Life Of Pi

At the beginning of the story, we already know that Pi has had a new life in Canada, so he must be rescued as a result. The last part, "Benito Juarez Infirmary, Tomatlan, Mexico", tells that after Pi was rescued, two Japanese people came after him to investigate the reason of the catastrophe. Then, Yann Martel states his opinions about reality as well as novels and reading through Pi’s mouth:

“Isn’t telling about something --- using words, English or Japanese --- already something of an invention? Isn’t just looking upon this world already something of an invention?

"The world isn’t just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn’t that make life a story?"

At the end of the novel, Pi narrates another story, which is so cruel that it does not match the "Happy Ending" in the last sentence of the first part. In this story, Pi’s mother and four real people fall into the lifeboat instead of Pi and three animals, and eventually we find that only Pi survived. He not only has to see his mother being killed, but also has to eat human bodies to keep alive like that cook.

Before Yann Martel wrote this novel, he had already written two unknown books. He had tried many different jobs, which put his life in an embarrassing situation. He mentioned that this book was born as he was hungry in "Author’s Note", so he went to India to look for energy and inspiration. Nevertheless, the publishing ran into a predicament again, because it was refused by many famous publishers; besides, because of hungry, he had a better understanding of difficulties of bottom-class people and deceit and designing of human beings.

The author provides this cruel story to make readers completely have another understanding of the first story: Richard Parker is exactly Pi’s alter ago. Behind the same law of the jungle, instead of saying the animals are metaphor of human beings in the first story, it is better to say the people in the second story have different animals’ characteristics. Consequently, when Pi asked those two Japanese that which story they preferred, they both agreed with “the story with animals”, “and so it goes with God.”

It is said to be “a novel make you believe in God”.