Life of Pi is divided into three sections. In the first
section, the main character, Pi, an adult, reminisces about his
childhood. He was named Piscine Molitor Patel after a swimming pool in France. He changes his name to "Pi"
when he begins secondary school, because he is tired of being taunted
with the nickname "Pissing Patel". His father owns a zoo in Pondicherry, providing Pi with a relatively affluent lifestyle and some understanding of animal psychology.
Pi is raised a Hindu, but
as a fourteen-year-old he is introduced to Christianity and Islam, and starts to follow all three religions as he "just wants to love God." He tries to understand God through the lens of each religion and comes to recognize benefits in each one.
Eventually, his family decides to sell their animals and move to Canada due to political concerns in India.
In the second part of the novel, Pi's family embarks on a Japanese
freighter to Canada carrying some of the animals from their zoo, but a
few days out of port, the ship meets a storm and capsizes, resulting in
his parents' death. After the storm, Pi regains consciousness in a small
lifeboat with a spotted hyena, an injured zebra, and an orangutan.
As Pi strives to survive among the animals, the hyena kills the
zebra, then the orangutan, much to Pi's distress. At this point, it is
discovered that a Bengal tiger
named Richard Parker had been hiding under the boat's tarp; it kills
and eats the hyena. Frightened, Pi constructs a small raft out of
flotation devices, tethers it to the boat, and retreats to it. He
delivers some of the fish and water he harvests to Richard Parker to
keep him satisfied, conditioning
Richard Parker not to threaten him by rocking the boat and causing
seasickness while blowing a whistle. Eventually, Richard Parker learns
to tolerate Pi's presence and they both live in the boat.
Pi recounts various events while adrift, including discovering an island of carnivorous algae inhabited by meerkats. After 227 days, the lifeboat washes up onto the coast of Mexico and Richard Parker immediately escapes into the nearby jungle.
In the third part of the novel, two officials from the Japanese
Ministry of Transport speak to Pi to ascertain why the ship sank. When
they do not believe his story, he tells an alternate story of human
brutality, in which Pi was adrift on a lifeboat with his mother, a
sailor with a broken leg, and the ship's cook, who killed the sailor and
Pi's mother and cut them up to use as bait
and food. Parallels to Pi's first story lead the Japanese officials to
believe that the orangutan represents his mother, the zebra represents
the sailor, the hyena represents the cook, and Richard Parker is Pi
himself.
After giving all the relevant information, Pi asks which of the two
stories they prefer. Since the officials cannot prove which story is
true and neither is relevant to the reasons behind the shipwreck, they
choose the story with the animals. Pi thanks them and says, "and so it
goes with God".

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