling stressful throughout the year. One of those books is Life of Pi. If you’ve read the book, hopefully you’ll see where I’m coming from with this post. If you’ve never read it, I suggest you check out my other blog this week.

In summary, the protagonist, Pi Patel, is lost at sea after a huge ship carrying his family and all of their possessions sinks at sea. Pi’s father owned a zoo in their native India, and upon moving to Canada, is forced to bring a majority of the animals with him on board the ship. When it sinks, so do the animals.

What makes the story interesting is that Pi survives for 227 days on board a lifeboat. Accompanying him, also having managed to reach the lifeboat, is a tiger and, at least for some time, an orangutan, a zebra, and a hyena.

After he finally finds land, Pi begins to explain his tale. Not only is it unbelievable that managed to survive the whole time at sea – but he claimed to do so with a fully grown Bengal tiger aboard. After people don’t believe Pi, he revises his story to them – replacing real life people with the animals that he used as characters in his story. He rationalizes it by saying that although the second version is more believable, it is unexciting and people do not want to hear it.

“And so it is with religion,” he says.

The rhetoric in this is pretty plain to me. The author, Yann Martel, makes a distinct point to his audience. As a reader, you spend the entire story believing that the animals on board with Pi are real – and even after an alternative is suggested, you want them to be.  People do the same thing with religion. They may like a story, but discredit it as inconceivable, and therefore not true. Personally, I’m one of the hypocrites that Martel targets, I want the animals to be real, but do not believe in any religion. The irony, then, is that the author makes you realize this paradox about yourself – rooting for Pi and his animals, yet also holding a double standard.

Regardless, Life of Pi is absolutely my favorite book.