In my opinion, the whole book was a metaphor for God. Throughout the book, Pi has been telling an incredible story about coexisting with a hyena, orangutan, and zebra for a short period of time and with a tiger for over 200 days at sea. At the end of the story, he tells the same story again, but with humans instead of animals. The things that have happened to the animals happen exactly to the humans. The roll of the orangutan was played by his mom, the hyena played by a french chef, the zebra a sailor, and the tiger was Pi. This means Pi watched his mother being brutally murdered by the chef instead of an orangutan being killed by a lion. Instead of a hyena taking off a zebra's leg to eat, the chef took off a sailor's leg to eat. Pi killed the chef, and then was completely and totally alone for over 200 days. He explains to two men that both stories have the same outcome, so which would a person rather believe? They reply "the one with the animals." Pi replies, "and so it is with God." Religion played a big part in this book. In fact, this story was promised to make us believe in God. Nobody wants to believe the human story, so a lot of people take the leap of faith and believe in the story featuring animals. I don't think it matters which really happened. I don't think that's what the author intended. I think the author wanted to make a point about taking the leap of faith and believing in the animal story because it's better.