Narrative framing: deconstructing Pi’s truth in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi.
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Date
2021
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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.
Description
Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.