Pink Poogle Toy Forum

(Highlight the blank space to read the spoilers.)

Avvelenare, the beauty of the book is that you get to choose whether you believe the story with the tiger or the shorter, animal-less story Pi tells the investigators near the end of the book.

When Pi's talking to the investigators, he tells them that both stories started the same way (with the ship sinking) and ended the same way (with him washing ashore), and it doesn't make any difference to any outsider what happened in between, so they may as well choose to believe the better story. It's all a big metaphor for religion and faith, and that's the point of the book -- things like the crazy floating island and the alternate version of the story are put in there to test the reader's "faith" in Pi's version of events. As Martel himself has said, "reality is how we interpret it. Imagination and volition play a part in that interpretation. Which means that all reality is to some extent a fiction. This is what I explore in the novel."

Definitely one of the best books I've read recently.