Summary and Analysis
Chapters 43–49: The First Days in the Lifeboat
Summary
As morning and calm return, Pi is greeted with the arrival of Orange Juice, a large orangutan. She appears floating on a nest of bananas, covered in black spiders. Pi welcomes her aboard the small lifeboat that he is knowingly sharing with a hyena and a wounded zebra. The tiger is hiding beneath the tarp that covers half of the lifeboat. Pi feels great affection for Orange Juice, fear of and revulsion for the hyena, and vague pity for the dying zebra. He hopes that the hyena will be more interested in eating Orange Juice and the zebra than him, as they are more familiar prey.
The hyena does, indeed, consume both animals. It first eats
the zebra alive, which is a horrific and lengthy process. Pi discusses the nature
of hyenas in detail, specifically how they are capable of cannibalism and drinking
urine. Pi has some hope that Orange Juice will be able to fight off the hyena,
and though she does initially hit the hyena very hard and defend herself well,
the hyena eventually takes her down and consumes her also. Suddenly the tiger
makes himself known, appearing from under the tarp and killing the hyena.
Pi takes a break from the immediate narrative to explain how
Richard Parker’s name resulted from a clerical error that mixed up the name of
the tiger’s captor with the name of the captive animal itself. Richard Parker’s
original name was Thirsty, because he was caught with his mother at a watering
hole.
Analysis
Pi’s conflict between self-preservation and his feelings
toward the animals with him is very evident in these chapters. The suffering
zebra’s death forces Pi to confront the truth about animals’ nature, instinct,
and potential brutality, which recalls how he suffered about these truths before
when he growing up at his family’s zoo. He continues to struggle with how much
empathy to feel for animals. Pi relates that he was initially outraged when the
hyena killed the zebra, but that his rage was short-lived; he refuses to be
sorry for that. He then apologetically describes how much empathy, sympathy,
and sadness he felt, at each turn describing a different level of these
emotions. These fluctuating emotions arise from the conflict between his own
need to remain alive and sane and his compassion for the zebra.
Pi struggles just as hard to remain detached from Orange
Juice’s death. He is touched by the orangutan’s mannerisms, which to him appear
to be human traits, and he again breaks his pledge to see animals only as they
truly are. Later, after Orange Juice’s death, Pi likens her to a refrigerator
with crooked wheels, essentially reducing her to an object as a means to cope with
her death. To remember the now dead Orange Juice in the affectionate and loving
way he used to think of her would be too much for Pi to handle. By considering Orange
Juice’s life, first as a pet, then as a zoo animal, and finally, after the
shipwreck, as a “released” animal in the wild—albeit in the ocean and not on
land—Pi is able to come to terms with his own circumstances. Like the orangutan,
he is ill-equipped to survive in the wild, and the fear therein becomes his
primary motivator.
Richard Parker’s name change from “Thirsty” to “Richard
Parker” is a direct parallel with Pi’s name change from “Piscine.” Both changes
illustrate the duality theme associated with the two characters and, along with
the animal-on-animal brutality that occurs in the lifeboat, foreshadows and
mirrors the second story that Pi later tells to the Japanese investigators.
Richard Parker’s original name, Thirsty, is also significant
because it is literally what Pi becomes as soon as he finishes telling the
story of Richard Parker’s name. Thirst is a central element throughout the book.
Pi’s thirst is not just physical or mental—for water, companionship, land, and
rescue—but also spiritual. His thirst for water, for instance, creates another
allusion to the Bible and another recasting of Pi as Christ. Pi points out that
Christ died of suffocation but that he complained only of thirst. By recounting
Christ’s thirst, Pi compares his own suffering on the lifeboat to Christ’s—which
also illustrates just how dire and real the lack of water is for Pi.