Dual Realities

an essay response to the novel, Life of Pi, by Yann Martel


From the moment we are born, we are given everything we need: food, water, and a place to call home. When being brought up within these boundaries, we create another version of ourselves, never quite knowing exactly who we are, and who we are meant to me. Adapting lifestyles in order to please others is exactly the challenge Pi Matel faces in the novel Life of Pi. After suddenly being thrown out of these boundaries, being forced to live on his own and having to fend for himself, Pi gives up on his vegetarian lifestyle, only in hopes of survival.

Growing up in India, with a mother, a father, and an older brother, everyday living and working in his family's zoo, things seem to be going just fine for Pi Matel. However having to do everything with his parents and living under their rules, he becomes someone they want him to be, and creates a second self. When we are with our friends, we are someone who is happy and fun to be around, when we are at school we are more focused and serious about our grades and school work, when we are with our family, we are more calm and do as we are told, but when forced to live on a lifeboat, your only company being a Bengal tiger because your family has just drown, who do we become? Do we stick with our instincts and remain the vegetarian zookeeper we have been our entire lives? Or do we adapt our lifestyle in order to survive? Here lies just one of the many difficult choices Pi was forced to make while living on the unforgiving waters of the Pacific.

Adapting our lifestyles is not only a problem Pi faces, but is a problem we face in our everyday lives. Creating dual realities, symbolizes the lengths we go to, to please others, which is why, I feel, we create these multiple versions of ourselves. Having a separate self for school pleases the teachers, while a separate self set aside for friends, pleases them. By showing the numerous personalities Pi has throughout this novel was Yann Martel's way of showing us the numerous personalities we create for ourselves.

Having everything that he once lived for -- his family, his friends, and his life in general -- taken away from him, right before his eyes, took an enormous amount of courage to remain hopeful, and for him to still have the will to live. After months of constant struggles, never having enough food, and with the fresh water supply running low, even the smallest plot of land would seem like a dream come true. Far off in the distance Pi and Richard Parker -- the Bengal tiger also aboard the lifeboat and therefore Pi's only companion -- spot an island. With sugar tasting algae, this unknown island seems like the sacred Garden of Eden of which Adam and Eve came across many, many years ago. After days on the island, Pi finally decides to spend a night on the island, instead of in the lifeboat. During the night, strange sounds can be heard from below, as dead fish begin to rise to the surface of the many ponds. Pi suddenly realizes that, "the island [is] carnivorous…This was why Richard Parker returned to the boat every night...This was why [he] had never seen anything but algae on the island." (p.282) After ridding himself of his vegetarian status, I feel this island was showing Pi what exactly all this animal death looks like and in a way, punishing him for what he had done.

Quickly fleeing the carnivorous island, and once again returning to the open waters, Pi's hope is diminishing faster than his food supply. After countless days of loneliness and nearly no food, Pi runs into another man who oddly enough was also trapped on a lifeboat. "I was struck dumb. I had met another blind man on another lifeboat in the Pacific." (p.250) However the man did not stay with Pi for long for as soon as Richard Parker picked up the mans scent, the only scent remaining in the lifeboat was the smell of his blood. The killing of Pi's so called "brother" illustrates what lengths animals -- or even people -- will go to in order to stay alive, showing how valuable the gift of life really is.

Months and months passed and living conditions got worse as Pi and Richard Parker grew weaker. Just as Pi thought that his life had come to an end, land was spotted along the horizon. The lifeboat had reached Mexico. Soon after his arrival, Pi was asked to speak to Japanese men -- the country where the sunken ship was made -- about his adventure. Pi told his story to the men, but they simply did not believe it was possible. When asked how something so hard to believe could possibly be true, Pi responds, "love is hard to believe, as any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?" (p.297)

Tired of having to prove himself, Pi tells yet another story, but this time replaces each animal with a person. Two stories, both told by the one survivor of the Japanese ship, Tsimtsum's tragic wreck; Yann Martel leaves us wondering what story is correct? Do we believe the story layed out throughout the course of the novel? Or the gruesome story that although is more realistic, is too horrid to want to believe. Each story, although different, contains links to the other, for it is those who are willing to listen, who truly believe.

Losing the ones we love, adapting the lifestyles that we have always known, are just two of the many struggles Pi faced while living out on the Pacific. Creating other versions of ourselves to please the ones around us, or in Pi's case, the animals he shared a lifeboat with, is Matel's way of showing us how we believe what we want to believe, become who we want to become and survive while others may not.