Life of Pi Part 3, Chapter 99 Quotes
How we cite the quotes:
Citations follow this format: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Mr. Okamoto: "But for the purposes of our investigation, we would like to know what really happened.
[Pi:] "What really happened?"
[Mr. Okamoto:] "Yes."
[Pi:] "So you want another story?"
[Mr. Okamoto:] "Uhh...no. We would like to know what really happened."
[Pi:] "Doesn't the telling of something always become a story?"
[Mr. Okamoto:] "Uhh...perhaps in English. In Japanese a story would have an element of invention in it. We don't want any invention. We want the 'straight facts,' as you say in English."
[Pi:] "Isn't telling about something – using words, English or Japanese – already an invention? Isn't just looking upon this world already something of an invention?
[Mr. Okamoto:] "Uhh..."
[Pi:] "The world isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn't that make life a story?" (3.99.205-14)
Pi makes a claim here that no matter how we present the events of our lives, we're always telling a story. That there's no such thing as "just the facts." And when we present "just the facts," we're actually telling a version of events (also known as a story). Do you agree? Can one version be more truthful than another? And what does it mean, in this situation, to be truthful?
Quote 2
"I know what you want. You want a story that won't surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won't make you see higher or further or differently. You want a flat story. An immobile story. You want dry, yeastless factuality." (3.99.224)
The Japanese investigators don't believe Pi's story. However, Pi responds in a surprising way: factuality only confirms what we already know. A story, however, makes us "see higher or further or differently." Notice also the adjectives "dry" and "yeastless" (3.99.224). A good story, according to Pi, expands and rises like bread. Sounds like a valuable commodity given that our narrator barely survived starvation.
[Pi:] "So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?"
Mr. Okamoto: "That's an interesting question..."
Mr. Chiba: "The story with animals."
Mr. Okamoto: "Yes. The story with the animals is the better story."
Pi Patel: "Thank you. And so it goes with God." (3.99.429-33)
Whoa. Mr. Pi Patel moves pretty quick here. Pi has said plenty already about how we interpret reality anyway and how we might as well choose the better story. But Pi – our clever sampler of world religions – takes it a step further. He argues a world with God makes a better story than a world without God. In cases where we have no definite proof, Pi says the best fiction is the best reality. Is Pi pulling a fancy trick? Or does he have a point?
[Pi:] "The arrogance of you big-city folk! You grant your metropolises all the animals of Eden, buy you deny my hamlet the merest Bengal tiger!"
[Mr. Okamoto:] "Mr. Patel, please calm down."
[Pi:] "If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? Isn't love hard to believe?"
[Mr. Okamoto:] "Mr. Patel – "
[Pi:] "Don't you bully me with your politeness! Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?" (3.99.109-113)
Pi loves to argue with Mr. Okamoto and Mr. Chiba (well, mainly with Mr. Okamoto). Mr. Okamoto and Mr. Chiba doubt Pi's story, which really insults Pi. In response, Pi asserts one of the guiding principles of his life. The most beautiful and important experiences are "hard to believe," but that doesn't mean they're illusions. Love and God are hard to believe. The existence of human beings also seems like a miracle. Whether or not Mr. Okamoto and Mr. Chiba agree with the rest of what Pi says, Pi's own existence – at this point – is a miracle.
[Mr. Okamoto:] "Your island is botanically impossible."
[Pi:] "Said the fly just before landing in the Venus flytrap."
[Mr. Okamoto:] "Why has no one else come upon it?"
[Pi:] "It's a big ocean crossed by busy ships. I went slowly, observing much."
[Mr. Okamoto:] "No scientist would believe you."
[Pi:] "These would be the same who dismissed Copernicus and Darwin. Have scientists finished coming upon new plants? In the Amazon basin, for example?" (3.99.51-56)
To Pi, Mr. Okamoto and Mr. Chiba have a limited view of science. The Japanese investigators think that science's method of rational inquiry discredits the miraculous. However, Pi thinks of science differently. He sees science as yet another gateway to the wondrous and miraculous. Perhaps it's not so hard to see his point. When Copernicus removed the earth from the celestial center of the universe, people must have been shocked. Because science brings us to new and undiscovered things, Pi's thinks science encourages our faith in the "hard to believe" (see Themes: Spirituality 3.99.109-113).
[Mr. Okamoto:] "We're just being reasonable."
[Pi:] "So am I! I applied my reason at every moment. Reason is excellent for getting food, clothing and shelter. Reason is the very best tool kit. Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away. But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater." (3.99.114-115)
Nice rebuttal, Pi. Mr. Pi Patel admits to reason's effectiveness: it helped him get food and water; it helped him train Richard Parker; all said, it let him fight for his own survival. But Pi also thinks Mr. Okamoto and Mr. Chiba should be careful with reason. Sure, it's an effective tool. Perhaps because reason is so effective, it tempts us to use only it to understand the world. However, if we limit our understanding of the world to what reason can explain, we'll miss some amazing things. For Pi, those include God, the miraculous, and his story.
[Pi to Mr. Okamoto and Mr. Chiba:] "What you don't realize is that we are a strange and forbidding species to wild animals. We fill them with fear. They avoid as much as possible. It took centuries to still the fear in some pliable animals – domestication it's called – but most cannot get over their fear, and I doubt they ever will. When wild animals fight us, it is out of sheer desperation. They fight when they feel they have no other way out. It's a very last resort. (3.99.105)
Pi considers – not for the first time – the fear he must have inspired in Richard Parker. And the fear human beings must inspire in all animals. And why not? Human beings, in Life of Pi, certainly are "a strange and forbidding species" (3.99.105). Their derangement causes them to needlessly kill each other, kill animals in zoos, eat each other, and demand that Pi settle on a way of worshipping God. Literature itself might be one great attempt to understand our weirdness.
[Mr. Okamoto:] "I'm sorry to say it so bluntly, we don't mean to hurt your feelings, but you don't really expect us to believe you, do you? Carnivorous trees? A fish-eating algae that produces fresh water? Tree-dwelling aquatic rodents? These things don't exist."
[Pi:] "Only because you've never seen them."
[Mr. Okamoto:] "That's right. We believe what we see." (3.99.47-9)
Some define madness as seeing things that don't exist. But Pi slyly questions this definition. Considering, especially, Pi's love for and obsession with God, it's a hop, skip and a jump to a defense of the Big Guy. It's possible Pi is asking Mr. Okamoto a super-secret hidden question: does the fact that most people don't see God mean God doesn't exist?
Quote 9
We laid him as comfortably as we could on a mattress of life jackets and kept him warm. I thought it was all for nothing. I couldn't believe a human being could survive so much pain, so much butchery. Throughout the evening and night he moaned, and his breathing was harsh and uneven. He had fits of agitated delirium. I expected him to die during the night. (3.99.248)
Like Mr. Okamoto and Mr. Chiba, we at Shmoop think Pi's second story is horrific and gruesome. But it's worth noting that in both Pi's stories extreme pain and suffering lead to madness. In some books, madness sneaks up on a character, or the character was always mad and the reader doesn't realize it until the end. But in Life of Pi madness happens after traumatic events; it's brought on by hunger or thirst. Every animal may have a mischievous, healthy streak of madness (1.10.2), but the heavy-duty delusions show up during or after great suffering. Does Pi learn anything from his worst episodes? Do Pi's delusions still communicate a sort of truth?