Time and exposure ravage everything on the lifeboat. The boat and all of Pi Patel’s gear—tarpaulin, stills, rain catchers, plastic bags, lines, blankets, and net—become sun-bleached, cracked, slack, and torn despite Pi’s attempts to grease them with fish skins and turtle fat. Salt and heat steadily destroy materials, strip away odors, and force Pi to protect his body under blankets and turtle shells, dousing himself with warm sea water to endure the roasting sun.

Pi and Richard Parker physically waste away as well. Richard Parker’s fur loses its luster and even falls out in places; the tiger becomes skeletal and weak. Pi also withers, dehydrated and starving, and begins spending long hours in a semi-conscious state where daydreams and reality blur, relying heavily on his “dream rag.”

Pi then records the final pages of his diary, capturing how close he is to death. He spots a massive tiger shark circling the lifeboat but it does not attack. With no rain and only morning greyness, Pi is too weak to stand, cannot even manage the whistle, and fears that if Richard Parker attacks he will be unable to defend himself.

As the heat becomes unbearable and Pi feels himself breaking “body and soul,” he notes Richard Parker lying nearly motionless and assumes both of them will die soon. Sudden salvation arrives in the form of a heavy hour-long rain, which Pi drinks and uses to refill containers and rinse away salt. Pi crawls to Richard Parker, touches him for the first time to check whether he is dead, and finds the tiger still warm and alive; Richard Parker finally stirs, drinks, eats a little, licks himself, and sleeps.

Despite the rain, Pi’s diary ends in despair with repeated declarations that he is dying. He explains that he did not stop enduring—he stopped recording, because not the paper but the pens ran out, leaving only “invisible spirals” along the margins.