An excellent story is like a mirror. While universal in some aspects, its most important qualities lie in what we see. Or maybe it is like a piñata, and the ideas like candy – you can take whatever you want if you are willing to break open the colorful but useless shell. While good stories all have some things in common, such as a plot and characters, they differ in their underlying aspects such as theme and writing style. That is why there is no perfect story for everyone – the criteria are subjective. For me, an excellent story is well written and explores philosophical themes that I care about at the moment. If I can see myself in a story and use it as a tool to analyze myself, then I consider it good read. This is why I chose to read Life of Pi by Yann Martel: it investigates the power of stories.
The power of story telling is a major theme in Life of Pi augmented by story-within-a-story-within-a-story structure of the novel. While somewhat confusing at first, the primary story – Pi’s tale of survival – is framed within another story that recounts how a writer meet Pi and learned of his story. Furthermore, the story about Pi’s survival contains a condensed version of the same story with humans in place of animals. These inner stories raise the question of which story is true and whether or not it actually matters, because the end result is the same for both and neither is verifiable. Additionally, Life of Pi also investigates the role of stories in the religions of Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam. For example, Pi says he loves the awe-inspiring stories of Hinduism, in which gods transcend mortality to kick ass (Yann Martel 92). Similarly, Pi is attracted to Christianity by the humanity shown in the story of Christ (Martel 97). Finally, it seems to me that Pi loves Islam for the feelings and imaginations it provokes, effects similar to those of a story (Martel 103). To top it off, Pi later emphasizes his dislike of agnostics by telling the reader that he imagines them limited by their doubtful rationality at the end, “lack[ing] imagination and miss[ing] the better story,” (Martel 106). I greatly appreciate Martel’s creative analysis of the power of stories in society and I believe it the primary reason I consider Life of Pi an excellent example of story telling.
While Life of Pi is great at story telling, it does have some critical weaknesses that prevent it from reaching the top of my list of books. The first weakness is the almost overwhelming bias in the book. The second is that Martel does not fully analyze the main ideas of the novel by exploring them until they fail but leaves out that which could weaken his arguments. In his book, Martel is highly opinionated on his view of religion and other people. As I mentioned before, Martel is unceasing in his criticism of agnostics and writes as though he were the prophet of a new religion of tolerance. Although I appreciate his views on tolerance, his one-sided view about religion is somewhat of a turn-off and makes it hard for me to appreciate the sections of the novel that deal with religious criticism. Concerning his bias against other people, I think Martel is excessively condescending in caricatures of humanity. For instance, his accusation of humanity for not understanding animals as “human” creatures unfairly excludes those who pioneered our understanding of animals, such as Jane Goodall. Moreover, his portrayal of the two Japanese investigators comes across as haughty and is not balanced. In doing so, he does a disservice to those readers who are intelligent enough to understand the underlying messages in his book without the need for his obvious condescension of the human race. In the end, I would enjoy Life of Pi more if it were not so partial.
Life of Pi is a good example of story telling because explores the important idea of the power of stories and does not shy away from providing an answer. Whether or not his view that stories are more powerful than reality is true, I respect his courage in answering the question he posed rather than going half way and telling the reader to decide. Unfortunately, this same courage leads to too much bias that makes it hard for a temperate reader to connect with some parts of the novel. Despite the obvious prejudice, I enjoyed his writing style and the way he explored the central theme of stories.
