Piscine Moliter Patel, Pi for short, has a problem. He's trapped on a dingy lifeboat with a four hundred fifty pound Bengal tiger, and the only cat chow to speak of within a 500 mile radius is Pi himself. After many weeks of constant worry and starvation, Pi's physique begins to go downhill. First it's his skin, then his eyes, and eventually, his mind.
While drifting aimlessly through the ocean, Pi hears something. It sounds like an elderly man, but who knows what the ocean could do to you. He turns. The sound of the ocean drifts away and the sweet song on the human voice melts Pi's bones. The man asks if Pi has any food; Pi replies that he doesn't and asks the man if he has any food, same results. Pi’s heart goes out to the man; here he is eating boots while Pi has fish literally jumping to feed him. The man starts to climb over to Pi's boat and trips, his hands coincidentally landing directly on top of Pi's neck, hissing, "Yes your heart is with me, as with your liver and your flesh," He cackles as his hands begin to tighten. Pi struggles to warn the man of the tiger slowly creeping up on them, but he doesn't notice. Suddenly the tiger pounces and the assailant is killed instantly while Pi is left without a scratch. What a strike of luck to find another man in another lifeboat stranded in the middle of the ocean. Or is it?
Although I do not believe that the blind man was real, I also do not think he is completely a figment of Pi's imagination. The author, I think, put this experience into the story to symbolize the leaving of Pi's id and him turning himself over completely to his primal instincts.
They say "the eyes are windows to the soul", and since Pi is blind, does that mean his old soul is abandoning him? I believe that the tiger represents Pi's soul, while the other castaway represents Pi's instincts, and the creature he is slowly becoming. Think about it: Pi was blind before the meeting, and he regained his sight after he defeated this evil being that was taking over him. Coincidence? I don't think so. Pi's id was represented in the vengeance of the tiger attacking the blind man and when the tiger won, he got his sight back.
In order to prove my conclusion I need to explain the actions of the blind man and the tiger that led me to such ideas. The blind man is a cannibal, and even if he wasn't one when he started his journey to insanity, he is now. Why? Only to survive. In the beginning Pi couldn't even kill a bug, and since desperate times call for desperate measures Pi decides that it would be in his best interest to man up and do it -- to survive. The tiger was once beautiful and all powerful; now he has grown weak and thin, and Pi tames this beast, just like he attempts to tame his mind. Strangling Pi, the blind man cannot see the tiger, just as he cannot see himself being beaten while he is in the lead. The tiger leaps and easily the evil man is dead. Sanity returns, and the pair continue on their journey like nothing has changed but something has changed, inside Pi's mind.
The tiger, Pi's moral self, has won. Had the primal blind man won I am positive that Pi would not have survived. Pi's mind, the only reason why he is holding on, is the difference between life and death. The difference between life and death is the will to survive. The will to survive will keep someone alive, but they will exist only as a blind animal and without the stability of a zookeeper an animal cannot live through itself.
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