life of pi in review:
The novel, Life of Pi, by Yann Martel is a novel about a 16-year-old boy named Pi Patel. In the story, Pi and his family are immigrating from India to Canada for a better life. While on the boat, a huge storm erupts, causing Pi to be the only survivor from the ship, "TsimTsum." Pi then finds himself on a lifeboat with four other animals, an orangutan, a hyena, a zebra, and a Bengal Tiger, named Richard Parker. After a period of time, the only survivors were Pi and Richard Parker. Pi was stranded on the lifeboat for 227 days, struggling with basic human needs such as shelter, food and water. At the end of the novel, when Pi gets rescued and is being interviewed from reporters who are interested in his story, he tells them the story about the animals. When the reporters heard the story they did not believe it, creating them to ask about another story. Pi then told the reporters a different story without the animals but instead with four people: Pi himself, Pi's mother, a cook and a Chinese sailor. After he told the reporters the new story, they believed it was more true than the story with the animals. The novel, then ends off with asking the readers, "Which story do you prefer?" (pg.352)
Thesis:
All of the animals on the boat are actually people, though Pi's perspective of the situation, he determined it to be animals, in order to create the "better story."