Life Of Pi Religion Essay

Pi believes in the unknowingness of religions because they provide better stories and a better appreciation of the things around him than scientific exploration. Because Pi is a Hindu, Christian, and Muslim, incorporates many of these religious stories into his narrative. When Pi is fourteen, he goes on holiday with his family to a hill station in Munnar. There, he meets a priest named Father Martin. Once Father Martin introduces him to the story of Jesus Christ, it is impossible for Pi to get him out of his head: he says, “I couldn’t get Him [Jesus Christ] out of my head… And the more I learned about Him the less I wanted to leave Him” (57). For Pi, the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ and the humanity found in the “one Story” (53) of Christianity

For once, “the trees, the air, the sun all spoke differently to me [him], now they spoke one language of unity” (62). This feeling cannot be explained by scientific explanations nor caused by anything but the presence of God “coming so close to me” (62). Because of his connection with God, Pi felt as though he was in a harmonious state of being and bliss, which was only possible through the believing in the divinity of the existence of religions and God. If Pi had lived through these moments through “dry, yeastless factuality,” Pi would never have been able to appreciate and believe in Christianity and Islam because he would have been stuck trying to point out all of the ways in which it was possible to prove the existence of a God. Because Pi is open minded, he lives his life believing in the “better story,” regardless of how impossible they seem. Religion is full of imagination and creativity, which contradicts the rationalism of “progress.” Just like the two choices in life between the “better story,” religion, and the “dry, yeastless factuality” story, progress and modernization, Pi gives us the choice between two different stories to believe