Neither the story of Noah and the ark, nor Pi on the lifeboat with a tiger, can be considered objectively true, in all of their details. But both are metaphors that make comprehensible the passes-all-understanding phenomenon of human survival in extreme circumstances. Or as the Japanese investigators finally acknowledge in the summary report with which the novel concludes, Pi’s is “an outstanding story of courage and endurance in the face of extraordinary difficult and tragic circumstances” (354)... they give up the quixotic quest for objectivity or believability, and adapt a literary framework, acknowledging that Pi’s “story is unparalleled in the history of shipwrecks” (354), just as one might say that Noah’s story is unparalleled in the
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To make it last I refrained from putting a strain on it; when the lifeboat nudged the island, I didn’t move, only continued to dream. The fabric of the island seemed to be an intricate, tightly webbed mass of tubes-shaped seaweed, in diameter a little thicker than two fingers. What a fanciful island, I thought. (285)
Questioning the narrator’s account is the knot that the reader has to ponder over on how to untie. The hero’s name itself, Pi – short for his birth name, Piscine – is an elusive number that signifies the infiniteness of human experience. Pi explains how his choice to shorten his name spared him the ridicule of his schoolmates: “In that elusive, irrational number with which scientists try to understand the universe, I found refuge” (27). Gregory Stephens comments on the symbolic significance of the name:
Pi is an irritating and unique number for the mathematician who, above all academics, desires certainty and factuality. It irritates because it defies the scientist’s longing for certainty. At the same time it fascinates because of its “infinite randomness”. Pi, as a mathematical formula, functions both as a logical equation and as a sort of mystical symbol. The novel itself seeks to strike that same sort of “irritating but fascinating” balance of the title character’s name.
To make it last I refrained from putting a strain on it; when the lifeboat nudged the island, I didn’t move, only continued to dream. The fabric of the island seemed to be an intricate, tightly webbed mass of tubes-shaped seaweed, in diameter a little thicker than two fingers. What a fanciful island, I thought. (285)
Questioning the narrator’s account is the knot that the reader has to ponder over on how to untie. The hero’s name itself, Pi – short for his birth name, Piscine – is an elusive number that signifies the infiniteness of human experience. Pi explains how his choice to shorten his name spared him the ridicule of his schoolmates: “In that elusive, irrational number with which scientists try to understand the universe, I found refuge” (27). Gregory Stephens comments on the symbolic significance of the name:
Pi is an irritating and unique number for the mathematician who, above all academics, desires certainty and factuality. It irritates because it defies the scientist’s longing for certainty. At the same time it fascinates because of its “infinite randomness”. Pi, as a mathematical formula, functions both as a logical equation and as a sort of mystical symbol. The novel itself seeks to strike that same sort of “irritating but fascinating” balance of the title character’s name.