Too Hard to Believe?

Abstract

"So which God indeed, and by whose prayers? But that is not the only complication from the novel. A story that promises to make you believe in God would presumably be a story about God – about God’s goodness or grace, God’s power or design – something, anything to compel us to believe. But not so with Life of Pi. While it does depict the confounding religious eclecticism of its central character, it says little or nothing about God, and makes no argument for God’s existence. By the time you come to the end of the story, like the investigators who interrogated Pi about the causes of the shipwreck, you are not sure whether the story you have heard is even true or not, whether Pi is reliable and trustworthy, or delusional at best. That is because on one level his story of surviving 227 days at sea with a 450-pound Bengal tiger cannot be confirmed. When Pi washed up on shore, the tiger was never found. But above and beyond whether or not it can be confirmed, it is a story that is simply too hard to believe. So after much skepticism and disbelief from the investigators, Pi told another story of his survival. This time without the tiger, without the island paradise, and full of deceit and despair in which Pi’s survival was only made possible by his descent into cannibalism. As Pi explains, neither story explains the sinking of the ship, neither story can be proven true or false. He states, “In both stories the ship sinks, my entire family dies, and I suffer,” in which case, “since it makes no factual difference,” the question becomes, “which story do you prefer? Which is the better story?” (Martel: 317)"(pg 3)