Life of Pi – Chapter 8 Summary
Chapter 8 Summary
Chapter 8 is one of the longest and most eventful chapters so far, and it works on two levels at once. On the surface it is about the dangers of animals and the foolishness of humans around them. Underneath it is about something more philosophical, the danger of seeing animals through a human lens rather than for what they actually are.
Pi opens with a statement that will stick with you: the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man. He means this in two ways. The first is literal and frankly disturbing. Pi gives us this extensive catalogue of the things people feed zoo animals, fishhooks to otters, razors to bears, apples with nails in them to elephants, broken glass, jewellery including gold wedding bands, ping pong balls, drinking straws and so on. The list goes on long enough to become genuinely upsetting. Animals of almost every variety have died from swallowing things visitors threw to them. Pi mentions Goliath, a famous case among zookeepers, a two ton bull elephant seal and star of his zoo who died of internal bleeding after someone fed him a broken beer bottle.
Then there is the active cruelty. Pi describes reports from zoos around the world of animals having their beaks smashed with hammers, their antlers attacked with hacksaws, their arms broken when they reached out for offered food, a zebra stabbed with a sword. Animals poisoned. And then Pi lists some cases so bizarre and disturbing he almost glosses over them quickly, a man urinating into an elk’s mouth, a religious fanatic cutting off a snake’s head. The Pondicherry Zoo was relatively spared the worst of this, but they still had their share of troublemakers. Their golden agouti was stolen and eaten. Birds lost feathers to people who wanted them. A man was caught climbing into the mouse deer pen with a knife, claiming he wanted to punish the deer for its role in a Hindu legend. A snake charmer tried to steal a cobra to replace his own dead one.
Then there were the well meaning visitors who caused harm through ignorance, people who fed the animals tidbits and sweets and caused digestive illness throughout the zoo. The zoo veterinarian could tell by the number of sick animals which days had been busiest with visitors. One sloth bear nearly died of severe internal bleeding after a man fed it rotting fish, genuinely believing he was doing something kind.
Pi’s father had a sign painted near the ticket booth asking which was the most dangerous animal in the zoo, with an arrow pointing to a small curtain. Eager visitors would pull the curtain back to find a mirror. The most dangerous animal is you.
But Pi says his father believed there was actually a second animal even more dangerous than humans, and this one was found everywhere. He calls it Animalus anthropomorphicus, the animal as seen through human eyes. This is the cute, friendly, loving, devoted, merry little creature that lives in toy stores and children’s zoos, in countless stories and cartoons. Pi’s point is that this imaginary animal is just as dangerous as the one that gets fed razor blades, because both come from the same mistake: looking at an animal and seeing a mirror of ourselves instead of what the animal actually is. Whether we are projecting human warmth and friendliness onto them or human cruelty and depravity, we are still not seeing them. And that blindness, Pi says, is dangerous.
This brings us to the main scene of the chapter. Pi’s father calls the boys in one Sunday morning with a tone of voice that immediately sets off alarm bells. Mother is there too, which is unusual since discipline was normally left to Father, and her visible anxiety makes everything worse. Pi immediately assumes it is Ravi in trouble and says so out loud, which earns him a furious look from his brother.
Father announces he has an important lesson that may save their lives. He leads the whole family through the zoo before it opens to the public and into the cat house, a vast dim circular cement building warm and smelling of cat urine, where their Bengal tiger patriarch Mahisha has been kept back from the island. Mahisha is 550 pounds and the moment they walk in he launches into a full throated snarl that shakes the whole building. Pi’s knees start shaking. Mother trembles. Even Father pauses to steady himself. Only the keeper Babu, who has a tested trust in iron bars, is unmoved.
Father shouts his lesson over the noise. Tigers are dangerous. Never touch a tiger. Never put your hand through the bars. Never get close to a cage. Pi nods so hard he is surprised his neck doesn’t snap.
Then Babu brings in a goat with its legs tied. Pi’s mother grips him from behind. Babu places the goat in the cage next to Mahisha’s, unties its legs and exits. The goat scrambles up to a higher level. Mahisha goes silent in anticipation. Babu pulls open the trapdoor between the cages. Father says “Never forget this lesson.” And Pi hears the goat bleating, which he realises it must have been doing the whole time but he couldn’t hear over the snarling. Mahisha had been deliberately starved for three days. A streak of black and orange flows from one cage to the next.
Pi is not sure if he saw blood before turning into his mother’s arms or if he added it later in memory. But he heard. That was enough.
Mother bundles the children out. They are in hysterics. She is furious, with tears in her eyes, asking how Father could do this to children. Father is quiet and soft voiced and contrite. He calls her “my bird,” which Pi notes he never does in front of the children, and says it was better a goat than Pi, if Pi had one day stuck his hand through the bars to touch the pretty orange fur.
But the lesson continues, more gently. Father walks them around the rest of the zoo, stopping at every enclosure and delivering a short verdict on each animal. The lions and leopards: a black belt karate expert in Australia challenged a lion and only half his body was found the next morning. The bears: one strike of the claws and your innards are splattered. The hippos: those soft flabby mouths will crush you to pulp and on land they can outrun you. The hyenas: strongest jaws in nature, not cowardly, will eat you while you are still alive. The orang utans: as strong as ten men, will break your bones like twigs. The ostrich: looks silly but one kick will break your back. The deer: those short antlers will pierce you like daggers. The camel: one bite and you have lost a chunk of flesh. The black swans: their beaks will crack your skull. Even the small birds: they will cut through your fingers. And the elephants, most dangerous of all, responsible for more keeper and visitor deaths than any other zoo animal.
The tour ends at the guinea pig cage, the one deliberately light note. Father picks one up and announces that guinea pigs, at least, are not dangerous. He hands the squealing creature to Pi. Pi puts it gently back with its mother. Though Pi notes, quietly, that the only reason guinea pigs were not dangerous was that they were practically domesticated. A truly wild one grabbed with bare hands would be like taking hold of a knife by the blade. Even the lesson’s comic relief contains a serious point.
Pi and Ravi give their father the cold shoulder for a week. Mother ignores him too. Pi passes the rhino pit and imagines the rhinos hanging their heads in mourning for the goat. But, he says, what can you do when you love your father? Life goes on and you do not touch tigers.
The chapter ends on a darkly funny note. Because Pi had falsely accused Ravi of some unnamed crime at the start of the morning, Ravi now has leverage over him for years afterward. Whenever he wants to terrorise his younger brother he leans in and whispers: “Just wait till we’re alone. You’re the next goat.”
