>>4859You could watch the movie. It's dazzling trash.
I'll tl;dr:
First part of the story is Pi being all "omg, does god exist, does it not????" meeting with absolute retards to discuss this matter. A big revealing moment is when Pi goes to the zoo and sees "the worlds most dangerous animal", and it's a mirror, ie humans.
Second part of the book, Pi has a fantastic journey stranded in the Ocean with animals. There's a lion too. The lion is dangerous and eats animals Pi likes.
Third part of the book: Pi is rescued and it is revealed that the animals were actually humans, but Pi needed to COPE and made them animals. The description of what actually went down is extremely vulgar and disgusting.
The final kicker and "ah-ha!" insight moment is when the audience is asked if they prefer the better story (the one with animals and the lion in the middle of the ocean), or the real story (that the animals represented real humans, and the lion was a cook that was insane). The analogy is that "the better story" is pledging fealty to pedophiliac bloodthirsty reactionary religion while "the real story" is atheism, which we are supposed to think as viscerally disgusting (the worst animal is the human, and the insane cannibalistic cook's actions are basically atheism).
When I read it in highscool, there were a bunch of people who said they preferred "the better story". I was a staunch atheist back then. I saw that as an extremely grotesque acceptance that their belief in religion is literally COPE because they would rather not believe in "the real story". For a moment, I was considering the possibility that the book was written by an atheist to expose the religious as retards through 1D chess. But after a lot of classmates chose "the better story" and after analysis I realized it was filled with retarded arguments "supporting" atheism in the first part, I realized it was a retarded COPE of the highest caliber. I was an idiot back then, I can only imagine what other bullshit I'd find if I read it today.