Abstract
Yan Martel’s Life of Pi – the story as well as its religious ideology—exhibits apparent intertextual correspondence with the concept of “Universalism” the Indian mystic Swami Vivekananda preached to the world more than a century ago. Martel’s central character Pi represents this concept of religion, which finds the same set of universally valid principles in all religions of the world, and thus embraces all religions with the willingness to worship God in all places of worship, irrespective of whether they belong to Islam or Christianity or Buddhism or Hinduism. This perception of religiousness of Life of Pi comes as a solution to the concerns of the present religiously divided, material and greedy world that speaks a lot in vain about ecumenism, interfaith and constructive interaction among religions. The story of the shipwreck with the horrible experiences of Pi in the lifeboat in the presence of the Indian tiger Richard Parker and his eventual survival validates this concept of God and works out a formula for a harmonious coexistence of religions and other conflicting forces in the world. Thus the book becomes a great religious allegory in tune with the fundamentals of all religious traditions: a pilgrimage on the sea of Karma to be united with the Absolute, a metaphor of the Atman seeking to realize Brahman, and an allegory on the concept of retributive justice of God by which sins are punished and virtues rewarded.
Highlights
This article focuses on the concept of religiousness exemplified in Yan Martel’s Life of Pi, and attempts to uncover how it corresponds with the religious philosophy the Indian mystic Swami Vivekananda posited before the world more than a century ago
Martel’s central character Pi represents this concept of religion, which finds the same set of universally valid principles in all religions of the world, and embraces all religions with the willingness to worship God in all places of worship, irrespective of whether they belong to Islam or Christianity or Buddhism or Hinduism
Yan Martel’s novel Life of Pi bears strong intertextual correspondence with Swami Vivekananda’s concept of “universalism,” which finds the same set of universally valid principles in all religions
Summary
This article focuses on the concept of religiousness exemplified in Yan Martel’s Life of Pi, and attempts to uncover how it corresponds with the religious philosophy the Indian mystic Swami Vivekananda posited before the world more than a century ago. Martel chose India as the spiritual as well as physical terrain of his book, obviously because he was fascinated by its mysticism and the uniquely multireligious and multicultural social fabric In his “author’s note,” he tells his reader beforehand (as a metafictional strategy) that it was a waiter in an Indian Coffee House in the Indian town Pondicherry who told him the story “that would make one believe in God.”. In his “author’s note,” he tells his reader beforehand (as a metafictional strategy) that it was a waiter in an Indian Coffee House in the Indian town Pondicherry who told him the story “that would make one believe in God.” And it is in that story that we read about the Indian Brahmin boy Piscine Molitor Patel--who is later called Pi, and Mr Patel--who accepts Christianity and Islam while being a Hindu, and leads a perfectly satisfied, pious and spiritual life by practicing all these religions
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