A Radical Believer

The religious view in Life of Pi is radical because it challenges the exclusive nature of religion. Religion is exclusive in the sense that most religions tend to exclude “those who are not accepted as members of the community of believers”

(An-Na‘im 30). Yet, in the case of Pi, we can see the interconnectedness of religions.

Pi presents a possibility of rendering different religions coexistent in one believer. It seems that it is through Hinduism, a polytheistic religion, that Pi has an opportunity to understand monotheistic religions, such as Christianity and Islam. After determining to be a Christian and obtaining the priest’s approval of him as a Christian, Pi

expresses his gratitude to Krishna (a Hindu God) “for having put Jesus of Nazareth”

(Martel 58). Furthermore, after visiting a mosque and reading the Qur’an with a Muslim mystic, he becomes a Muslim. Later, when three wise men, representing three religious leaders—the pandit, the priest, and the imam—ask him to choose one of their religions to believe in, Pi decides to have faith in all of them, instead of choosing only one of them, because all religions, for him, are “true,” and he “just want[s] to love God” (69). Pi believes in three religions at the same time; he is a Hindu, a Christian, and a Muslim. Thus, thereafter, when Pi, adrift on the lifeboat, strives to weave buoyant ropes to connect the boat to the raft that he can stay on to avoid

attacks from the tiger, he entreats gods of different religions—“Jesus, Mary, Muhammad and Vishnu!”—to give him more time to do it (Martel 150).

Pi can go beyond religious boundaries because he sees the sameness of different religions rather than stresses their differences. For instance, when Pi considers the relationship between Brahman and atman in Hinduism, he compares them with a Christian view: “The truth of life is that Brahman is no different from atman, . . . what you might call the soul. . . . If you ask me how Brahman and atman relate precisely, I would say in the same way the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit relate:

mysteriously” (Martel 48-49). For Pi, Hindus, Christians, and Muslims have much in common regarding their devotion to God, so their identities are not so different from one another. He thinks that “Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God, are hat-wearing Muslims” (50).

Pi’s belief in three religions at the same time seems to be a response to White’s proposal that it is necessary to “find a new religion, or rethink our old one

[Christianity]” to deal with the ecological crisis (White 45). From White’s standpoint, Pi’s multi-religious faith can perhaps serve as an example of easing the crisis that White talks about. Pi, at first a Hindu, understands the universe through Hindu eyes:

“Brahman saguna is Brahman made manifest to our limited senses, Brahman expressed not only in gods but in humans, animals, trees, in a handful of earth, for everything has a trace of the divine in it” (Martel 48). Because of his belief in Hinduism, Pi experiences the existence of God through nature and living beings around him, be it humans or animals. Bearing this in mind, he appreciates the help of Vishnu (a Hindu god) when he catches a dorado more than three feet long. As a Hindu, Pi reveals his concern and respect for animals, for they are divine revelations.

Similar to Francis, a saint for ecologists, who loves nature and feels divinity in

nature, Pi has experiences of being with God through nature. For Pi, nature reveals divinity, a divinity not only of a Hindu god but also of Christ (or Mary), and Allah. At one time, on his way back from town, he suddenly feels he is “in heaven” because he has a different way of seeing things and nature around him, including the road, the trees, the sun, etc.; thus, he feels “like the centre of a small circle coinciding with the centre of a much larger one” and thinks that he has met “Allah” (Martel 62). At

another time, he sees “the Virgin Mary” while seeing snow “falling through the air” in a clearing in a wood (63, 62). On the occasion mentioned before, Pi thanks Vishnu for his transformation as a fish. On the other occasion, when he catches a dorado, he thinks, “Thanks be to you, Jesus-Matsya” (221). One time, when lightning occurs and a bolt strikes the wave near Pi’s boat, Pi is amazed by the flash of light. He feels exuberant and ecstatic, for he treats the flash of light as “an outbreak of divinity,” so he murmurs, “Praise be to Allah, Lord of All Worlds, the Compassionate, the Merciful, Ruler of Judgment Day!” (233). Because of his religious beliefs, Pi is concerned with nature, including animals. When Pi kills a flying fish, he sheds tears for it. Regarding himself as a killer, he feels “as guilty as Cain” and laments: “All sentient life is sacred.

I never forget to include this fish in my prayers” (183). In a sense, Pi has a Franciscan spirit because he, like Francis, cares about nature and God’s creatures; besides, he is more radical than Francis, for he crosses the borders between different religions.

V. Conclusion: A Bit of Messianism

In this ending section, following on from the topics on ecology and religion discussed previously, I would like to discuss the issue of messianism to help

reconsider the human-animal relationship and see whether it may discover the novel’s political dimension. De Boever interestingly observes that the seaside scene in which Pi meets the three religious leaders is “a rewriting of a scene from the New Testament,

‘The Visit of the Wise Men,’” in which the wise men from the East “have come to visit the newborn Christ, the messiah or the anointed one” (30). Thus, Pi acts as “a messianic figure,” and furthermore this figure is “highly critical of established religion and theology” because his “pluri-religious practice” leads to “a crisis to the religious communities that are all constituted through exclusion” (30). Building upon the theme of messianism, I would like to point out a possible messianic moment in

Life of Pi, that is, the dream-like scene in which Pi converses with the tiger and a

When Pi drifts on the sea, one of his favorite ways to escape from reality is to use his so-called “dream rag” to cover his face; subsequently, he will “fall into a daze,”

and “be visited by the most extraordinary dreams, trances, visions, thoughts,

sensations, remembrances” (Martel 236). Because of this, he enters a state of illusion where he becomes blind and engages in conversations with Richard Parker, a tiger, and then with a stranger. In this scene, as mentioned elsewhere, when Parker admits that he has killed humans because of “circumstance,” Pi ridicules his animal “instinct”

(247). Later, Pi hears a voice from a male stranger who becomes blind and is adrift on the ocean like Pi. After talking about food with this stranger, Pi treats him as his fellow and wants to “let [them] be together and feast on each other’s company” (254).

When their boats touch together, Pi opens his arm to “embrace him and to be

embraced by him” (254). Yet, soon after this stranger tries to stand on the floor of Pi’s boat, he is ripped off and consumed by Parker. Pi, like Parker, also eats some pieces of his fellow’s flesh because they, “when dried by the sun,” look like “ordinary animal flesh” and “[slip] into [his] mouth nearly unnoticed” (256). Recalling the theme of cannibalism, Pi’s eating flesh dwarfs his human pride and troubles his understanding of the distinction between man and animal. In a sense, in such a

“circumstance,” a man is not a man, and an animal is not an animal; they are merely