Life of Pi
by Yann Martel
Contents
Chapter Sixty
Overview
During a nighttime awakening, Pi Patel is overwhelmed by the ocean’s vastness under a clear, star-filled sky and briefly achieves a calm acceptance of his suffering as small within the universe. He frames the moment through the story of Markandeya and Vishnu, using it to place his ordeal in a grander context. By daylight, Pi’s instinct to survive returns as a protest against that detachment, and he ends by praying as a Muslim before sleeping again.
Summary
Pi Patel wakes once during the night and pushes aside the lifeboat’s canopy to look out at the world around him.
He sees a sharply defined crescent moon, a perfectly clear sky, and stars so brilliant that the night feels almost not dark at all. The sea is calm and shimmers in black and silver, stretching without limit, and the sheer immensity of air and water leaves Pi both moved and frightened.
Pi compares his feeling to the sage Markandeya, who fell out of Vishnu’s mouth and briefly beheld the entire universe. In that vast setting, Pi recognizes that his suffering is finite and insignificant, and this realization brings him stillness and a momentary acceptance.
Pi admits that this calm does not last into daylight, when he again insists that his suffering matters because he wants to live and cannot help but cling to his small “peephole” of life. He murmurs words of Muslim prayer and goes back to sleep.
Who Appears
- Pi PatelNarrator; wakes at night, contemplates the universe, accepts suffering briefly, prays, sleeps.
- MarkandeyaMythic sage invoked by Pi to illustrate awe before the universe.
- VishnuHindu deity in Pi’s analogy; symbolizes the universe’s vast containment.