In Yann Martel’s fantasy adventure novel, Life of Pi, the elderly man Francis Adirubasamy, who tells Martel Pi’s story claims, “I have a story that will make you believe in God” (Martel, 2001, p. viii). It is not surprising that the publisher has used this claim to promote the book. Nonetheless, it is a significantly strong claim that one cannot easily oppose. Life of Pi is a bold, daring novel, in which Martel asks readers why they do not believe in God and it makes them believe. However, the truth is that the phenomenal success of this bestselling novel and its ‘claimed’ religious efficacy are not even remotely connected, and suggesting that they are would mean undermining its own deconstructive project. Martel’s abilities to tell a story are certainly praiseworthy, without exception, but he does not exactly succeed to persuade with his treatment of religion.
Indeed, Yann Martel’s novel is wonderful, but it may not necessarily make readers believe in God, rather it might reinforce their faith in the substantial redemptive powers of fiction, and perhaps Martel intended to make this very point. It is arguable that Martel never intended to prove that God exists, rather he was out to justify the belief that God exists. Taking a post-modernist position, Martel is actually comparing the perspective of God’s existence to true story behind Pi’s experience of shipwreck and his fictional, alternative version in which animals are replaced with people. Just like Japanese officials prefer the story with animals over the one without them because it was the better one, similarly, the belief that God exists is the better story than the ones told by those who do not believe that God exists.
It is completely agreeable that Martel’s advocacy of God’s existence and his storytelling has relative merits, but it is also arguable that there is a problem within it all as well. In the early pages of the novel, Martel does succeed at painting a colorful image of religion, but beyond that, he is not able to appropriately reveal the accurate nature of Pi’s faith. It becomes apparent that the thoughts of life and morality provoked by discussions of God are not relevant to Pi on his lifeboat the same way they are usually not relevant in the animal kingdom. Indeed, despite his love for God and embracing three religions, namely Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam, Pi manages to survive the shipwreck because he spends more time thinking on how to survive with a 450-pound Bengal tiger that he is left with rather than thinking about life and morality.
Martel has organized his novel around a philosophical debate that the modern world tends to prefer fact over fiction or story, materialism over idealism, reason over imagination, and science over religion. The Japanese government officials who appear in the latter part of the novel are examples of the opposite ends of this debate. The head of the investigation Mr. Okamoto is an example of the positivist view that truth is an objective reality, and only the methods of science can verify and uncover it. He dismisses Pi’s truthful story, the one with animals, refusing to believe that there was a tiger with him in his lifeboat, claiming that it is “very unlikely” (Martel, 2001, p. 332), because he stands by with empirical evidence, which Pi was not able to provide. Mr. Chiba, his assistant, is an example of the Romantic viewpoints, especially its emphasis of emotion, imaginative creativity, spontaneity and subjectivity, so the Pi’s truthful story impressive and he exclaims “What a story” (Martel, 2001, p. 324).
Ironically, Martel constructs the plot and protagonist of his novel in accordance with the rules of casual explanation, drawing upon the conventions of realism to elaborate the two. There are numerous realistic factors in Pi’s survival in a lifeboat with a tiger for 227 days that make it possible to account for and understand his story. It seems that realism serves Martel’s true intention behind writing this novel quite well. Realism demands detailed documentation, and that is what makes Pi’s truthful story the “better story” and more robust or substantial in its imaginative composition or structure. Moreover, Martel is able to express the fact-fiction, reason-imagination debate his novel revolves around in a more formal manner by fusing mundane ordinary details with Pi’s “incredible” story. In combination with the strain of idealism or romanticism running through the story, the details actually make Pi’s story so meaningful and powerful.
In conclusion, Martel manages to resolve this debate as his novel reaches its moment of climax, when Mr. Okamoto and Mr. Chiba answer Pi’s question: “Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?” (Martel, 2001, p. 352) Although Mr. Chiba is quick in replying, Mr. Okamoto spends some time thinking about what to answer (Martel, 2001, p. 352). Ultimately, Mr. Okamoto agrees with Pi’s statement that “[n]either [story] explains the sinking of the Tsimtsum,” that since there is no evidence available, so even science cannot explain it. He also agrees that it is not possible to prove which one of Pi’s two stories of survival is actually true. Still, like Mr. Chiba, Mr. Okamoto also chooses the story with animals over the one with people. His choice can be considered as an indication of the fact that he underwent a transformation, in which his imaginative capacity managed to develop from it earlier was. Thus, as Pi says, “And so it goes with God” (Martel, 2001, p. 352), this is what Martel’s advocacy of God’s existence is based on.
References
Martel, Y. (2001). Life of pi. (1st ed.). Toronto: Knopf Canada.
