Page 27 - Magazine

Spirituality

This theme often brings to mind more ethereal subjects like the soul or the soul's rebirth.
You'd be both right and wrong applying such lofty thoughts to Life of Pi. In this book,
spirituality grounds itself in the everyday. The most ordinary activities take on a level of
spiritual intensity (granted they happen in an extraordinary setting). Often, the protagonist
describes – perhaps with a little jealousy – animals engaging their surroundings with an
almost yogic discipline. Of course, this is not to say spirituality is always fun and games.
Sometimes suffering and duress actually bring about the protagonist's spiritual insights. In
fact, except for the protagonist's suffering, spirituality might have a more limited role in the
novel.

Suffering

Suffering brings out the best and the worst in Life of Pi's characters. On the one hand, the
characters care for each other when they very well could have killed each other. On the
other hand, suffering drives a few characters to murder and cannibalism. There's a
moment in the book when the protagonist catches a dorado fish. To subdue it, he beats it
with a hatchet. He says, "I felt like I was beating a rainbow to death" (2.60.31). Whoever or
whatever causes suffering in this novel – God or a bizarre sequence of events – the
characters' musings and fortitude through it all recall the sheen and flash of a rainbow.

Fear

Pi has to fight against being crippled by fear, as he goes about the everyday business of
survival. He definitely has a lot of things to be afraid of – bone-crunching waves, man-
eating sharks, and conniving tigers, to name a few. Of course, fear also takes on an
existential component in the novel, meaning that Pi also has to deal with the terror of
isolation, meaninglessness, and boredom. When faced with the latter types of emptiness,
maybe fighting off sharks and tigers doesn't sound so bad.

Mortality

The protagonist in Life of Pi battles death for so long, his relationship with death becomes
very complex. Death is the thing he must push as far away from himself as possible. Death
is also part of life, and our protagonist begrudgingly admits this fact. He seeks death. He
runs away from death. By the end of the novel, our protagonist might as well have dated
death. They love each other, but used to hate each other. They've broken up a couple
times. They've gotten back together. They're together but seeing other people.

Literature I – Magazine