Life of Pi Part 2, Chapter 70 - 85
Pi manages to catch a large turtle that proves too cumbersome for the little raft, and so he takes it abroad to the lifeboat where he butchers the turtle to drink its blood as suggested by the survival manual. Richard Parker growls at Pi for coming onto the lifeboat and this causes him a little worry as he realizes that he may need to come aboard the ship with more freedom. He decides to expand his territory and make Richard Parker comfortable with his presence. He describes the training method, as he begins to establish his position as an alpha by having Richard Parker associate the rolling of the boat with the whistle. Pi uses the boat’s anchor to roll the boat so that Richard Parker grows seasick every time he intrudes on Pi’s territory. He also uses the turtle shell as a shield, as he attempts to train the tiger, who manages to throw Pi into the ocean four times before Pi’s strategy begins to take effect. Pi longs for a book during his journey and records his thoughts in the little notebook where the account of several months is easily compressed into the length of a single page.
Pi continues to practice his religion during his time on the boat, as he improvises the religious rituals to fit the circumstances. He holds mass without bread, completes his daily Muslim prayers without knowing the direction of Mecca, and offers his Hindu gods the meat of turtles. The circumstances test his faith, but he perseveres as he begins to view all things around him as parts of god. He refers to the sky as being God’s ear and Richard Parker as God’s cat. Pi sings a lonely Happy Birthday song for his mother as he calculates the day to be his mother’s birthday. He realizes that Richard Parker has begun to see him as the alpha when the tiger begins hiding its feces from him. Pi takes Richard Parker’s feces in his hands and blows the whistle to show the tiger his dominance over him. They begin to struggle with their rations as the biscuits begin to deplete, and Pi is even forced to contemplate eating Richard Parker’s remains but he drops that plan quickly realizing the lack of nutrition in the foul substance. Starvation begins to set in as Pi’s ankles begin to swell and his body begins to deteriorate.
Pi’s life contracts to a ballet of circles as he crosses different parts of the ocean under the changing moon and stars. He is wracked by the extremes of his life, with heat in the day, and claustrophobia from the darkness of the night. Pi realizes that his existence has come to resemble the final moments of a strategic game, as he has few moves to make but the stakes are always life and death. His relationship with the sharks begins to change, where he had once feared them, but now he hunts them. He recalls the first time he had caught a shark, that first time he had caught the animal by its tail and hurled it into the tiger’s territory. The tiger had been bitten in his attempt to kill the shark, a mistake that had allowed him to see that the tiger too could make mistakes. He recalls another time when a dorado had leaped into the boat as it had been chasing its prey. Pi had been very hungry, but as he grabbed the fish, he realized that the starving tiger was inches away from him and ready to attack. He hadn’t retreated but had stared into the tiger’s eyes without flinching which had caused the tiger to retreat and thereby completely established Pi as the alpha. He had rewarded the tiger with a few pieces of the fish.
He understands that the details of his story can be a little difficult to believe but he defends his account by explaining that Richard Parker had relied on Pi for his food and that he had been used to the arrangement due to his life in the zoo. Besides, the only true proof of his story remains Pi himself who had managed to survive at sea even if the presence of the tiger could never truly be confirmed. The greatest challenge, greater even than food, had been water. Pi took care of the solar stills diligently and collected as much water as he could from the rain, yet they never quite had enough water. The adult Pi remembers the savagery that he had adopted in his desire to survive as he recalls that he sometimes ate his food without ensuring that it had died much like the tiger.
Pi is forced to bear a ferocious storm at sea, which forces him to abandon his raft and seek shelter in the boat under the tarpaulin where he lies flat down as far from the tiger as he can manage. They spend a harrowing time in the boat, grasping on for dear life as the ocean tries to sink the boat, but they manage to survive. Pi emerges out of the tarpaulin once the storm has passed to find the raft lost to sea along with all but one of the training whistles that he had been using for the tiger. He looks into the eyes of a huge whale as it passes near the boat, and though he never sees one that near him again, he sees them in the distance. Pi only ever sees four birds during time as a castaway, he had hoped the presence of the birds would signal the approach of land but none of them ever did. A booby landed on the boat once, and Pi immediately captured it, skinned it, and ate it with relish. Pi’s faith in God is strengthened by a lightning strike that hits the water very close to the boat, leaving Pi stunned at the mass of whiteness that appears at the time of the strike, unlike Pi, Richard Parker becomes afraid of the lightning.
Analysis
Pi's survivalist attitude comes to the fore in this section as he displays a new kind of savagery that he displays after overcoming his initial reluctance to kill and consume animals. In the past, Pi had been unable to bring himself to kill a caught fish, yet he now seems to think little of killing a turtle to drink its blood or consuming fish without first killing it. The adult Pi expresses his regret, but he also understands that the circumstances of the situation almost seemed to necessitate savagery. In this context, the symbolism of Richard Parker as Pi's animal nature has been further developed. Pi required his animal nature on the lifeboat, but he does not need it now that he is once again living in the civilized wild which is why Richard Parker is no longer with him. The reader also gets a glimpse of the duality that Pi is forced to confront during his time as a castaway when his humanity battles Pi's animal nature. He spends a day singing a birthday song for his mother, and on the next day loudly exalts over an empty ocean with the tiger's feces in his hands.
Pi is rescued from madness by religion, which is something he had always held in great esteem even though he had been raised in a mostly secular household. Pi sees the benevolence of God in the beautiful vistas in which his suffering takes place. He begins to lead a hermit-like lifestyle wherein he routinely performs religious rituals as he seeks to understand the ways of God and make peace with his fate.
