Previous
Chapter 21
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Life of Pi, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Survival
Religion and Faith
Storytelling
Boundaries
Summary
Analysis
Pi goes back to narrating. He imagines an atheist’s deathbed moments, and describes the atheist taking a final leap of faith. He then describes an agnostic clinging to his “dry, yeastless factuality,” trying to scientifically explain the white light he sees and missing “the better story.”
The phrases are immediately repeated to show their importance. The need to improve and order reality through storytelling (or religion) is a natural human instinct, and something similar even exists in animals – referring back to Pi’s explanation of the “fiction” the lions live with in accepting their trainer as their alpha.
Themes
