Sunk the day I noticed, with a pinching of the heart, that I ate like anĪnimal, that this noisy, frantic unchewing wolfing-down of mine wasĮxactly the way Richard Parker ate.

It came as an unmistakable indication to me of how low I had The sentiment that 'a person can get used to anything, even killing' should send a chill down your spine-people don't tend to get this introspective when it comes to laying the beatdown on some dorado.īut even if you choose to read this as an innocent former vegetarian regretting the lack of Garden Burgers on board the lifeboat, it still shows that Pi is drawing a parallel between him and Richard Parker. It can also be read as a hint that it was Pi who killed the cook.rather than Richard Parker killing a hyena. This passage can be read as something other than a former veggie lamenting the fact that he's been killing fish. It is simple and brutal: a person can get But in point of fact theĮxplanation lies elsewhere. You may be astonished that in such a short period of time I could goįrom weeping over the muffled killing of a flying fish to gleefullyīludgeoning to death a dorado. The first un-tigerlike characteristic of Pi's to disappear is his vegetarianism: As Pi's days on the lifeboat stretch into weeks and then months, the differences between man and tiger-even in Pi's possibly fictional retelling-start breaking down. Yep: even when you're simply analyzing names, it's more than possible to interpret Richard Parker as an extension of Pi's character.īut the similarities continue. So there's a lot of renaming, discussion of names, switching of the hunter with the hunted. But in a paperwork mix-up, the tiger ends up with the name Richard Parker and the hunter with the name Thirsty. Originally, a hunter named Richard Parker baptized the tiger with the name 'Thirsty' (creative, right?). It's probably no coincidence that Richard Parker was named strangely-and then renamed-as well. Didn't Pi also spend a long time discussing his own name? Wasn't he named after a swimming pool? And then, didn't he give himself his own shortened nickname? Martel opens Part 2, Chapter 48 with the sentence: 'Richard Parker was so named because of a clerical error.' And if that sounds vaguely familiar-you're right. But even before that, the two characters share something we'd like to call 'the anxiety of naming.' Certainly the Japanese investigators say Pi is Richard Parker. Pi and Richard Parker are mashed together in more than one way in Life of Pi. While also, of course, considering the possibility that Richard Parker is nothing more than a crazy big tiger on a lifeboat.Īnd if your brain melts trying to believe in both stories at the same time, we apologize.

But whichever one you choose – the story with animals, the story without-we think it's illuminating to at least entertain the possibility that Richard Parker is nothing more than an imaginative extension of Pi. (Click the character infographic to download.)ĭepending on which of Pi's stories you believe, Richard Parker is either a real tiger.or he's simply a very developed figment of Pi's imagination.

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