During Pi’s time on the lifeboat Richard Parker goes blind. Soon afterwards Pi also loses his sight. It began with a dark spot in the middle of his vision that eventually grew to consume his entire range of sight. During this time Pi hears a voice. Initially he believes it to be his imagination as he goes insane but then he came to the conclusion that it must be Richard Parker because the voice was speaking so fondly of eating meat. At this point in Pi’s story he is very weak and his mind is working very slowly. After a while he realizes that the voice must be another person because he has a French accent, one that Richard Parker, having been raised in India, could never have. The man came on to Pi’s boat and tried to kill and eat him but he was killed by Richard Parker once he steped into the tiger's territory. The Frenchman that Pi meets is likely the same Frenchman that is in his second version of the story. Both men have killed a man and a woman and both men tried to kill Pi. The Frenchman in Pi’s second account of his survival was the ships cook and it is very likely that the man Pi meets was also a cook because of his knowledge of obscure dishes. The reason Yann Martel created such obvious similarities between the two characters was to make Pi’s first story seem like the true account while the second one was just a dry, yeastless factuality that was based off the true events.
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