This story starts as an Indian father takes his family and his zoo on the deck of the Tsimtsum. One stormy night, the boats sinks and our main character, the son of the indian father,Piscine Molitor Patel climbs- or, falls- aboard on a lifeboat with an orangutan, a hyena, a broken legged zebra and a bengal tiger named Richard Parker.
Life of Pi is about a boy and a tiger on their adventure on the wide pacific ocean. They face sharks, an acidic and carnivorous island, hunger, and everything that is thrown their way.
Is this book worth reading? definitely. This is a must read, expanding the reader's imagination, with a slightly mysterious ending that the reader themselves must solve.Is this book worth buying? I recommend just borrowing in a library.
-SPOILER-
Do not read if you have not read to the end of the book yet!
At the point where Pi and Richard Parker is stranded in the middle of the vast ocean, I started to think that it was amazing how the author could illustrate such a blank part of the story where only hunger and starvation was half of what was going on. The parts where nothing was actually going on except the main character's narration was fascinating because you could see inside the mind of someone who was struggling to survive in the middle of nowhere with a bengal tiger beneath him.
The ending was a bit confusing, but at the end of the book, during the interview, Pi Patel says "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?" I think we can agree that the story with animals was much more thrilling and adventurous. The author is asking the reader which ending they prefer, expanding their imagination and belief. Through this the author leaves the ending up to us, and we find the answer in how we see the world, and how we want to see it.
The way the author said'Tigers exist, lifeboats exist, oceans exist. Because the three have never come together in your narrow, limited experience, you refuse to believe that they might', I came to realize how narrow our imagination can come down to, only believing in what we see and can prove. Also it brought an urge for adventure and experience in
me and I am sure it can do the same to any other reader.
