Survival at sea

When I first came across the idea of reading The Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, I was intrigued by the title, thinking, before seeing the cover, it had something to do with π. Then I read a brief description of it and was immediately reminded of an earlier reading of The Island of the Day Before, by Umberto Eco, which also uses surviving at sea after a shipwreck as the foundation for explorations into the further reaches of human existence. Interestingly, there are a few threads that seem to connect Pi and Roberto, but not enough to draw any parallels between the two books.

My decision to buy The Life of Pi was also influenced by its winning the Man Booker Prize, which is, to me, reason enough to read a novel, having enjoyed many of the previous winners, plus later works of the authors.

According to some reviewers, The Life of Pi is about the basic meanings of life and belief in the Divine, which was another reason for me to read the book, as I have explored the reaches of human belief in my own philosophical pursuits. This is a flimsy reason to buy the book if only because purposeful fictional explorations of human relationships with religious beliefs tend to hold little substance, giving little sustenance to the mind.

And, so, I jumped in and ran with Pi and Richard Parker as far as I could. Knowing Pi survives to tell the tale to the person “writing” the story seemed at first to have little bearing on whether I would continue or stop. The more I read, the further I went into the amazing tale of survival at sea in a lifeboat, and the more reminders that Pi survived, seemed to build sort of a barrier to my achieving The End.

Honestly, I really tried to read further than where I stopped. I even skipped ahead to read from the end backwards, but nothing seemed to get past whatever was holding me back. Maybe the lack of trepidation in the narrative injured my ability to digest the material. The need for suspense in any novel drives the tale forward demanding the reader turn the page to find out what comes next.

Mostly, though, I think my problem with The Life of Pi is the constant reminders throughout the book that Pi survives to tell his tale. No matter how horrendous the physical suffering due to starvation, dehydration, and fear of being eaten by the tiger in the boat or the sharks prowling in the water, the author keeps reminding the reader that everything turns out okay, that the reader shouldn’t worry about anything, because Pi gets to wherever the boat is going and that whatever Pi’s mind devises to survive works. I really didn't care to find out because in the end Pi comes across as normal as the rest of us, which maybe the whole point to the novel, but I wasn't intrigued enough to turn the next page to find out.