How is fear personified in chapter 56 of Life of Pi?

Fear is something that Chapter Fifty-Six of this novel focuses on exclusively. It comes just as Richard Parker goes onto the boat along with Pi and Pi realises just what he has done by trying to encourage him to get on the same boat as him, as he fears that Richard Parker will be enraged, and, what is more, hungry. The reality of being trapped in an enclosed space with a tiger suddenly confronts Pi and he is forced to face fear.

This chapter therefore personifies fear in a number of guises, but the first paragraph describes fear as being "a clever, treacherous adversary" that "has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy." It is an enemy that comes to you "disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt" and then suddenly attacks you. This personification of fear as an enemy is so important because it leads Pi to meditate on the importance of finally facing that enemy at some point and confronting it head to head in order to triumph over it. 

How is "Life of Pi" an allegory about fear?

I think it is possible to read Life of Pi as an "allegory of fear," so long as we take into consideration the multitude of things going on in Yann Martel's stunning novel. 

It is true that fear is working its way into Pi's mind as he attempts to process the strange world around him. He presumably has great fear for his mother as he watches her meet her end on the raft. And soon, he inherits the sum total of what fear remains, as he wonders whether or not he will survive. I think another important topic in Martel's work is trauma, and the curious way that the human brain works when it is subjected to intense duress. 

In the novel, Pi conjures up a world that might be fabricated purely from trauma. But his ultimate thesis is that the "fabricated" world may not be any less real than the "real" one. A boy alone on a raft exists only in the reality his mind creates; this is the fundamental teaching of phenomenology. 

And in this fantasy world, we come across a third fear that is more abstract; the fear he has for Richard Parker, which ultimately, is the fear he has of himself. And so our "Man vs. Wild" narrative gets curiously intermingled with a "Man vs. Self" story line, where the wild is the self, and proves just as terrifying in either format. 

Yes, fear is a central theme to Martel, taking its place alongside trauma, spirituality, imagination, and grief.