Emily Johnson CIS Literature 3/4//2013 Ms. Johnson The Life of Pi Notebook One InThe Life of Piby Yann Martel, there are two stories, but which is true: The boy with the animals or with the humans? Staying on a boat with animals seems unrealistic. Yet, the story with the humans killing and eating each other is too savage. As readers, the only way to know is with faith. The whole story lines itself in faith. How far will someone go to believe a story, even if it seems false? Pi Patel, the main character in the story, tells a story about a hyena eating an orangutan and a zebra, brutally. Then a tiger named Richard Parker came along and gobbled up the hyena. Pi, then, was left alone with Richard Parker on the boat for 227 days (Martel 189).Richard Parker never tried to eat Pi. Japanese men from the Maritime Department in the Ministry of Transport came in to interview Pi once he landed in Mexico, wanting to know what happened to theTsimtsumsince he was the lone survivor. When Pi told him how he and Richard Parker were in the boat for so long, they did not believe him, “Mr. Okamoto: ‘Mr. Patel, we don’t believe your story”’. The Japanese men thought Pi was taking them as fools (Martel 292). Neither of them had faith in Pi’s story. ‘“I’m sorry to say it bluntly…but you don’t really expect us to believe you, do you?”’ (Martel 294). They could not even be convinced. At first that was not Pi’s intention, but he needed them to trust and believe him. He simply wanted to know what their
