Life of Piby Yann Martel: Parody in Art of Telling

Abstract

Yann Martel’s Life of Piistypically a postmodern-parodic fiction, which not only aims to resist the singularity of the grand narratives, but also parodies all the existing tales and narratives. By offering to ‘believe in God’ through his fiction, Martel baits his readers with serious themes and trawls them into a sea of questions and confusion.Martel introduces an uncertainty principle throughout his plot of the story to promote the postmodern general concept like uncertainty and fluidity of meanings and truth. This fiction coincides with Lyotard’s concept of ‘meta-narrative’ and ‘little-narrative’, and Derrida’s concept of ‘play’, ‘differance’ and ‘deconstruction’.Pi Patel, the main character and narrator, proves him to be a liar and tells two different versions of the same story. Martel offers his readers to choose any of the versions, they think to be the better story, and readers are left confused and forced to question, what actually happened as well as to ponder different levels of interpretations and the meanings. So,Life of Piis a postmodern (parodic)‘mini-narrative’ because postmodern narratives are not evaluated in terms of their truth value.