Equivalent exchange, an absolute law in nature, dictates that one must give up

something so that one may gain something that is equal in value. By this logic,
sacrifice is, at its very core, a necessity in life; however, it is also a gray
area with no definite lines for good or bad. Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi
illustrates this overarching theme throughout Piscine “Pi” Patel’s struggle to
overcome the daunting task of survival in solitude. After a storm washes away all
hints of life and hope, Pi, alone and scared, struggles to come to terms with the
fact that the life he once lived is now gone, such that neither religion nor family
can help him anymore. Equipped with sparse supplies and miles of water between him
and land, Pi is set adrift on a lifeboat for two-hundred twenty-seven days, with
only a Bengal tiger to keep him company and the constant threat of insanity and
death shadowing his every action. Each sacrifice Pi makes is a price he must pay to
keep himself alive, even if the outcome can be considered worse than the
alternative based on differing perspectives of the situation. Despite his formerly
principled lifestyle and faiths, Pi soon learns that he must leave behind or look
past his core beliefs and step out of his comfort zone in exchange for survival,
exemplifying the necessity of sacrifice and its ambiguous nature.
Richard Parker is such an important figure to Pi’s survival that Pi purposely
sacrifices his own safety and comfort to keep the tiger and, by default, himself
alive. After the other animals are killed, Richard Parker offers Pi something that
nothing else can during his lonely journey: companionship. Stranded in the middle
of the ocean with no hope for rescue, it is in this deep loneliness that Pi
realizes his fear of insanity spurred by solitude overpowers his fear of Richard
Parker; this epiphany allows him to choose Richard Parker’s survival over his own
immediate safety: “It was Richard Parker who calmed me down. It is the irony of
this story that the one who scared me witless to start with was the very same who
brought me peace, purpose, I dare say even wholeness” (Martel 162). In quelling
Pi’s need for companionship and keeping him occupied and alert, Richard Parker
fills Pi’s empty days with work rather than allowing him to dawdle his thumbs. This
allows Pi to focus on keeping both of them alive rather than waste away, hopeless.
However, by keeping the tiger alive, Pi endures the constant fear of having Richard
Parker turn on him and kill him; still, to him, this outcome is much better than
being completely alone. Pi’s sacrifice to keep Richard Parker alive in the form of
depleting supplies and psychological horror pays off in the comfort of knowing he
might not die alone on the ocean. This toxic relationship between the tiger and Pi
progresses until Pi admits that “without Richard Parker, [he] wouldn’t be alive
today to tell you [his] story” (164). Despite Richard Parker constantly terrorizing
Pi and making his life on the boat a nonstop game of paranoia and walking on
eggshells, Pi realizes that his nemesis is also his savior. The fact that both of
them are stuck in the same situation together brings comfort to Pi, who sees no
hope in his survival, and Richard Parker is always there to motivate him to
continue on—if not for the tiger, then for himself. He considers the tiger so
valuable that he is willing to cohabitate in order to subvert the threat of
loneliness that he predicts will kill him if left alone for long enough. Pi
admitting that Richard Parker is a “good” thing for him despite the obvious
discomfort he feels augments just how deep his trauma is, therefore highlighting
the significance of his sacrifice. In this case, while his survival can be
considered “good,” the trauma he receives because of it leads this particular
sacrifice to err more on the side of negligence.
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In surviving, which is always a “good” thing, Pi now has to live with permanent
trauma for the rest of his life. As such, keeping Richard Parker alive is both
“good” and “bad,” thus illustrating the unclear nature of sacrifice. Pi also says
while looking back on the events that transpire throughout the novel, “Richard
Parker has stayed with me. I’ve never forgotten him. Dare I say I miss him? I do. I
miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares
tinged with love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart” (6). Pi’s dependency
on Richard Parker throughout his time on the boat morphs his perception of him to
the point where he looks back with fondness in spite of the tiger’s antagonistic
role. Pi finds that despite Richard Parker’s nightmarish existence on the lifeboat,
he remembers him as the one thing that kept him alive, busy and focused. This is
proof that Pi has been psychologically scarred by the tiger, so much so that he has
recognized his own dependency on Richard Parker and openly accepts it as evidence
that his decision to keep Richard Parker alive was a good one. However, this is not
the case. Both scenarios of cohabitating with Richard Parker despite the mental
strain and the alternative of solitude are classified as “bad” because they offer
different types of anguish either way. Just because one choice seems better than
the other does not mean that it is a “good” choice. Without Richard Parker, Pi
would have been alone and without much work to keep him occupied, which he admits
to, but with Richard Parker around, Pi still receives trauma that does not
disappear even into adulthood. Although Pi’s choice of sacrifice does bear fruit
and proves to be crucial to his survival, it cannot be so easily colored black or
white. It blurs the lines between “good” and “bad,” laying down a gray area that
concludes his sacrifice to be neither singularly good nor bad but, rather, both.
Contrary to his religious beliefs, Pi turns a blind eye to his faith in order to
survive. Born and raised a Hindu, Pi still conforms to the Hindu vegetarian values
that disapprove the act of harming and eating other living animals, even after he
accepts Christianity and Islam as a part of himself. These beliefs prevent him from
killing or eating meat. On the lifeboat, however, as supplies dwindle and
desperation sets in, Pi realizes that he must kill and eat sea life in order to
survive: “It was simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything, even
killing” (185). He ultimately forgoes his Hindu values and kills a dorado when he
finally accepts that his life is at stake. He weeps in anguish at first, but he
easily moves past his disposition towards killing and eating meat when it proves to
be an invaluable act of survival. This keeps him alive, even at the expense of
desensitizing him to violence and betraying his Hindu teachings. Even Pi himself
considers his actions deplorable, but that does not keep him from repeating it. Any
act of heresy is considered to be culturally shameful and “bad,” but Pi’s actions
keeps him alive, which makes the sacrifice of religion both “good” and “bad” rather
than one or the other. Eventually, when killing becomes second nature to Pi and he
is able to cope by compartmentalizing survival and religion, he narrates, “I laid
hands on so many fish that my body began to glitter from all the fish scales that
became stuck to it. I wore these . . . like tilaks, the marks of colour that we
Hindus wear on our foreheads as symbols of the divine” (196). He mentions his
faiths very rarely after he begins his carnivorous diet, but he still ironically
relates the proof of his misdoings to the tilaks of Hindus, as if to mock how far
he has fallen.
Even though Pi is willing to look past his religious beliefs to survive, it still
makes him feel guilty, but that is not enough to make him stop. He subconsciously
acknowledges this and always seems to feel ashamed in the back of his mind despite
never officially confronting this conflict. Throughout the first part of the novel,
Pi tells the audience that his religious beliefs are very important to him, enough
to cause tensions within his family. Even so, not even his attachment to religion
lasts in the face of starvation. In fact, this is one of the first things Pi
overlooks, starting with his consumption of the biscuit made from animal fat,
believing that the higher powers will overlook his act of desperation. As the novel
progresses, Pi moves farther and farther away from religion until it is one of the
last things on his mind. In sacrificing his devoutness, Pi ensures that he survives
starvation. However, while Pi’s survival is a good thing in that his life is saved,
he also personally considers his actions “bad.” The reverse—Pi dying instead of
betraying his religious beliefs—is also a “bad” outcome, but if he starves to death
rather than eat meat or the biscuit, this can also be considered “good” because his
devoutness stays true. In one case, he dies because of staying true to his Hindu
values, and in the other, he stays alive by betraying them. Death is inherently
“bad,” but so is becoming a heretic; thus, neither of Pi’s choices can be
classified as wholly good or bad since both have their vices. Ultimately, either
choice Pi makes is subject to different views of religion and life and, depending
on which side one favors, can be seen as ambiguous in nature.
Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi features an intimate take on the necessity and dual
perception of sacrifice. Throughout his journey, Pi learns that the things he had
once valued in the past are both worthless to uphold when his life is at stake and
invaluable tools for his survival when betrayed. His sacrifice takes the form of
keeping Richard Parker alive in order to satiate his loneliness and betraying his
Hindu upbringing to eat meat. In both cases, Pi’s choice keeps him alive in mind
and body; however, in keeping Richard Parker alive, Pi lives in constant fear and
paranoia, stressed with every move the tiger makes, and eating meat causes him to
betray his beliefs, which already have an established importance in his life. These
trade-offs make his choices “bad” in that he attains deep psychological damage and
turns his back on the lifestyle he lived. Even so, it is still “good” that he is
ultimately kept alive. By this double standard, Pi’s sacrifices and the outcomes
they produce augment the fact that not all sacrifices are singularly good or bad
but, rather, gray and subject to opinion.
Works Cited
Martel, Yann. The Life of Pi. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2001.