Comparing Yann Martel’s Life of Pi and Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut

Breakfast of Champions, written by Kurt Vonnegut, is a story of “two lonesome, skinny old men on a planet which was dying fast” (Vonnegut, P.17). One of these old men is Dwayne Hoover, a “fabulously well-to-do” Pontiac Dealer, and the other is Kilgore Trout, a “nobody” writer. This novel looks into their lives leading up to their meeting in Midland City. Life of Pi is a story that is framed by a fictional entry from the author, Yann Martel, who describes how he came to hear Piscine Molitor Patel’s story. Metafiction is a narrative technique in which the work always includes an awareness within the fiction, that it is a work of fiction. Metafiction generally has the narrator establish themselves as a character in the novel. Breakfast of Champions and Life of Pi both have characters who have a hard time differentiating their perception of their situation and the actual events taking place.

Metafiction generally uses a technique where the storyteller is allowed to do certain things while embodying the role of the narrator, for example, commenting on the story while it is going on and changing it to suit the intended audience. Pi’s first-person account of the days spent on the open sea is replaced, by Martel, with a fictional story in place for the more realistic story to suit the main audience. “‘So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can’t prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?’… Mr. Chiba: ‘The story with animals’” (Martel, P.317). This introductory framework of Martel’s narration on Pi’s first-person account of the days spent on the open sea contradicts the end of the novel, when Pi reveals the more realisti...

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...ues such as narrative intrusion and . By using this approach, where the narrator comments upon the tale while it is being told, gives an awareness within the novel that it is a work of fiction to all readers. This method also confuses the characters, leaving them disoriented regarding their consciousness to their reality and the actuality of it all. While metafiction can sometimes be puzzling to understand, the techniques authors use, play on this confusion it puts forth to lure readers to keep reading in order to finally comprehend what is really going on. I recommend this type of genre, as well as the two novels, Breakfast of Champions, and Life of Pi, to everyone. Generally these books are not a difficult read in the sense of vocabulary, but more on how the books are put together, making them difficult to get into yet extremely interesting once the reader does.