Through the recurring theme regarding the power of story, Yann Martel infers that story is a way to cope with the gruesome depths of grief. After Piscine Molitor Patel (Pi) finishes telling the first story of his journey of survival across the Pacific Ocean, Pi tells another interpretation of the story without the use of any animals to his two Japanese interviewers. Then, the two men speculate by inferring that “...the Taiwanese Sailor is the zebra, his mother is the orang-utan, the cook is...the hyena--which means he’s the tiger” (Martel, 392). Pi’s family dies through unexpected ways that he can’t psychologically grasp. Pi changes everyone in the story into animals so that the harsh idea of all his loved ones being dead can be comprehended.
