Author's Note: This is what I think Martel meant when he said, "The idea of a religious boy in a lifeboat with a wild animal struck me as a perfect metaphor for the human condition. Humans aspire to really high things, right, like religion, justice, democracy. At the same time, we're rooted in our human, animal condition. And so, all of those brought together in a lifeboat struck me as being... as a perfect metaphor."
What I think Martel was trying to demonstrate was how although any wild animal would simply give its life for the food of another, as in the food chain, any human will most likely pray to not die, and say that this “Isn’t right.” or something. We look for things with meaning, such as justice, fairness, and religion. The tiger could have simply killed Pi before the other animals, but that would defeat the purpose of the human aspects and beliefs. We long for that fairness, and justice, but really, in the wild, Pi is just another animal, and it was just luck, or chance, that Richard Parker, or even the hyena, didn’t eat Pi.
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