While at sea, Pi and Richard Parker face many challenges, traumas, tragedies, and miracles. Using a whistle, seasickness, and a turtle-shell shield, Pi manages to assert his authority over Richard Parker and delineate his own territory on the lifeboat, where he is comparatively safe from the tiger. But Pi realizes that if Richard Parker gets hungry enough, he will swim to the raft and kill him. There is no land in sight and the ocean is shark-infested, so Pi builds a raft which he attaches to the lifeboat, to keep himself at a safer distance from Richard Parker. Pi is left alone on a lifeboat with an adult male tiger. The hyena kills and devours both the zebra and Orange Juice, before Richard Parker kills the hyena. Along with Pi, the lifeboat contains a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan named Orange Juice, and a bengal tiger named Richard Parker. Pi, his mother, father, and brother Ravi all board the Tsimtsum along with the zoo’s animal inhabitants (who are on their way to be sold around the world).Īn unexplained event causes the Tsimtsum to sink, and Pi is the only human to make it onto the lifeboat and survive. He is a precocious and intelligent boy who considers himself a pious devotee to three religions: Hindu, Christianity, and Islam.īecause of government upheaval, the Patels close the Pondicherry Zoo and move to Canada when Pi is sixteen. Pi grows up in the South Indian city of Pondicherry, where his father runs the zoo. Life of Pi tells the fantastical story of Piscine Molitor Patel, also known as Pi, a sixteen-year-old South Indian boy who survives at sea with a tiger for 227 days.

Novel of life of pi