Adrift on the lifeboat, Pi keeps practising religious rituals, reshaping them to fit his isolation and shortages: solitary Mass without priest or consecrated host, darshans without murtis, pujas using turtle meat for prasad, and Muslim devotion despite not knowing Mecca’s direction and mangling Arabic.

These improvised acts comfort Pi, but maintaining faith becomes exhausting. Pi describes faith as trust and love, yet Pi repeatedly feels anger, desolation, and weariness so intense that Pi fears Pi’s heart will “sink” beyond recovery.

When despair peaks, Pi tries to lift Pi’s spirit by naming everything around Pi as belonging to God. Pi points to Pi’s makeshift turban and clothes, to Richard Parker, to the lifeboat, to the open ocean, and to the sky, declaring each one “God’s” and using the litany to remember creation and Pi’s place within it.

But the reality undercuts the words: Pi’s clothes unravel, Richard Parker remains dangerous, the lifeboat feels like a jail, the ocean is slowly killing Pi, and the sky seems deaf. Pi describes despair as a lightless blackness, yet Pi is grateful it always passes, often broken by small necessities or signs—fish appearing, a knot needing repair—or by thinking of Pi’s family being spared this agony.

As the blackness recedes, Pi feels God remain as a bright point inside Pi, and Pi chooses to continue loving.