In the novel Life of Pi, Yann Martel dichotomizes the perceptual realities, and psychological realities of Piscine Monitor Patel. Martel is insistent in not "sacrifice[ing] our imagination on the altar of crude reality"(Pi); and to do this, he sets forth in making us wonder whether we are reading an imaginative fiction, or a real life story. Written as a factual account, we are constantly reminded that Pi is alive and doing well in Montreal, but his story's credibility is also constantly held under speculation, with the far-fetched passages such as that of the algae island, and the blind sailor. The differences between facts and realities, fact and fiction, literalism and imagination, are themes that run throughout the novel. Pi deals with these oppositions, through his acceptance of co-existence of opposites. This is a theory, which Pi learns early in the novel, with his fascinating religious complexity...