A Short and Sweet Summary

    Life of Pi is a three part story of Piscine Molitor Patel, a sixteen- year- old South Indian boy who survives out at sea with a Bengal tiger for 227 days. Pi is raised in Pondicherry a Southern city in India, where his father runs a zoo. At the age of fifteen he adopts three religions Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam. Pi has been a Hindu from an early age, but considers himself to be devoted to all three religions.

Due to commotion by the government that has been bugging Pi’s father for quite some time, the Patel family decides to close the zoo and move to Canada. At sixteen, Pi, his mother, father, brother, along with the zoo animals all board the Tsimtsum (the animals are on the ship so they can be sold all around the world). 

    An unknown reason causes the Tsimtsum to sink, and Pi is the only person to make it onto a lifeboat and survive. The lifeboat including Pi contains a hyena, a zebra, an orang-utan, and Richard Parker a Bengal tiger. As the journey continues most of the animals end up killing each other, leaving pi and Richard Parker as the sole survivors left on the boat.  

     While at sea, Pi and Richard Parker face challenges that only a pessimist could survive through. Without a sufficient amount of food and fresh water, both Richard Parker and Pi become severely weak and encounter high amounts of pain. During a severe period of starvation, Pi and Richard Parker become blind. They encounter a Frenchman that’s hidden agenda is to kill Pi and eat him. Without any idea of a tiger being on the lifeboat, The Frenchman steps into Richard Parker's territory and immediately gets attacked and killed. 

      Pi and Richard Parker end up on a strangle island made up of algae, with trees growing from it, and no other life other than meerkats. After a couple of weeks of staying on the island, by Pi eating algae and Richard Parker eating meerkats, they begin to grow stronger. Pi starts to sleep in a tree on the island and shortly after realizes that the island in carnivorous. Pi becomes greatly disturbed by this realization, takes Richard Parker, and leaves the island. 

      Richard Parker and Pi after quite some time end up on a Mexican beach. As soon as they are on land Richard Parker immediately runs off into the jungle, without even acknowledging Pi. Pi finds Richard Parker's lack of delay deeply hurtful because they both experienced so much together. Pi is then found, fed and bathed, and taken to a hospital. At the hospital, two Japanese men come to question Pi on how the Tsimtsum sank. Pi tells his story, which the men do not believe, so he offers them another story. He replaces the animal characters with humans which cause his original story to be doubted on.  

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