In Canada, a writer visits an Indian storyteller named Piscine Molitor Patel (Pi), and asks him to tell his life story. Pi tells the story of his childhood life in India, and how he grew with animals from his parents zoo, Pondicherry, that they have owned and operated for many years. The beginning of the story also explains how Pi was curious about religion from an early age, and wanted to learn more about it. Pi ended up learning and practicing three religions all at once- Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. One day, his father (zoo keeper and owner) explains to Pi and his family, that funding from the local government will soon stop. Thus, they will be unable to support the zoo any further. This forces the family to pack up their lives, their animals, and close the zoo. They decide to move to Canada, where they will sell the animals and start a new life. (1)

 

They board on a Japanese cargo ship with the animals and a few days into their travels a large storm causes the ship to sink right over the Mariana trench. This is where the real journey begins! Pi manages to survive the ship wreck, by climbing into a lifeboat. He is accompanied by a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena and a 250 pound male Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. As they all drift across the Pacific Ocean, the animals begin to getting hungry and aggressive. Pi needs to find a way to survive, as each animal slowly begins to get hungry and fight one another. Somehow Pi manages to survive this 277- day adventure, and in the process it makes him question his religions, Gods, and internal belief system. Pi is found on a shoreline in Mexico and once found he is brought to a local hospital, where two agents from the Japanese cargo ships visit him to determine how the ship sank. (1)

 

They begin questioning him as to how the ship sank, and want details. Pi tells his story about the shipwreck, and the struggle to survive with all the animals on the raft. In dis-belief, they correspondents begin to quiz him on the details and find areas that do not add up. So, when asked one more time to tell the story as to what really happened, Pi tells another version. This version in very similar, but instead of animals they are people aboard the lifeboat. Pi relates each person very closely to each animal from the story before. The reporters are shocked and disgusted by the horrible story, but both seem to believe that this is the truth. However, they question the desire to publish such a dark story. Pi says that in either story nothing changes; the ship still sinks, my family still dies, and I survived alone making it to shore. The he asks the reporters what story they will choose to publish, which they choose the one with the tiger. Pi responds with “and so it goes with God”. (1)