Our enemies can become our closest friends. For their weaknesses are our strengths and their strengths could be our breaking point. A test of survival, you need one to have the other. So begins the process of Pi caring for his greatest treat at the moment, Richard Parker.
When Pi's panic started to settle in after the traumatic sinking of the beloved ship and all his family, including the animals who were also dear to him, he realized that the tiger aboard the ship with him was becoming more and more life threatening as their food started to diminish. After he separated himself far enough to think but close enough to observe he began to think of multiple options that he had. Most of those were pertaining to him somehow killing the beast, now known as Richard Parker. Out of all the choices and thought out plans he came to the very last, Plan Number Seven: Keep Him Alive.
So it began, he would fend for himself then for Richard. Each water drop Pi got there was an equal amount for Richard to drink too. The puzzling part is why? It could have been simple, well almost, to execute Richard and even use him as a source of nutrition. Yet he unconditionally promised himself. He is keeping his sanity close and his enemy closer.
His actions in this situation are peculiar but they're just how we live also, we are only blind from the fact. All of us fear those who are stronger than us, if it's actual physical strength or intelligence or even on their social scale. So to cease the urge they have to disrupt our lives we befriend them. As Sun Tzu said in On the Art of War, "Keep your friends closer, and your enemies closer."
