Life of Pi sort of with a capital 'S' – something that would direct my life." He spoke of being lonely and needing direction in his life, and found that writing the novel met this need. The name of Martel's tiger, Richard Parker, was inspired by a character in Edgar Allan Poe's nautical adventure novel "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket" (1838). In this book, Richard Parker is a mutineer who is stranded and eventually cannibalized on the hull of an overturned ship (and there is a dog aboard who is named Tiger). The author also had in mind another occurrence
Max and the Cats for a tiger and some others who make it onto the lifeboat with Pi. In "Life of Pi"'s acknowledgments, Martel thanked Scliar for "the spark of life," but later said he had not read Scliar's novel, only a review of it. Max is forced to leave Nazi Germany after he and his friend, Harald, have an affair with Frida, whose husband denounces them to the secret police for inappropriate behaviour. He flees the country on the "Germania", a ship bound for Santos, Brazil, with zoo animals in the hold and very few passengers, but the captain is involved in an