Life of Pi - Summary and Analysis Chapters 93–94: The End of the Journey and Rescue
Summary
Pi and Richard Parker continue their journey and land in Mexico. Pi is incredibly weak and sick. Richard Parker runs into the jungle without turning back to look at Pi. Pi gives himself the challenge of telling his story in exactly one hundred chapters and expresses disdain for his name—Pi—a number that never ends.
Pi is rescued by local people, who bathe, feed, and clothe him.
Analysis
Despite the dramatic shipwreck, the detailed journey, and the devastating near miss of being rescued by the freighter, the end of Pi and Richard Parker’s journey is uneventful, with a lack of riveting details. The account of Pi’s rescue in Mexico is by far the dullest of all the chapters. Being rescued has not been the focus of the novel, nor for that matter the focus of the journey. Instead, both have revolved around the miraculously close relationship between a young man and a tiger.
Pi’s challenge to himself to tell his story in one hundred chapters is a use of what is called metafiction, or fiction that calls attention to itself as being fiction. For that is exactly how many chapters the novel contains: one hundred. Some of the chapters are lengthy; some are only a single line. Numbered but unnamed, the chapters are each contained and complete, though there is no consistency of form or length. By in effect carrying out Pi’s challenge, the novel helps Pi force order onto a disordered journey; he makes his journey and life finite, unlike the never-ending number his name echoes.