Life of Pi – Chapter Overview and Narrative Structure

Author’s note

PART 1: Toronto and Pondicherry

1) Pi’s school experiences, sloths and Richard Parker introduced

2) Narrator describes Pi
3) Pissing Piscine and swimming pools
4) The Zoo and freedom
5) Pi’s naming
6) Narrator describes Pi’s kitchen and culinary skill
7) Satish Kumar the biology teacher, Science, God and Agnosticism
8) Cruelty to animals and father’s ‘lesson’ of the tigers
9) The key to successful zookeeping
10) The ‘instinct’ to escape
11) Escapee wild animals in society
12) The narrator suffers the spicy food Pi serves him
13) Alpha male pack leadership and training animals
14) The Omega animal
15) Narrator describes Pi’s home full of eclectic religious iconography
16) The birth of Pi’s religious sensibilities and Hinduism
17) Pi’s Introduction to Christianity
18) Pi’s introduction to Islam
19) Islam continued
20) Islam continued and the meeting of Satish Kumar the baker
21) Narrator’s metaphysical musings after an afternoon with Pi
22) Atheists and agnostics on the deathbed
23) ‘Interfaith dialogue’
24) Ravi’s teasing
25) The hypocrisy of religious zealots
26) Pi asks for baptism and a prayer mat – one passport for heaven
27) Pi’s parents fret over their son’s religious convictions
28) Pi and prayer
29) Why people relocate
30) The narrator meets Pi’s wife
31) The Kumars meet at the zoo
32) Zoomorphism
33) The narrator looks over Pi’s photograph collection
34) The Patel’s prepare to move to Canada and animal trading
35) The departure
36) The narrator meets the rest of Pi’s family – a ‘happy ending’

PART 2: The Pacific Ocean

37) The sinking of the Tsimtsum and saving Richard Parker

38) Flashback to the voyage on the Tsimtsum and Pi’s escape
39) Flashback to the zebra and the lifeboat
40) Richard Parker, sharks and hanging on the oar
41) The wounded zebra and the hyena
42) Orange Juice joins the lifeboat
43) The hysteria of the hyena
44) The first night on the lifeboat
45) Dawn, the eating of the zebra’s leg, O.J.’s seasickness and the turtle
46) The second night and the killing of the zebra
47) The death of Orange Juice
48) How Richard Parker got his name
49) Day 3, thirst and the search for water
50) The dimensions of the lifeboat
51) Water and emergency rations
52) The survival kit list
53) The death of the hyena and the improvised raft
54) 6 Plans to deal with the problem of Richard Parker
55) Day 4 and the flaw in plan 6
56) The nature of fear
57) Prusten and the birth of the Indio-Canadian Trans-Pacific floating circus (Plan no. 7)
58) The survival manual
59) Cockroaches, solar stills and the green city of fish
60) Awe at the vastness of the ocean and man’s insignificance
61) Fishing with a shoe and the flying fish
62) Solar stills and the close of the first week
63) Daily routines
64) Nakedness and boils
65) Drifting
66) Advanced fishing techniques and turtles
67) The boat as part of the oceanic ecosystem
68) The sleeping pattern of small boys and Richard Parker
69) Flares
70) Turtle blood and butchery
71) How to carve out your territory with a whistle in 9 steps
72) The five shields and early training
73) The longing for books and the diary
74) Keeping faith
75) Pi sings ‘Happy Birthday’ for his mother
76) Constipation and playing with Richard Parker’s faeces
77) Pi is reduced to eating anything available including Richard Parker’s faeces
78) Many skies, many seas and the struggle of opposites
79) The shark attack and Richard Parker
80) The dorado and the staring match
81) The secret of Pi’s survival
82) The ongoing struggle for water and food
83) The storm, the loss of the raft and the last of the whistles
84) The whale and the seabirds
85) Lightning
86) The oil tanker
87) The dream rag
88) Trash and a message in a bottle
89) Perishing exposure and the last diary entry
90) Blindness, the voice and ‘the terrible cost of Richard Parker’
91) Vision returns and Pi resorts to cannibalism
92) The Algae Island
93) Turning to God
94) Reaching Land

PART 3: Benito Juarez Infirmary, Tomatlan Mexico

95) Narrator introduces the transcribed interview to follow

96) The interview with the Japanese Ministry of Transport officials
97) ‘The Story’
98) The interviewers’ doubt
99) The other story
100) Mr Okamoto’s final report