Life of Pi

The author presents a transcript of Pi’s interview with two officials from the Maritime Department in the Japanese Ministry of Transport, Tomohiro Okamoto and Atsuro Chiba, who are in California on unrelated business. They drive to Tomatlán, Mexico to interview Pi when they learn that he is the lone survivor of the Japanese Tsimtsum. However, due to a series of comical errors resulting in them getting lost and suffering multiple car repairs, they arrive in Tomatlán 41 hours late. Utterly exhausted from not having slept for 41 hours, Chiba and Okamoto begin interviewing Pi. The transcript includes outsourced translations of Chiba and Okamoto when they speak in Japanese. These translations appear as a separate font from the rest of the transcription.

The interview begins, dated February 19th, 1978. Okamoto introduces himself and Chiba, who is new on the job. Okamoto tells Chiba to pay attention and learn. They ask Pi if he wants a cookie, which he accepts. Chapter 97 consists only of: “The story.” Okamoto and Chiba marvel at Pi’s tale, but they express disbelief between themselves in Japanese. Pi asks for another cookie before Okamoto suggests they take a break.

Upon returning, Okamoto and Chiba tell Pi that his story is interesting, but not believable. Okamoto starts grilling Pi on the details such as the floating bananas. He asks Pi to demonstrate that bananas can float, to which Pi obliges. After filling a sink, Okamoto places two of Pi’s bananas in the sink and is surprised to find that they, in fact, float. Okamoto then retorts that an algae island is “botanically impossible.” He also challenges the existence of Richard Parker, saying that no trace of a Bengal tiger has been found in Tomatlán. Pi says that wild animals are adept at hiding, and he tells them the story of the panther from Zurich Zoo. Pi is also offended that the two men require evidentiary proof, and he asks them if they believe in abstract or metaphysical things, like love or God.

Chiba becomes increasingly distracted, prompting further admonishments from Okamoto in Japanese. They tell Pi they want the “straight facts” with no inventions (302). Pi affirms that he understands: they want “dry, yeastless factuality” (302).

He tells them a second version sans zoo animals. This alternative version consists of Pi, Pi’s mother, a Taiwanese sailor, and a French cook. The handsome Taiwanese sailor, who speaks no English, suffers a badly broken leg. The cook manipulates everyone into thinking the sailor’s leg needs to be amputated to save him. In actuality, the cook wants to use it as bait. Eventually, the sailor dies, and the cook immediately butchers him, despite Pi’s mother’s protestations. Pi and his mother refuse to join the cook in eating the boy’s flesh, but they break their vegetarianism to eat fish. Later, Pi’s mother and the cook get into an altercation, leading the cook to kill Pi’s mother. He decapitates her and throws her severed head in Pi’s direction before butchering the remainder of her body and eating her flesh. Soon after, Pi kills the cook and eats his heart, liver, and flesh. He says the cook went too far “even by his bestial standards” (310). Pi concludes his story abruptly, saying simply, “Solitude began. I turned to God. I survived” (311).

Okamoto and Chiba are horrified by this version of Pi’s story, but they do note in Japanese that the stories share peculiar parallels such as between the Taiwanese sailor and the zebra, and the hyena and cook. They probe Pi further over technical details of the Tsimtsum’s sinking, to which Pi has no answers. They realize it will remain a mystery. Before parting ways, Pi asks which story they prefer. Both Okamoto and Chiba respond that the version with animals is “the better story” (317). In the final chapter, we learn Mr. Okamoto sends a report to the author in which he speculates the ship sank due to engine failure. He adds an aside, saying that Pi’s story is “unparalleled in the history of shipwrecks” (319), and that few castaways can claim to have survived so long yet in the company of an adult Bengal tiger.