Life of Pi ship sinks in the middle of the Pacific Ocean during a voyage to North America. Richard Parker is a royal Bengal tiger who is stranded on the lifeboat with Pi when the ship sinks. Richard Parker lives on the lifeboat with Pi and is kept alive with the food and water Pi delivers. Richard Parker develops a relationship with Pi that allows them to coexist in their struggle. In the novel, a hunter named Richard Parker is hired to kill a panther thought to have killed seven people within two months. Instead, he accidentally immobilizes a female Bengal tiger with
Life of Pi "The Emergency", Pi's father decides to sell the zoo and immigrate with his wife and sons to Canada. The second part of the novel begins with Pi's family aboard the "Tsimtsum", a Japanese freighter that is transporting animals from their zoo to North America. A few days out of port from Manila, the ship encounters a storm and sinks. Pi manages to escape in a small lifeboat, only to learn that the boat also holds a spotted hyena, an injured Grant's zebra, and an orangutan named Orange Juice. Much to the boy's distress, the hyena kills the zebra and then