English

Abstract

This analysis of Yann Martel’s Life of Pi examines extraordinary elements of this famed novel; it examines it as an avant-garde montage, a new fable, A tableau of the weird and fantastic—in other words, a book outside the realm of normal novelistic portrayal and exposition. In one important sense, this novel is a combination of the fictional and the factual, which can be understood as transacting modes in a single paradigm, with fictional and non-fictional assets overlapping onto each other. But there is much more in this work, for the book is as well an essentially unfinished, enigmatic, and deeply spiritual exploration of the godhead and what this means for human existence. It is all a “theology of introspection and experience, beyond human capacity,” as discussed in this analysis. In these ways, this book is much more than simply a fiction, an ordinary novel, and it becomes a new kind of spiritual reading experience. Readers should note that this is an independent philosophical and technical analysis, and the writer makes little effort to cite from and regurgitate other works. This work is a new examination of reality, spirituality and fiction. This is then a sovereign investigation, and unlike typical literary analysis, it will only minimally refer to other writers, theorists and analysts. Key words: Life of Pi, spirituality, the Godhead, religion, love, the divine.