'Life of Pi' is a complex and philosophical novel written by Yann Martel. It tells the story of a sixteen-year-old boy named Piscine Molitor Patel aboard a lifeboat for 227 days with a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra, and finally, exclusively, a Bengal tiger, named Richard Parker. In the third part of the novel, however, Pi tells a second story of his ordeal, in which the animals from the first become metaphors for the people who survived with him on the lifeboat, and Richard Parker becomes a metaphor for Pi's wild side that emerges afterwards. the brutal beheading and murder of his mother in order to avenge her death and survive physically. Symbolism is very important in this novel as it allows Martel to fully explore its themes of survival, faith, and the importance of storytelling. While Pi is recovering from his stay in a hospital in Mexico, two men from the Japanese Ministry of Transportation arrive to interview him about the sinking of the ship, the Tsimtsum, and Pi tells them a different version of the events in which we see all the animals from the story original become symbolic representations of other castaways. Pi is angry at his interviewers' inability to believe: "If you come across mere credibility, what do you live for?" Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What's your problem with difficulty believing it?'Pi is angry at his interviewers' refusal to believe his first story. He argues that the things that make life worthwhile are themselves miraculous. Just as love cannot be proven, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Just because something is “hard to believe” doesn't mean it's false. Pi urges them to trust his first story. In the second part of Pi...... middle of the paper ......rds to highlight "the part". It is important and should not be underestimated. Martel writes that he has a story "that will make you believe in God." It successfully describes why people choose to live a life with God. Why a life with God is the best story. However, although the second telling of the story may cast doubt in the reader about the first story, it is not intended to do so for more than a moment. “And so it is with God” is showing that regardless of whether God is real or not, living a life with God will always be better than one without faith. Even the highly skeptical Mr. Okamoto and Mr. Chiba ultimately choose to believe the first, better story. This is when we are pushed to the edge of our physical and mental limits. That faith in God is what helps us in this life. Works Cited Martel, Yann. Life of Pi: A Novel. New York: Harcourt, 2001. Print.