Life of Pi is a tale of a shipwreck told to an anonymous man who immediately jumps into the shoes of Pi and listens to the entirety of the adventure. It is a fantasy story that has a large shipwreck, zoo animals on a boat, and an unlikely survival; it’s the perfect setting for imagination and exaggeration to take over. The entire style of changes in Part Three, it turns from imagination and exaggeration into an interpretive assessment of the stories told. In the ending of the book; Pi tells his two interviewers two stories and asks them, “Which do you like better?” The same question is directed to the reader but after finishing the book the reader realizes that there is one more question to be asked, which story is the true story? After reading the two-word Chapter 97 “The story” it puts the readers and interviewers on the same page. We had both just finished being told or reading the story with all the animals. Anyone with an imagination, including myself, enjoyed the entire story with Richard Parker and the other zoo animals on the raft. We all went with the storyline and enjoyed the reality of food-finding while also there were obnoxious animals staying in a small space with a human and Pi is one of the two who stay alive. However, the two interviewers are more skeptical of the boy’s story. They ask him if he is telling the truth. Pi then retells the story but switches out the animals for more believable human characters. The interviewers admit that they enjoyed the first story more but believed the second story. How easily the animals were switched out for humans poses the question if a tiger was ever even on the boat with Pi. The tiger easily could have been a physical representation of a different side of Pi. Pi the vegetarian would have never survived stranded at sea. He needed a lion at side to catch and kill fish, to fend off the other blind castaway, and to manage staying alone for two hundred and twenty-days at sea. But if the characters are all made up, what is to stop the story from being a huge exaggeration of the series of events. After all, they never found a lion running through the streets of Mexico. It is hard to deny that he was lost at sea for a long time, but there is not any other kind of evidence. We as the reader must determine whether or not we are being fed a lie about man-eating islands or if we should take it in and accept the story, and that bananas can float... after our own test in the sink of course. (456)
Heltne, I agree with you that the question the reader wants the answer to is not the same as the question Pi asks at the end. I'm pretty sure that's a deliberate choice by the author, but I'm still trying to figure out exactly what he means by it. At any rate, I think the contrast between the two questions (and the two versions of the story) make for an interesting discussion on your part, and I think you can turn that issue into a pretty good essay topic.
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