I believe the second story. Although the second one is a brutal one, it’s a story about human eating human. The hyena is the French cook, the zebra is the sailor, the orang-utan is Pi’s mother and the tiger is a part of Pi, the brutish nature. We can see that the tiger doesn’t kill hyena until he kills orang-utan. In that boat just mother means a lot to Pi, so when the sailor is killed, Pi doesn’t feel so angry that he intends to kill the cook for revenge. But when it turns to his mother, it is different. And in his first story, Pi was blind temporarily because of the insalubrious condition. Pi said that he met another castaway on this gigantic ocean, who talked with Pi in French accent and told him that he killed a man first and a woman. This castaway tried to kill Pi but RP attacked him and ate his face, so Pi has never figured out who is the castaway. But we can know that this castaway is the French cook in the figurative expression. This indicates again that Pi has killed the cook.
Originally Pi is a vegetarian, but in the ocean there isn’t vegetable but fish. Pi has no choice. When they arrive at the island, there are many meerkats and algae on it. Pi eats a lot of algae and RP eats a lot of meerkats. The weird part is the meerkats seem to feel no fear. They don’t escape but wait for being eaten. Their behavior is just like plants. I think this is a kind of ironic of the vegetarians. The plants also have the same lives as animals, if you don’t eat the standing and waiting meerkats why would you eat standing and waiting vegetables?
This book is quite good and absorbing. And the suspense is the best part of it.
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