Castaway's Life in The Life of Pi by Yann Martel

The Life of Pi is a novel by Yann Martel describing the journey of a 16—year old castaway’s life at sea and his not-so-friendly companion- a 450-pound Bengal tiger. This novel has a unique storyline but isn’t one of those books that you will remember a few years later. One 16-year old boy one 450-pound Bengal tiger, one ocean, and 227 days to work with Yann Martel could have done a lot more with this storyline, but the most interesting part he could accumulate was a carnivorous island.

After being on Mr. Suber’s list of top 3 favorite books. and winning the Booker prize I had high hopes for this novel. I was however. disappointed. Martels writing came across as trying too hard and overly drawn out. Before the book even begins, in the author’s note Martel says this will be a “story that will make you believe in God,” making this story out to be something magnificent that will leave you no choice but to lead you down the Christian path, if you’re not already there.

While it turns out religion is not even atopic to discuss in this novel. The first part of the novel describes young Pi‘s childhood in India. How he went from being Piscine to Pissing then to the self-proclaimed nickname of Pi, his struggle with having faith in 3 different religions, life growing up on a zoo, and learning how to swim. Piscine Molitor Patel lives in Pondcherry, India with his mom, dad, and brother during the 19705.

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After the first ten chapters of the book I found myself drifting off to sleep while reading and convinced myself to at least read until the second part, hoping it might get a little bit more interesting. When Pi is pushed over board by crew members he sees Richard Parker and idiotically coaxes him over to the life boat. Realizing what he has done, Pi builds a make-shift raft out of life jackets and oars to keep his distance from the tiger. He quickly realizes that he has to train the tiger to know that Pi is the alpha.

There is nothing in this novel that makes you want to keep reading, you obviously know that Pi will survive this because he is the one narrating the story. Once you read the first few chapters of the second part you can pretty much skip to the end of the section where they land on the island. To be honest, I don’t remember much of the second part. It begins to get wordy and redundant to the point where I checked the page numbers to make sure I wasn’t re-reading parts. Part three I will give a little credit to. Yann Martel contradicts everything we have read so far and adds an interesting twist. In the mist of his story getting questioned by interviewers, Pi rewrites his entire story, questioning the reader to have faith in which story is true. This 401 page book could have been written in at 50 page or»so short story and would have been one hundred times better.