Rachel R asked: In Life of Pi, Piscine, also known as Pi, Patel and Richard Parker find a luscious green floating island. Equivalent to the animalized beginning of the story, the island also translates to a true reality, shown though the beautiful writing of author Yann Martel. The small island is a close representation of paradise, for it is providing endless food, water, and shelter to the castaways. When arriving to the carnivorous island, Pi comes upon an innumerous amount of meerkats living in complete isolation from any other animal species. These meerkats help Pi establish a better understanding of the island, and how its ecosystem works. In a biblical sense, Meerkat Island symbolizes the Garden of Eden, while the meerkats themselves are all the non-believers. The Island is the most important symbol in the novel; it is proof that faith saved Pi.
When discussing the story behind the animals, Pi tells at the end of the novel, each animal is given a human role. However, the meerkats are not included in Pi’s human story. To understand their role in this, one must understand the Garden of Eden analysis. The island, similar to the Garden of Eden, can be seen by looking at Pi as Adam or Eve, with the island as his paradise to live and thrive on. In the story, God makes Adam and Eva and puts them both in the garden, eastward in Eden. Where as Pi was located on the island eastward of where the ship sank. God has both Adam and Eve tend the garden in which they live; while in this island potion of the novel Pi desides to finnally clean the lifeboat, as if he where following the charges God gave him, for no other reason would he need to use energy to make a clean boat. As well, God warns Adam not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Throughout Pi’s stay on the island he knows there is something wrong. He feels sick often, and the meerkats are acting strange. However, he does not question this feeling of skepticism. He is in awe over the abundance of food and water. This allows him to block out this skepticism and curiosity of what may be harmful. The same way Eve eats from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and persuades Adam to eat from it too.
The meerkats warn Pi throughout his entire stay about the true reality of the island. For instance, during chapter 92, Pi is woken in night by the meerkats crying in excitement over the enormous number of dead fish floating to the top of the pond. He says, “Not a single meerkat went down to the pond. None even made the first motions of going down. They did no more than loudly express their frustration. I found the sight sinister. There was something disturbing about all those dead fish” (Martel, 277). Basically, this shows that the meerkats are the snake in the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The serpent in the original story, suggests to Eve the idea of there being fruit of knowledge, or being able to have a life with knowledge. The meerkats by acting in the way they do cause Pi to question his thoughts of the island. By doing so he discovers the truth of the island’s ecosystem, just as the serpent pushes Eve to taste the fruit of knowledge.
Pi finally decides to question the island’s mysteries. This is when his debate with himself leads him to discover the shocking truth, the island is carnivorous. This reality is so fatal, that Pi realizes he must leave the island. He could not disregard the fact that his home was actually a murderer. In this sense the island also symbolizes Pi’s feelings and decisions for killing the carnivorous cook. He says, “By the time morning came, my grim decision was taken. I preferred to set off and perish in search of my own kind than to live a lonely half-life of physical comfort and spiritual death on this murderous island” (Martel, 283). Pi would rather die by his own beliefs than live a life which he feels immoral.
The meerkats, besides being the serpent, are all the non-believers through the novel. The meerkats chose to live on the island even though they are fully aware of its horrible reality. They chose to live their life being physically comfortable disregarding the fact that they are spiritual dead. In chapter 22 when he says, “I can well imagine an atheist’s last words: “White, white! L-L-Love! My God!”—and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying, “Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain,” and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story”(Martel, 62). The meerkats, like agnostics, lack imagination and miss the better part of live, which is spiritual, not physical. Pi faced this same challenge on the island when he had to choose to either live and thrive on the island or leave and possibly die. He had to choose the path of being the believer or being the non-believer. The island was a test. It proved he would not abandon his spirituality for the physical comfort of paradise.
The meerkats were necessary in the novel for Pi to discover that faith, and faith alone allowed him to survive his 227 days at sea. With out the false reality of the meerkats Pi would not have been capable of over coming the cook horrible ways. They made him realize that the cook choose to live a life of physical comfort, not spiritual. He discovered through this alternate reality that he had a choice. That he could stick with his faith and give up comfort from the cook. With out faith Pi would have been mentally dead causing him physical death.
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