Build a movie plot around this: Who emerges from under the tarpaulin and kills the hyena? Richard Parker
This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. (June 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)In Canada, novelist Yann Martel meets Pi Patel, whom he has been told has a life story that would be a good subject for a book. Pi tells his story to Yann:Pi's father names him Piscine Molitor after the swimming pool in France. In secondary school in Pondicherry, he adopts the name "Pi" (the Greek letter, ) to avoid the sound-alike nickname "Pissing Patel". He is raised Hindu and vegetarian, but at 12 years old, is introduced to Christianity and then Islam, and decides to follow all three religions as he "just wants to love God". His mother supports his desire to grow, but his father, a rationalist, tries to convert him. Pi's family owns a zoo, and Pi takes interest in the animals, especially a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. After Pi gets dangerously close to Richard Parker, his father forces him to witness the tiger killing a goat.When Pi is 16, his father announces that they must move to Canada, where he intends to settle and sell the animals. The family books passage with the animals on a Japanese freighter. During a storm, the ship founders while Pi is on deck. He tries to find his family, but a member of the crew throws him into a lifeboat. A freed zebra jumps onto the boat with him, breaking its leg as it lands. The ship sinks, killing the crew and his family. Pi sees what appears to be a survivor, but it turns out to be Richard Parker, which evades his efforts to keep him out of the boat.After the storm, Pi awakens in the lifeboat with the zebra, and is shortly joined by a surviving orangutan. A spotted hyena emerges from a tarpaulin covering half of the lifeboat and snaps at Pi, forcing him to retreat to the end of the boat. It kills the zebra and later the orangutan. Richard Parker emerges from under the tarpaulin, killing the hyena and attempting to kill Pi, before retreating...