To love or to hate? That is the ending

I was torn by the end of the novel. I felt all at once that I was being jipped, lied to, and that someone was laughing at me for believing the story he told in the first place. And yet at the same time I was glad that I had been able to read the first story. Honestly, I couldn't even guess as to which one is true. They both have things that make them utterly believable, true even, while containing things that just seem...wrong, for lack of a better word. Who is going to butcher a young man, then murder a woman in cold blood eat her flesh, dispose of her remains and then allow himself to be killed by a scrawny young man who is so hungry that he has difficulty standing? But on the other hand, after you had done such things, why would you want to live? The stories match each other uncannily well. Then I am struck with the possibility that Martel is just so brilliant that he thought the whole thing up out of thin air.
Regardless, I greatly enjoyed this book. I find it to have a very haunting quality to it. I can't get it out of my head. For some reason I greatly enjoyed the comparison of Pi to Richard Parker. It touches me deeply that we are not so far from nature that we forget the animal nature implicit of living on this earth. It does frustrate me though. Which story is true? Are either of them true? Is their such a person as Pi Patel? I hope so. I find it inspiring to see such boldness and creativity. I feel good just having read of someone who wants to survive, because that implies that there is something in our world worth living for. In today's society there is so much corruption, so much suffering, and worst of all, there is so much despair, that I have difficulty understanding why people try so hard to stay alive. So even if it was only for that reason, this book was worth all the tension that I have felt, as I have accompanied Pi through his ordeal. Even though I wanted to avert my gaze when he tried to eat Richard Parker's feces, or the barnacles, or sucking out the fishes' eyes (shudder). I am happy and grateful for what I have, and I hope that if it ever came to it, I would be able to withstand whatever came my way, just like Piscine Molitor Patel, aka 3.14.