Questions Without Answers

Having read this novel, and rereading several segments I might add, I cannot escape the allegorical feel of this novel. That is to say, that underneath the charming and heroic tale, there is a profound well of questions and commentaries and examinations of what it means to discover and live in faith- faith, which is a phenomenon only tangible to the individual on an intensely introspective level.

This of course, presents an epistemological dilemma: if faith is only known within an individual whose self is, in my opinion, determined by the vast archives of perception, how can we know it to be true? If perceptions are possibly altered in the filter of our a priori assumptions, how can we know the true nature of faith? Can the true nature of faith be universal? Does it defeat the purpose of faith to attempt to determine a quantitative process for externalizing it? Is it crucial that we know for certain which of Pi's two stories of his shipwreck is true?

It seems to me that Yann Martel, through Life of Pi, is among other things commenting on the futility of modern Western society's attempts to rationalize religion within groups of people. Not only is Martel's emphasis through Pi the fact that devotion to a religion is an incredibly individual journey, but that it is a journey that must be carried out in light and in spite of everything else weighing in on your life. This includes scientific atheism which is represented by character Mr. Kumar who says to Pi: "I lived in bed, racked with polio. I asked myself every day, 'Where is God? Where is God? Where is God?' God never came. It wasn't God who saved me- it was medicine (pg. 30, Par. 5)." Mr. Kumar is described as a man who visited the Pondicherry Zoo regularly, as if to make sure that the animals were still mating according to Gregor Mendel and still dying according to Charles Darwin. He is the rationalist. For him, truth is the measurable, observable, documentable, statistically proven objectivity.

Later on, Pi is told the Christ story by a Catholic priest. He then tries to rationalize, much to my immense entertainment, Christ's death in relation to what he relates everything: the Pondicherry Zoo...

"I tried to imagine Father saying to me, 'Piscine, a lion slipped into the llama pen today and killed two llamas. Yeserday another one killed a black buck. Last week two of them ate the camel. The week before it was painted storks and grey herons. And who's to say for sure who snacked on our golden agouti? The situation has become intolerable. Something must be done. I have decieded that he only way the lions can atone for their sins is if I feed you to them.'"

Instead of rejecting this (hilarious) notion of faith, Pi spends the next while listening, pondering, considering, and listening some more to stories from Christianity and, soon to follow, several other faiths. He seems to believe subconsciously that to learn the true nature of any and all of these faiths he must experience all that he possibly can within them. He refuses to make any assumptions pertaining to any aspect of his faith(s) based on inadequate experience and stunted rationalizations.

Pi's parents exlaim in reaction to Pi's new hobby:

"Mother chuckled. 'Last week he finished a book called The Imitation of Christ."

'The Imitation of Christ! I say again, I wonder how far he'll go with these interests!' cried Father."