A Personal Take on Life of Pi

            Life of Pi boldly begins with the lead character’s statement that “this story will make you believe in God.” A tall order, and as an agnostic/atheist (I waver), I was skeptical but intrigued. In fact, when I decided to read the book, after watching the recent Academy Award-winning movie, I somehow had no idea it was a spiritual novel. Not that I took the ending in the movie totally literally, but still, I figured it was more about the mystery of the human psyche and the will to live more than anything else. Needless to say, when my book arrived from the seller on Amazon with a note saying, “Enjoy the book. God bless you!” I started to figure it out.

            However, despite not being theistic, I am not opposed to reading, writing, and discussing matters of philosophy, spirituality, and faith—in fact, I probably enjoy it more than most theists do. Therefore, I still gleaned quite a lot from this book, some of which I find troubling and some of which I find insightful. Here are some of the points I’m pondering…

            Throughout Life of Pi, the author and/or title character express a blatant distaste for agnostics. He describes them as being “muddled…in the thrall of reason, that fool’s gold for the bright” (p. 5). Meanwhile, he touts a flattering affection for both religious folks and atheists because, as the reader gathers, they know how to make a decision about their faith. The religious put faith in God and dogma, while atheists put faith in science and reason. Apparently, agnostics also put faith in science and reason (a fact that Pi endlessly chides them for), but not so much that they are willing to make a claim on the existence of God. As Pi tells it:

It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation. (p. 28)

This was my first beef with the book because I have a different take on what Pi dubs “doubt.” For me, agnostics are not so much doubtful as a way of life as they are wise enough to believe that they do not know everything. Whereas theists and atheists ultimately stake a claim in what they presume to “know” about our existence in the world and the meaning behind it all, agnostics acknowledge this cannot be known. Sure, that may lead to some doubt at times, and it may not ultimately be comforting in times of struggle, but I fail to see how the author/Pi harbors more resentment for agnostics than he does for atheists, who in my experience abide by the same logic.

            Nevertheless, I agree with the message of the book that says reason and intellect are not enough to get through life. One must eventually develop some sort of faith, whether it is theistic or not (although the book seems to argue it must be the former). I have been through enough trial and tribulation to realize that attributing everything to reason and science is often small consolation, and I have encountered enough mysteries in this world to understand that even reason and science can’t explain everything (or, even if they do offer an explanation, it doesn’t quite capture the strangeness and wonder of the phenomenon). I’m sure that if I found myself in the very precarious and dire situation that Pi endures, I would cling to an even stronger faith than I have now (that is, if I could even survive such a situation!). In fact, Pi doesn’t shoot down reason altogether in his struggle. Reason keeps him living much longer than he would without it. However, the end of the book reveals that he may have been relying much more on faith and, perhaps, fantasy to get him through than anything else.

            And yet, throughout the book I kept questioning, “Where’s the part that will make me believe in God?” Until the very end, and especially at the end, it seemed the author was operating on the assumption that people can simply choose to believe in God. After telling both stories about what happened to him on his journey across the Pacific—the original story and the more “logical” story—Pi says, “In both stories the ship sinks, my entire family dies, and I suffer…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?” The Japanese engineer replies, “The story with animals is the better story.” To which Pi states, “Thank you. And so it goes with God” (p. 317). Contrarily, as much as I may want to believe in God for the comfort and peace it may bring, I don’t feel it is a choice I can make. The idea that some supernatural sentient being governs the universe is so divergent from my reason that choosing to believe in it feels like I’d be lying to myself. After finishing the book, and still now as I write, I am frustrated by the ending. For the author to plant the possibility that Pi was imagining the entire story with the animals, as a deluded alternative to the more sinister story in which everyone cannibalizes and kills each other, seems to mar the credibility of his message. Well, sure, it would be nice if I could just play make-believe every time I’m experiencing pain and suffering, but that doesn’t change reality. It’s just living in a dreamworld.

And yet, this ending makes Life of Pi the feat of literary wisdom that it is and serves as an important allegory. In addition, I found that it wasn’t really the ending that altered my perspective, but rather one passage about half-way through the book. Written from the point-of-view of the author himself, it says, “What of God’s silence? I think it over. I add: An intellect confounded yet a trusting sense of presence and of ultimate purpose” (p. 63). This passage could probably be interpreted in several ways, and perhaps I am interpreting it incorrectly, but this is how I understood it: God doesn’t have to be some supernatural sentient being governing the universe, God can be one’s view of ultimate purpose. The author describes “the founding principle of existence” as love (p. 63). I realized that, indeed, the so-called faith I have in life is in the interconnectedness between all things and our capacity to show love and kindness to one another. Sure, there are plenty of examples that defy this faith: war, poverty, discrimination, the destruction of our natural resources, etc. etc. etc. And yet, if we didn’t believe that we could overcome these atrocities with love, then what’s the point in living?

As it turns out, Life of Pi really is about the mystery of the human psyche and the will to live, but it goes deeper than that. I can’t say this book made me believe in God in the traditional sense of the word, but it did strengthen my existing faith. And, shoot, that’s not half-bad.