Life of Pi Characters

(Click the character infographic to download.) We want to state something upfront: Life of Pi isn't a character-driven book, and Martel doesn't devote the majority of his efforts to digging deep in...

(Click the character infographic to download.) Depending on which of Pi's stories you believe, Richard Parker is either a real tiger...or he's simply a very developed figment of Pi's imagination. B...

(Click the character infographic to download.) Pi's MotherPi's mother is named Gita, but she's mostly just referred to as "Mother." She's an incredibly warm and loving towards Pi: she's sympathetic...

(Click the character infographic to download.) If there's anything like pure evil in Life of Pi, it comes in the form of the hyena, who, in Pi's second version of his experiences at sea, is the shi...

Mr. Okamoto and Mr. Chiba identify the blind Frenchman, who sails up to Pi late in the telling of the first story, as the hyena. This  complicates the allegory, but, like we said, it's not exa...

(Click the character infographic to download.) The Taiwanese sailor simply suffers. In the second (animal-less) story told by Pi, the cook needlessly amputates the sailor's broken leg to use as fis...

Pi's father, Santosh, carries the banner of the New India. This means he stands for progress, not religion. He cares about the business of the zoo and worries about losing Pi to religious fanaticis...

Pi feels intense guilt about Ravi. When Pi leaves to investigate the explosion on the ship, he shakes Ravi but decides to let him sleep. Big mistake. Ravi goes down with the ship. Pi still feels gu...

Francis Adirumbasamy – also known as Mamaji – is the guru of all gurus. He's the guy who tells the author about Pi. The author describes him in the Nehru street coffee shop as "a spry, bright-e...

We think it's a little cheeky for Martel to include himself as a character. In the novel, he's kind and earnest, considerate toward Pi and initially suspicious of Francis Adirubasamy. We love the a...

These two investigators are more than a little hapless: they disagree and lose focus. In fact, they seemed more like a comedy duo than serious dudes investigating a tragedy.But they fulfill an impo...