Narrative framing: deconstructing Pi’s truth in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi.

Abstract

The primary focus of this dissertation is Pi Patel, Yann Martel’s main protagonist in Life of Pi (2001). Martel’s novel is framed by an Author’s note that introduces a story that “will make you believe in God” (xii). This Author’s Note encases a series of strategically nested embedded narratives. In the dissertation I explore Martel’s use of narrative framing as a literary technique. It is proposed that this is an intentional narrative strategy that Martel employs to create nested frames to encase Pi’s disparate accounts of his sea odyssey. The exploration on narrative framing as a literary technique will begin on the borders of the text, the paratextual framing. I rely on Genette’s (1997) theories on paratextual framing in Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation to analyze the circumtextual framing of Life of Pi (2001) and its correlation to Pi’s ‘truth’. The narrative frames in Life of Pi (2001) will then be analyzed within the context of Jacques Derrida’s description of the performance of the frame in The Truth in Painting (1987). The potential performance of the frames in this context presents interpretive possibilities for analysing the representation of Pi’s trauma in the novel. I will also attempt to deconstruct Pi’s ‘truth’ as represented in his divergent stories that are presented in the embedded narrative frames of the novel. The reader of the text, and the Japanese officials who interview him after the traumatic castaway episode of his life, are confronted with a choice of which story to believe as being the ‘true’ story. Viewed through a lens of subjectivity, each one of Pi’s stories can be evaluated as containing its own truth. To this end, I will explore the relativity of truth and storytelling as interconnected themes in the novel. Martel presents storytelling as having its own truth, independent of any claim to objective reality and this is evident in Pi’s appeal to the Japanese officials to choose the “better story” (Martel, 2001: 317). The nature of Pi’s truth will be deconstructed in the exploration on trauma, and I rely here on developments in Trauma Theory, especially in relation to Literary Studies. The relationship between memory and storytelling in Martel’s fictional universe is analyzed in relation to Pi’s representation of his trauma in the novel. The dissertation also comments on the significance of religious narratives in Pi’s physical and psychological survival. l conclude the dissertation with a critical examination of the privileging of one story as being the ‘better story’. The aim of this examination is to discover how the possible performance of the narrative frames presents new avenues for interpreting Pi’s trauma.