Questions to consider when reading The Life of Pi and writing a book report on it

Please read through the following questions and respond to some of them when writing your book report on The Life of Pi. You do not need to answer every question, just those that you find relevant or that interest you. Feel free to deal with questions that are not on the list below.

  1. Pi is double religious studies & zoology major in college. Speaking of sloths, he says, “I felt I was in the presence of upside-down yogis deep in meditation or hermits deep in prayer, wise beings whose intense imaginative lives were beyond the reach of my scientific probing…. A number of my fellow religious-studies students—muddled agnostics who didn’t know which way was up, who were in the thrall of reason, that fool’s gold for the bright—reminded me of the three-toed sloth; and the three-toed sloth, such a beautiful example of the miracle of life, reminded me of God” (p. 5). Why do sloths remind Pi of yogis, hermits, or God? Why does Pi evaluate his fellow religious-studies majors as he does? What draws “agnostics in the thrall of reason” to religious studies?
  2. What do you think about Pi’s comparison of zoos to God & religion? (pp. 15-19): “I know zoos are no longer in people’s good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.” (p. 19)
  3. Do you agree with Pi’s statement, “We are all born like Catholics, aren’t we—in limbo, without religion, until some figure introduces us to God?” (p. 47)
  4. If Pi had started his life as a Christian or Muslim rather than a Hindu, with its multiplicity of gods and goddesses, do you think he would have been as open to seeing the beauty of other religions?
  5. What does Richard Parker represent? Satan, fear, Pi (or some aspect of Pi), the threat of nonexistence, God?
  6. What do you think the floating island represents? What do you think the blind man represents? What is the meaning of the two men named Satish Kumar, Pi’s atheist biology teacher and the Sufi baker?
  7. The author divides the book into 100 chapters, like Dante's Divine Comedy. What is the significance of that? What parallels are there between The Life of Pi and the Divine Comedy?
  8. The Japanese ship is named Tsimtsum, which is actually a Hebrew term used by the Jewish Kabbalist Isaac Luria to refer to doctrine that “God began the process of creation by ‘contracting’ his Ein Sof (infinite light) in order to allow for a ‘conceptual space’ in which finite and seemingly independent realms could exist.” How does the name of the ship affect your understanding of the book?
  9. “These things don’t exist.” “Only because you’ve never seen them.” “That’s right. We believe what we see.” (p. 294)—“Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer.” (p. 297)—What do these interchanges between Pi and the Japanese investigators mean to the story?
  10. Pi is an irrational number, so does the fact that the main character’s name is Pi mean that religion is irrational? On the other hand, irrational numbers are real, so is that relevant to the discussion (the set of all real numbers equals the union of all rational and irrational numbers)? What about the fact that Pi is on the sea for 227 days, and 22/7 is an approximation of pi?
  11. How do you feel about describing Pi's religious faith as "a remix of religions"?
  12. The Life of Pi may be compared to the story of Job in the Bible: the three animals are Job’s three friends, the tiger is God, and the blind Frenchman is Elihu (random interruption of story). Do you think this is a valid comparison?