Yann Martel's Life Of Pi

Throughout the novel Life of Pi, Yann Martel explores the theme that truth is subjective to everyone. In the beginning of the book, Pi finds and believes in three separate religions. While this may seem impossible, he stays faithful to all of them in his own way. At the same time, the leaders of each of those religions insists that their religion is the only true one. Pi also overcomes difficulty when he achieves a double major in science and religion. Finally, the entire novel as a whole gives the reader a choice: which of Pi’s stories is the true one? These choices of truth are recurring motifs throughout the book. An early conundrum in the novel is when Pi decides that he is a Christian, a Muslim, and a Hindu. This may seem impossible due

After Pi has discovered Jesus Christ and has been attending all of his religion’s services for a while, all of the leaders coincidentally meet him with his parents at the bazaar in India. This accidental (and quite unbelievable) experience has all of the leaders shouting about how their religion is the one true religion, and that the others are wrong. According to them, it is impossible for Pi to choose all of them at once when they announce that there is only “Practice--singular!”(68.) When they all demand that “he must choose”(69), Pi quotes Ghandi with “all religions are true”(69). By agreeing with Gandhi's statement, Pi is clearly stating his position on religion: all religions are true. A few pages later while being questioned by his mother about the “one nation in the sky”(73), Pi responds with “shouldn’t all passports be valid for it?”(74). To Pi, not only are all religions true, they all relate to one truth about heaven and religion. Every religion is a passport into heaven, and Pi loving three different religions really means loving the one true

There, he achieves a double major in both religious studies and zoology. In most people’s minds, religion and science are very different. Pi even says that “sometimes I got my majors mixed up”(5). While pursuing these two very different majors may seem difficult, Pi again pursues the motif of him combining things that are not usually seen as complementary. By letting Pi choose his own beliefs, Martel shows the reader that even when things are difficult to think about at the same time, it is still possible to