After reading the novel and watching the film version of Life of Pi, what I am left with primarily is deep admiration for the skills of Yann Martel, the writer, and Ang Lee, the director.
 
Many people who have read the novel and viewed the film have devoted time to discussing which of the two stories is true. Responding to the story, many authors have explored the impact of the details given in the first third of the book (Pi's adrift on the sea) and even recast the story through the theme of religious reincarnation.
 
Personally, I think the brilliance of Life of Pi is that everyone who reads will respond to it differently. The story, told in both novelistic and cinematic forms, elicits feelings in every reader and viewer.
 
What is the true story like? Is the shipwreck true? Is the Bengal tiger real? Is the algae island with meerkats imaginary? Since most of the time we are unable to witness the facts ourselves, our access to the truth depends on narrative. When a person begins to narrate subjectively, he is already recreating. Pi tells a story of 227 days of adventure at sea. He is of course the main character of his own story. But when we hear the second possibility, the first story instantly collapses, and the reader is left with a feeling of uncertainty. Before I read the second story, my idea was that different animals represented different types of people: the zebra represented the innocence of the young, the orangutan represented universal love, and the hyena represented evil. In a world defined by these values, only people like Pi can survive. Yann Martel's second story is very logical. Nonetheless, it is more difficult to accept. The main flaw is that the brave, strong, and intelligent teenager in this story seems too perfect. For this reason, the algae island could be seen as the mother's corpse and the meerkats as maggots, which makes the story sound uncomfortable.
 
Every person thinks that he or she is rational. But this novel subverts the perception of the truth and, in turn, of the self. What is the truth? Is the teenager in the story described by Pi really himself, or is he imagining himself? Does anyone know? Does it matter what the truth is? I don't think it actually matters, and that's the realization that the author cleverly leads the reader toward. No matter how you interpret it, you can't be completely right. There are too many things in this world that lie outside of reason, and no one knows what the truth really is. This uncertainty creates room for imagination. This is also the reason why religion has been able to spread above our tangible world.
 
These are some of my interpretations of the book. Perhaps, after reading it, you will have completely different ideas, which I think is totally reasonable. If this novel were not so abundant, if it were only simply about how a boy survives, if it could not be interpreted in different ways, the Booker Prize would not have been awarded to it.