He is a "small, slim man - no more than five foot five. In the beginning of chapter 2 the narrative switches back to the author's point of view for a description of Pi. He says that he is working and now lives in Canada although he misses his home country of India and also misses someone named Richard Parker. However, he does not reveal how he has suffered but goes on to explain that he was a religious and zoological student. He expresses great love and affection for Patel.Ĭhapter 1 begins with Pi narrating in the first person and telling the reader that his suffering has left him "sad and gloomy". He then goes on to briefly discussed the experience of hearing Patel's story and why he decided to write it as a novel. The author agrees and meets with Patel in Canada. The author talks to a man named Francis who says that he can get him in touch with a man named Pi Patel who, he says, will tell him a story so incredible that it will make him believe in God. He is now trying to shed the failure of his most recent novel and is currently living in India while attempting to write a book about Portugal. The author writes himself into the story and claims to be a novelist who was told an incredible story while living in India. The author implies that it is up to the reader to decide which story is true. The tiger runs off into the jungle while Pi is taken to the hospital by passersby.ĭuring an interview with the marine authorities about the ship, Pi tells them his miraculous story but, when pressed tells another more realistic story of surviving on a boat with four people whom eventually turned to cannibalism. Pi and the tiger spend 227 days on the ship until eventually, they hit shore on a Mexican beach. Initially, Pi is frightened of the tiger but eventually he trains it to respond to him as he learns to use the ships emergency supplies to take care of them.
The animals, a wounded zebra, an orangutan and a hyena, eventually destroy each other leaving Pi alone on the small boat with only an adult Bengal tiger. While making passage across the sea, the ship sinks and Pi manages to make it onto a lifeboat with four other animals and no one else. When Pi is a young man, his father decides to move his family to Canada from India and bring along some of the animals from his zoo. Pi is an imaginative polytheist whose father owns a zoo that he spends much of his time in. The book is the story of a young man, Piscine Patel, who goes by the name "Pi" and an author who is determined to write his story which he has been told is astounding.