Originally published in September 2001, Life of Pi by Yann Martel is a brilliant story of survival to the most extreme, eloquently written by Yann Martel. As stated in the preface, Life of Pi is Martel’s fourth book – the second and third of which were failures. Life of Pi is a comeback novel for Martel – his first appreciated novel, and justly so. Life of Pi is a fictional story which incorporates non-fiction in order to blend the lines between the two genres. The book is most interested in questioning our everyday beliefs – reality, religion, and our origin story.
The book begins with Martel in the book – he is listening to the story of Pi for the first time and is given the idea to write a book on it. Soon, this turns into a narration by …show more content…
In the novel, this makes the reader question what is factual and what is fictional and also how far he/she will go believing in something as fact. Furthermore, Life of Pi brings up the question of what defines something as a fact, and what is fiction. For example, in the preface, Martel starts by discussing his past novels that failed and then proceeds to discuss how he first heard the story of Pi. This is an explicit example of Martel using a general air of fact in order to blend in the fiction – in this case, Martel really was writing Life of Pi after failing to achieve success with his previous novels, but he did not actually meet with Francis Adirubasamy and discuss the story of Pi (which is fiction). This is just the beginning of how Martel uses the theme of fact vs fiction in the entire story in order make the reader question the line between factual truths and fictional elements. In the end of the novel, part 3 is an “official” transcript of a discussion between Pi and Japanese Transportation Officials recorded soon after Pi landed in Mexico. Martel writes it as an official transcript in order to gear the reader’s mind towards excepting factual quotations, as transcripts are usually connotated as factual/official documents. This works against the reader seeing through this and realizing that in reality, this is just Martel writing a fictional transcript. This thin line between fact and fiction helps the reader learn that in life, the difference between fact and fiction is quite small, and it is easy to mistakenly view an idea to be on the incorrect side of the
The book begins with Martel in the book – he is listening to the story of Pi for the first time and is given the idea to write a book on it. Soon, this turns into a narration by …show more content…
In the novel, this makes the reader question what is factual and what is fictional and also how far he/she will go believing in something as fact. Furthermore, Life of Pi brings up the question of what defines something as a fact, and what is fiction. For example, in the preface, Martel starts by discussing his past novels that failed and then proceeds to discuss how he first heard the story of Pi. This is an explicit example of Martel using a general air of fact in order to blend in the fiction – in this case, Martel really was writing Life of Pi after failing to achieve success with his previous novels, but he did not actually meet with Francis Adirubasamy and discuss the story of Pi (which is fiction). This is just the beginning of how Martel uses the theme of fact vs fiction in the entire story in order make the reader question the line between factual truths and fictional elements. In the end of the novel, part 3 is an “official” transcript of a discussion between Pi and Japanese Transportation Officials recorded soon after Pi landed in Mexico. Martel writes it as an official transcript in order to gear the reader’s mind towards excepting factual quotations, as transcripts are usually connotated as factual/official documents. This works against the reader seeing through this and realizing that in reality, this is just Martel writing a fictional transcript. This thin line between fact and fiction helps the reader learn that in life, the difference between fact and fiction is quite small, and it is easy to mistakenly view an idea to be on the incorrect side of the