Religion and zoos

In one chapter of his delightful Life of Pi , Yann Martel gives a robust defense of zoos, and a funny critique of the notion that animals consider zoos to be prisons from which they long to escape.  From the first pages of the novel, Pi, the narrator, has connected zoology and religion (his double major at the University of Toronto), and he closes his defense of zoos by reverting to that theme:

“I know zoos are no longer in people’s good graces.  Religion faces the same problem.  Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.”