It's only a cookie

Does this book have a happy ending? From the beginning I was skeptical about that line. Is it just happy because he survives or is there more meaning behind what Yann Martel believes to be a happy ending? This book has a happy ending depending on whether you prefer the "dry, yeastless factuality" or the "better story".
When I finished this book, I just held it there in my hand and couldn't believe what I had just read. You start the book on this up-climb of happy thoughts and continuous learning. As you read the "meat" of the story you get drawn into Pi as the character and how he evolves on this lifeboat with Richard Parker (and all the former passengers). The ending literally shocked me! I should have seen something like this coming, but you get so involved in the "better story".
The story with the humans, I believe, is the true story, the dry, yeastless factuality. That is what happened, in all its sickening ways. For me I prefer to have the “better story”, although finding out the truth was inspirational to me and needed to be told. I wouldn’t take that part out of the book.
I was able to go back through and really analyze the deeper feelings of Pi as Richard Parker. The concept of Pi actually being the tiger shows deep meaning to Pi’s worries and concerns that we thought he was just showing to Richard Parker. In order to survive he knew he needed to apply the attributes of a Royal Bengal Tiger (an animal he viewed as dominant).
Trying to understand the “dry, yeastless factuality” or the “better story” concept, I took a look at my own life. I don’t believe I have suffered an event you can call “tragic” but the death of a loved one always causes sorrow. The “dry, yeastless factuality” would be the facts of how they died, why they died, when…so forth. You need the facts to understand the situation, but when people talk of ones they have lost, they always give the “better story”—happy events; times they shared together, characteristics of that person.
Pi remembered the tragic event by replacing humans with animals. By doing this, you are able to learn from what happened without depressing, repulsive facts. I felt sadness for Pi as I’m reading the body of the story but also was able to “navigate” on to the happy ending. I felt like I was on the boat, pulling for Pi, Richard Parker, and myself to get to land. If the book was written strictly on the dry, yeastless factuality or didn’t have that hope of a happy ending, you might have just given up—jumped overboard.