Portraying of Pi
Pi’s Imam, Priest and Pandit all surprisingly showed up at the same time and place where Pi and his family were. Each one them started bragging how the boy was such a devoted Muslim, Christian and Hindu. Pi’s family, knowing nothing of their son’s religious whereabouts, and the three men were all astounded to find out that the boy was practicing the three religions all at the same time. Each one of them went about mocking each other’s beliefs and practices. At that moment and to his astonishment, Pi experienced ill treatment from the same men who were once eager to add him to their masses, as he tells us: “There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless” (Martel, pg. 78). The term “Ultimate Reality” is a philosophical term that means “the cause of all existence”. Pi tells us that even the religious leaders desperately defend God. This plays a significant role in Pi's overwhelming experience in religious studies. Each of Pi’s three religions, Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam, come with its own set of tales and fables, which are used to spread the teachings and illustrate the beliefs of the faith. Pi enjoys the wealth of stories while appreciating an atheist’s ability to believe in the absence of God with no concrete proof of that absence.

At the top of a hill Pi views the harmonious relation of all the elements. He notices the blissful profound peace that pulsed from the trees, the air, the sun, etc. He notes the unity of everything he views around him and feels like he is in the middle of it: “I felt like a small circle coinciding with the center of a larger one” (Martel, pg. 69) This is another part of Pi’s revelation after seeking religion. He has a sense of peace, unity, and harmony. resulting from his ability to weave three religions and science into his personal belief system. The circle simile is appropriate for someone named Pi. This also helps establish the theme of naming though Pi’s name. As the mathematical representation of pi has an incomprehensible amount of decimals, so does the many layers of Pi’s realties and meaning.

The narrator explains the various religious symbols all throughout Pi's home. The religious symbols are from multiple religions and his house consequently gets labelled as a temple. “In the living room, on a table next to the sofa, there is a small framed picture of the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe, flowers tumbling from her open mantle” (Martel, pg. 50) This illustrates an allusion to the Virgin Mary. Mary is the mother of Jesus as foretold by Christians. As a virgin, Mary gives birth to Jesus. Having this previous knowledge gives the reader a better understanding of Pi’s religious beliefs. The many religious allusions featured in this chapter all physiologically bond together to emphasize the different rituals of the religions that Pi believes in.