Aleesha
Religion is a crucial theme throughout the lifetime of Pi. The story starts early with Pi stating, ”I have a story which will make you believe in God.” This quote immediately establishes what the story is all about. The author tells the story during a way that shows that God is in everything which religion can’t be faraway from factual science.
From a young age, Pi develops a robust faith in Hinduism and credits his curiosity and openness to other religions to his Hindu roots. he’s later introduced to Catholicism by Father Martin, a Catholic priest who shows Pi that the inspiration of Christianity and faith in God are supported love. Within an equivalent year, Pi also starts following Islam. Pi is greatly influenced by two men in his life. the primary is Mr. Kumar, a Muslim mystic. he’s the one that introduced Pi to Islam, and also became a mentor for Pi’s journey as a Muslim while he was still living in India. Pi starts to go to Mr. Kumar regularly, learning about Islam and Arabic. After he’s exposed to all or any three religions, he decides he must follow all of them. He doesn’t see a contradiction because they’re all based on love. Religion is weaved throughout the book.
The author defends the assumption of multiple religions directly, which as people, we all have choices to believe one, three, or maybe more religions. Pi, as a personality, manages to mix all three of his beliefs into one. he’s a vegetarian who prays in some ways and loves and respects all things the maximum amount as he can.
Pi sees no contradictions between any of those religions. He accepts all of them as a part of one divine reality, a belief that some would call pantheism, or the thought that the entire world may be a manifestation of God. this is often not true of his mentors or his parents. When Pi and his family encounter accidentally what Pi calls the ‘three wise men’, his Hindu, Christian, and Muslim mentors, they argue fiercely about truth nature of god, each claiming Pi as a member of his own religion. As all of them insists that theirs is merely true religion, each man raise a finger at an equivalent time, and Pi notes ‘the spontaneous unity of their gestures,’ reminds them of Gandhi’s assertion that each one religions are true, and tells them he wants only to like God. This seems to temporarily satisfy all of them.
This incident illustrates Pi’s understanding of what Hinduism calls atman and brahman. In other words, the union of the human self with an ultimate, divine reality. Pi views all the various religious traditions as routes to the present union and believes that they’re all predicated on a sincere love. Like his early impressions of Hinduism, Pi involves enjoy the sense experiences of the rituals of every religion and therefore the loving impulses of every, but he largely ignores the actual beliefs and rules of any religion because they’re only a way to the present unity.
Pi’s parents are nominally Hindu, but they’re not particularly religious. However, they’re alarmed and suspicious of Pi’s embrace of the ‘foreign’ religions of Islam and Christianity. They, too, feel that he must choose. His father compares religions to nations and reminds him that each nation has its own passport. Pi replies that some people have multiple passports, and his father concedes that there’s ‘only one nation’ within the sky. Again, we see that Pi views religions as simply diverse ways to realize an equivalent end.
