YAN MARTELL

Yann Martel, novelist,

short-story writer (born 25
June 1963 in Salamanca,
Spain). A Francophone who
writes in English, Yann
Martel is best known for
the international
bestseller The Life of
Pi (2001), which won the
prestigious Man Booker
Prize and was adapted into
an Academy Award
winning film of the same
name.
 Yann Martel’s Life of Pi
The first chapter of the book begins with the protagonist and
narrator, Pi introducing himself to the reader, starting to talk
about his childhood, his studies and family history. However, he
states right from the beginning that in his life he has suffered a
lot, but he doesn’t reveal the causes of his suffering yet. Pi gives
the reader hints that he was experienced something incredible in
the past, which has strongly marked his life, but doesn’t specify
anything. This creates suspension. Telling the reader about his
background before presenting the main event of his life also
prevents Pi from being ‘boxed’ in as a character of a fairy-tale.
Learning that he has his origins and knowing how he has
become what he has become, the reader gets to accept Pi as a real
living person, who had parents and friends. By specifying names
of other characters and geographical places he becomes much
more reliable. The reader can also assume that if he tells a
credible story about the beginning of his life, he will tell the
truth in the future too.
“It is true that
those we meet
can change us,
sometimes so
profoundly
that we are not
the same
afterwards,
even unto our
names.”
 Yann Martel’s Life of Pi
 The reader learns from Pi that he was an excellent student and
twat lie has superior education in the fields of religion and
zoology. At this point he mentions that a part of his thesis of
religious studies was dealing with Isaac Luria’s cosmogony theory.
This theory deals with the creation of the world by god and
contains many elements that foreshadow the things that are going
to happen with Pi. Such elements of the cosmogony theory are for
example: the contraction of deity, called 'Tsimstum’, which will
later be the name of the Japanese ship, carrying Pi; vessels carrying
light which are cracked and sink into matter, which foreshadows
Pi's shipwreck; or God creating 5 figures that will become the
dimensions of reality, which can symbolize the five characters from
the lifeboat. Pi also philosophizes about the secret of the sloth’s
survival, animal which manages to avoid trouble by its slowness
and its excellent hiding ability, in a way isolating itself from the
world. Pi mentions that he misses the country where he was raised,
India, but lie also likes Canada a lot. He also in misses a person
from the past called Richard Parker.
 Yann Martel’s Life of Pi
 The reader becomes curious about this
character and Pi’s life in India. Than the
timeline of the story is broken as Pi
jumps back and forth, telling the reader
about the way he was treated in the
Mexican hospital after describing in
detail his health problems and other
negative experiences in his life. The
narrative line is also fragmented here as
the author gives his personal comments
upon Pi's physical aspect and attitude.
 Yann Martel’s Life of Pi
 Pi becomes the narrator again as he starts talking
about his childhood in India. The origins of his
strange name are finally revealed. Despite his parents
fear of water, Pi has learned to swim with the help of
an old family friend named Francis Adirubasamy,
whom Pi only refers to as ‘Mamaji’. This Mamaji was a
swimming champion in his youth and lie teaches Pi to
love water and the ritualistic movements of
swimming. The best pool in the world in
Adirubasamy’s opinion is the Piscine Molitor in Paris,
after which Pi was named. Pi becomes a very good
swimmer and his name also refers to water, ‘piscine '
meaning ‘pool’ in French. From these facts it seems as
Pi’s connection with water is predestined. It is as his
shipwreck and his sea adventure have already been
determined by fate. Indian term that means ‘respected
uncle’
 Yann Martel’s Life of Pi
 His full name, Piscine was a very good starting point to his
classmates to tease him, when Pi was a child, turning la is
name into Pissing. In order to strengthen his own identity
and status. he had to teach the other kids to call him on his
chosen name, Pi. He did this by writing it down several
times on the blackboard. The nickname Pi has other
meanings to. Pi is a letter from the Greek alphabet and it
also refers to a number in mathematics. The number Pi is
believed to be endlessly long, its numbers flowing without
any given pattern or repetition in the sequence. This may
symbolize the multiplicity of humanity as well as the depth
of the human soul of mind. His abilities make it possible for
Pi to be able to survive his incredible journey, making him a
real mythical hero.
 Represents the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its
diameter (Hornby, 869)
 Yann Martel’s Life of Pi
 Pi spent most of his childhood in the zoo of his
hometown, Pondicherry. The local zoo was run by
his father, Santosh Patel, that’s how he gained
access and insight to the lives of captured animals.
Pi explains that the sounds of the animals were like
clockwork in the zoo, some kind of animal
bragging in every hour. Lions were roaring,
monkeys screaming and different birds were
singing, sounds that entertained him a lot as a
child. Pi shares his opinion about zoos with the
reader. In his view zoos shouldn' t be closed
because they do no harm to the animals; on the
contrary they provide these wild creatures with
excellent life conditions, where they don't have to
struggle for food or survival.
 Yann Martel’s Life of Pi
 Zoo is a very important factor in Pi's life, which shaped his
character and his view of life concerning personal freedom. In
zoos animals and their keepers perform the same actions every
day. The keepers clean and feed the animals and the animals
have their own rituals performed daily, the whole thing is very
orderly. These habits give a consistency to the lives of both
humans and animals. almost never run away even if they get the
chance to do so and that's because they are accustomed to the
safety of the encaged life. In the wilderness they would have to
fight for food, survival and replication, while in their cages they
are provided with everything. In this sense the Zoo is a
metaphor for our modern society, where people refuse to fight
for anything concerning other people's lives. They love to lock
themselves up by these daily rituals and by wrongly valuing
material possessions. Thus they isolate themselves, mostly
unconsciously, from the reality, their habits serving as building
blocks of their own cells. However much Pi praises this kind of
isolation, he will be 'freed' by chance or by fate, as his ship
wrecks and his journey to the unknown begins.
 Yann Martel’s Life of Pi
 After the great adventure and after he is healed in a hospital in
Mexico, Pi is visited by two officials from the Maritime
Department of the Japanese Ministry of Transport. One of them is
called Atsuro Chiba, the other Tomohiro Okamoto and the two
are willing to interview him in order to shed light on the
mysterious circumstances of the sinking of the Japanese ship,
Tsimtsum. The interview is tape- recorded and it is done in
English but is also contains parts where Chiba and Okamoto are
having private conversations in Japanese. These parts are provided
by the author in English in the translation of an anonymous
person. During the interview Pi repeatedly receives and asks for
cookies from the two Japanese men. The reader also finds out that
Pi stores a lot of things under his bed sheet. This can be seen as a
result of the long time he has spent hungering in the boat on the
sea, but in fact it strongly reminds me of the ritual of feeding the
animals from time to time in the zoo, mentioned by Pi at the
beginning of the novel. It is like the trauma Pi has gone through
on the open water, brought up the animalistic side of his soul. His
instincts were awakened.
 Yann Martel’s Life of Pi
 At this point the reader is nearing the end of the novel,
but yet another conflict is brought up, which is also left
unsolved by the author. For the first time Pi tells his story
with the animals in the lifeboat to the two Japanese
officials, the same way he presented it to the readers in the
previous chapters. This is indicted in the text with the
expression "The story". However Chiba and Okamoto find
the story too fantastic to believe and Pi has to retell it in
another way in order to make himself understood. This
raises the question: which one of them, if any, is the true
story? In the second version his sad story with the dying
animals disappears, to be replaced with a much more
tragic, I would even say horrifying one as the wild
characters become humans. As the readers learn this they
might think that Pi made up the story with the animals
merely to make it easier for him to accept what has
happened.
 Yann Martel’s Life of Pi
 In this new story the merciless, killer hyena is replaced by a selfish cook, the
beautiful zebra becomes a Chinese sailor and the orangutan, which already
had humanlike characteristics becomes Pi's own mother. The tiger is Pi
himself, or the wild side of his soul. In this story as in the previous one, the
hyena — here represented by the cook — kills the other passengers of the
lifeboat. He ends the suffering of the sailor, who has already broken his leg
while jumping in the boat. First he tries to use the sailor's amputated leg as
a bait to fish, but later when the sailor dies he eats him. Side by side with his
mother, Pi tries to stop the cook, who resists and cuts off the head of Pi's
mother. At the end Pi comes out victorious; he kills the cook and becomes a
cannibal himself. He becomes the sole survivor of the accident. After telling
this second story Pi asks the officials, which story they enjoyed the most?
Their answer is evidently the first one with the animals in it. The first story
features animals with human characteristics, personalities; some of them
can even talk. The whole story seems a bit childish. In fact these types of
characters are frequently used in children's tales exactly because they
illustrate the true human nature better than human characters could do.
The author underlines that humans are basically not as different from
animal as they would think. When their possessions and shelter are taken
away and they are on their own in the wilderness, they tend to trust their
instincts and are driven by their basic needs just like animals.
 He consumes the heart and liver of the cook and some parts of his flesh
 See Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’
 Yann Martel’s Life of Pi
 The final part of the novel also illustrates the difficulty of interpersonal
communication. This is caused by the limits of language as well as the faultiness of
human nature. Pi alters his stories according to the state and situation he is in the
moment of talking. He fills in the gaps of the story, parts which he has forgot, with his
personal fantasies. He also tells two different stories in order to make himself
perfectly understood. The small details may be changed but basically the nature of
the characters and the outcome is the same. The moral conclusion of both stories
should be the same if the reader thinks it through deeply. In order to reveal the
ultimate truth, one should read between the lines. This means that language isn't a
perfect tool for expressing oneself. The language in fact I a convention between
people; they agree that a word represents an object or an emotion in the real world. In
this sense all words are metaphors, so they can be interpreted differently according to
the circumstances of their appearance. This becomes evident from Okamoto's final
report too, in which he tells his own interpretation of the story to the Japanese
Ministry of Transport. There is no such thing as a better or worse story. What alters is
only the interpretation of the individual which is shaped by personal experience.
Every man on Earth accepts the harshness of reality on different levels and they make
up their versions of reality according to how much they can take in. in fact what
people really want to achieve by using language to communicate is shaping reality in
order to fit them. People like to hear nice and fantastic stories like the first one with
the Bengal tiger; they remember it better and retell it with joy. While the second story
with the mad cook, the blood, the killing and loss of family is much more upsetting
because it shows the painful reality of human nature, one we are not proud of and
one which we don't like to be reminded of.