Life of Pi

On his first diplomatic posting in the Caribbean, Bill Burridge is kidnapped by a revolutionary movement. His kidnappers shackle him to a prison wall and torture him. To deal with the challenges of his current situation he, like Pi, retreats into his own head and memories and tries to find ways of dealing with the circumstances in which he finds himself while remaining sane.

Like Pi, Peter is isolated from his family and society. Peter is isolated because he was born a boy but knows he’s a girl. Like Pi, she is on a journey to survive and find his place in the world dealing with challenges and threats, first in the small town of her birth and then in Montreal.

In this sci-fi novel, Marine Torin Kerr is sent into a war zone and caught in an air strike. The military concludes she’s dead, but she survives and finds herself trapped in a series of underground caves that appear to be a POW prison. Like Pi, she has to rely on herself to escape the desperate situation she finds herself in. Also like Pi, she faces many life and death challenges if she is going to find her way back to civilization.

Like Pi, Will is forced out of the only world he’s ever really know and must find his way through a series of challenges and obstacles. Will’s mom is agoraphobic and doesn’t ever leave their house. Will’s curiosity, however, is too much and he decides to venture out only to discover how dangerous the Outside can be.

While Pi is caught in the middle of an ocean, Samuel is trapped in a big city far away from his tropical island home. Samuel feels like an outsider and as his new life unfolds he learns to make his own rules and to conjure a reality from the pages of his favourite comics.

The suicidal unnamed narrator of the novel is living in exile in Montreal, having escaped the war-torn country of his birth. The narrator’s isolation forces him to reflect on his childhood and confront his philosophy on life, much the same way that Pi’s situation forces him to re-examine truths he has held to be true for so long.