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I didn’t doubt any of the book until the end when there is the other story, its odd because in hindsight i should have but i just didn’t.

And my doubt at the end did not last long as i don’t believe the other story

What I thought of those two plot developments was “hurrah!” somethings actually happening… I was disappointed that Pi (or the author) didn’t make more of a big deal about these incredible and so out of the ordinary events in comparison to months of just surviving.

This is one of the most bizarrely out-of-place and darkest sections of the book. On the surface, of course, it is hallucinations from malnutrition and exposure. There are two images: the Frenchman and the island. The Frenchman is very obviously conflated with the murderous cook and his appearance follows from Richard Parker suddenly gaining the power to talk. Pi’s unconscious, with the real characters, has surfaced fully as he is passed out. Pi kills the animalian part of his psychology at this moment, but at the same time understands that that animal is no tiger but an integral part of being a human and thus deserves to be represented by one.

I read the island as a representation of Pi’s own body/mind – floating on the ocean, by necessity a self-sufficient ecosystem, apt to use animals (plants) as symbols. Like Pi, it lures fish for food. The acid pools are related to Pi’s digestive system. The implication is that he is in danger of digesting himself due to malnutrition. The meerkats may be circulatory, or neuronic – they are certainly circadian.

I read a more likely explanation with the island as representative of human society, with the self-similar meerkats copying each other so closely and eating food they did not kill themselves. But once they set foot outside into the cruel natural world and its acidic pools they stand no chance.

I can’t tell the significance of the human teeth other than a memento mori and a parody of the life-giving stone of a fruit. I also linked the loss of teeth not only to a common dream trope but also to the process of growing up, insofar as the teeth are stolen and turn up in a fairytale land.

The island seems inspired by the folkloric man-eating trees of Madagascar, similarly to the sailing lore that inspired Richard Parker’s name.

So during his hallucination Pi is instantiating the psychological drama being played out in his own head. There are Freudian elements related to the process of growing up (since this is a Bildungsroman): comprehending the animalian id as a human trait, the swelling banana, and the lost teeth. There is an assessment of the social structure of human society and its fragile, illusory nature. There are constant reflections of solitude and self-sufficiency – island, leather of one boot.

The swelling banana is an important image. It relates to Pi’s mother the orang-utan on her floating island of bananas (whence Oedipal). Note that the Frenchman/cook is referred to as a brother and arrives in a similar way. The Freudian banana conflates sexual and hunger drives, and it relates to the same acceptance of the way the mother was killed by the cook, who represents what can be analysed as a sexual drive.

It is Pi’s delusional self-analysis and is an acute version of the feelings which have plagued him throughout the book. It represents a psychological trauma that threatens to surface and send him mad, and I would certainly say that this is the place where he learns the necessity of faith as a defence mechanism. Ironically his blindness lifts as he chooses not to focus on the observational reality of events.

I included an excerpt from an oral presentation i prepared for my English class where we read this book. Its a bit wordy because its meant to be given orally but it summarizes my feelings of this portion of the book. Spoilers ahead

In the novel the account of the “island”, or floating mass of algae, is a highly representative symbol of the loss of innocence and cannibalism in the second story. In the second story Pi’s cannibalism of the cook is symbolical of the lush abundance of the island. In Pi’s first account the island is described as “a green to get drunk on” pg 324, something so beautiful to someone so drawn out and starved. The island itself was sustenance When Pi kills the cook he describes him as “delicious, far better than turtle” pg 391, Pi “cut off great pieces of his flesh… ate his liver”. Pi gorges himself on the cook in the same was as Richard parker engorged himself on the meerkats of the island, “He killed beyond his need. He killed meerkats that he did not eat… his pent-up hunting instinct was lashing out with a vengeance” pg 339. This killing beyond need is a direct parallel to Pi’s cannibalism of the cook. Directly following Pi’s departure from the island he finishes the story with the short note contained in chapter 93. “The rest of this story is nothing but grief, ache and endurance…It was natural that bereft and desperate as I was, in the throes of unremitting suffering, I should turn to God.” pg 358 This clolsing statement is a direct parallel to the closing statement to Pi’s second story, where Pi ends with “selfishness, anger, ruthlessness… Solitude began. I turned to God. I survived.” pg 391. The account of the island and the excess found there is an allegorical account of Pi’s cannibalism as well, and the teeth found upon the island represent the cook, and the dark secret the island holds in Pi’s mind, that it truly was the turning point of his story where all innocence was lost and there was no turning back. On the “island”, or at the point of feasting on the cook, Pi was subhuman, and truly as far from society as he would ever be, breaking one of the most strongly enforced taboos of all time, cannibalism.

TLDR: The island is a metaphor for Pi eating the cook in the second story, ew right?

Still not super sure about the french guy