And thereby hangs the tale. The tale of Pi's 227 days in a lifeboat adrift on the Pacific with a fullgrown Bengal tiger named, imagine that, "Richard Parker." It's Pi's Excellent Adventure, a story of survival on the uncaring ocean, boy against the elements, but it's also, on many levels, a parable. I mentioned in my last post that I found the basic situation a pretty good metaphor for life itself, and I'm sticking with that idea. Pi and Richard experience many things during these long and terrible months together, months of deprivation, fear and loss. But when the unthinkable happens and a freighter appears on their horizon - only to pass them by without noticing their tiny ark - Pi's reaction is to burst out: "I love you!.....Truly I do. I love you, Richard Parker. If I didn't have you now, I don't know what I would do. I don't think I would make it....I would die of hopelessness."
The journey ends at last, they come to rest on a Mexican beach. Richard Parker disappears into the jungle ("Then Richard Parker, companion of my torment, awful, fierce thing that kept me alive, moved forward and disappeared forever from my life.") and Pi into the hospital. And when representatives of the Japanese maritime transportation authority come to interview Pi in his hospital bed, we get a new surprise. They disbelieve the excellent adventure, find it too fanciful. So Pi tells them a different version.
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