Decisions In Yann Martel's Life Of Pi

The life of a person is made by one decision after decision, with different decision brought different way of thinking or different perspective. In the novel by Yann Martel 《Life of Pi》, there is also a decision. A decision that make pi able to survive in the middle of the pacific; make the offices feel peace in their mind; make the reader to realize the greatness of the book Pi needs to make he’s story on the Pacific Ocean an unrealistic story so that he can survive the ocean. At the beginning of the part 2 of the book, when Pi did an item check and almost give up he’s will to live on, he said this: “Yes, so long as God with me, I will not die, Amen.” It is worth mentioning that in the item check he made, the final item on the list is “1

Not because they think god does exist, but because they need religious story to bring peace in their mind. After Pi believes in all the three religions, he write down this as a note: “Words of divine consciousness: moral exaltation; lasting feelings of elevation, elation, joy; a quickening of the moral sense, which strikes one as more important than an intellectual understanding of things; an alignment of the universe along moral lines, not intellectual ones; a realization that the founding principle of existence is what we call love, which works itself out sometimes not clearly, not cleanly, not immediately, nonetheless ineluctably.”(Martel, 80). This is Pi’s thought about existence, he talks about the principle of existence will work out not immediately but ineluctably. Like the two stories from the book, the Japanese officers are unable to find out which one of the story is the real one. To choose between the two stories are like choose between the universe that moral lines or intellectual ones should go first, animal story stands for universe that moral lines go first and the human story stands for the universe that intellectual ones go first. Also the final choice will decide their perspective on Pi. As the quote shows that Pi thinks the universe should be along moral lines, not

And according to this line from the author’s note: “the elderly man said: ‘I have a story that will make you believe on God.’” (Martel, ix), the book wants the reader to believe in god in some way. In the author’s note, after this line from the elderly man the author questions the process of how the story “make you believe in God”, likely the same question in the reader’s mind. When the reader finishes the book, the reader can also choose which story to believe. The reader picked the animal story, the goal of the book was achieved. But when the reader picked the human story and believe that’s what really happens to pi, the reader takes the disturbing option, seems like the book loose. But think again, because more than half of the book was the detail of the animal story, and it was part 2, the human story is at the middle of the part 3. So any reader who hasn’t read the book must take or believe the animal story in the first place, the reader will think the story is between a kid and a tiger, the reader will believe what happens in the part 2 of the book is what happens to Pi. No matter what is the reader’s final perspective to the story, when the reader was reading the part 2 of the book, the reader is believing the animal story, picking the universe that moral lines go first, following the will of the