3L: The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies – Vol 20 (3): 147 – 160 147 Believability on the Axes of Structuralism: Yan Martel‘s Life of Pi SEYED JAVAD HABIBI Department of Studies in English, University of Mysore, India sjhabibi@yahoo.com SARA SOLEIMANI KARBALAEI Department of Studies in English University of Mysore, India ABSTRACT Elaborating on parallel, substitutional and correlated elements of the narrative in Yan Martel’s Life of Pi, this study aims at examining Martel’s technique for presenting a believable story in his novel. To discuss the way the believability of Pi’s narrative gets solidified, this enquiry takes advantage of the organizing principles of structuralism, namely, the metonymical-syntagmatic and the metaphorical-paradigmatic axes. Attributing the various correlating elements of the novel to these axes shows that what actually makes Pi a reliable narrator and simultaneously his narrative believable are the very parallel structures of the novel. Keywords: structuralism; metonymical-syntagmatic axis; metaphorical-paradigmatic axis; believability INTRODUCTION …the nicer knowledge of Belief, that what it believes in is not true. (Wallace Stevens) Life of Pi is constructed on a key sentence formulated in the preliminary dialogue of the novel when Francis Adirubasamy, Pi Petal‘s old swimming guru, directly addresses the Canadian anonymous novelist who has come to India due to the failure in his career and his consequential penury: ―I have a story that make you believe in God‖ (Martel 2002, p. x). So the novel turns toward a test of faith for those who read it. The watchword in this statement is believe that attracts attention to the underlying significance of all events of the novel, particularly when it is associated with other two key words: story and God. Philosophically speaking, as Runes puts it, the word ―belief‖ is used in two different senses: ―acquiescence in the existence of objects (e.g. external things, other minds, God, etc.) or assent to the truth of proposition (e.g. scientific, moral, aesthetic, or metaphysical statements).‖ (1983, p. 36). Runes carefully distinguish these two senses: ―The belief in objects is frequently immediate and non-inferential; the belief in propositions usually rests on reflection and inference‖ (p.36). Bearing this in mind, Adirubasamy‘s opening statement is a witty invitation to both these senses. It foreshadows that the narrator‘s attempt to sustain the trustworthiness of the narratives through incorporating parallel structures is a means to make his story so immediate that readers accept it readily as the account of some real events. Meanwhile, it suggests that the belief in God, contrary to common expectation, can be immediate and non-referential: the belief in the existence of God is the direct consequence of not doubting the actuality of events in Life of Pi.