I really liked The Life of Pi. I think one of the writer's themes is about loss and how to cope with that loss. When Pi fell off the ship into the water, his heart sank into the lifeboat he found himself in, along with the ship he was on that carried his family. It was then that Pi realized he would be on his own, except for Richard Parker, the Bengal Tiger. We don't realize that the story is about loss until the very end, though. When Pi is rescued, two men from a maritime department interview Pi about the sinking of the ship. Pi tells them the story of his life in the boat with the Bengal Tiger, along with a wounded zebra, an orang-utan, and a hyena, and how all these animals get eating except the Bengal Tiger. The officials don't believe Pi's story, so he tells a story where humans take the place of the animals, including his mother. His mother is the orang-utan. The hyena is the cook who kills Pi's mother for survival. It's a much more believable story to the officials. When Pi tells the story with the animals, he could be hiding from the truth about what happened to his mother. It could have been too traumatic for him to process.
In all the world, there are two types of people, the ones who hide from the truth and the ones who seek the truth. The thing is, sometimes the one who seeks the truth doesn't realize that it can come at a cost to another person's mental health. The one who hides from the truth sometimes doesn't realize that it comes out anyway, just in a different way. Either way, the truth hurts. Either way, the truth always come out eventually.
Sunday, December 8, 2013
Life of Pi (first blog entry)
Life of Pi is a really interesting book by Yann Martel. It's about a young man who is stranded on a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal Tiger for company. Pi survives by his wit for many months and learns more about himself than many would learn in a lifetime.
When I read the title, the word Pi reminded me of the mathematics symbol for Pi, but I soon found out that it was short for an embarrassing name that sounded too much like, excuse my language, pissing. Pi was named after a swimming pool, Piscine, which is odd at first, but then it makes all the sense in the world. Pi finds himself living in the largest swimming pool there is, the ocean, and he is able to adapt to his new environment in order to survive.
Survival is key and a means to survival was food, something that Pi had in common with the Bengal Tiger. From reading this book, I learned that we are not so different from animals as we like to think we are. Pi learned to communicate with the tiger through means other than verbal, which is the most obvious thing that separates man from the beast. In this case, communicating on the tiger's level ensured Pi's survival.
When I read the title, the word Pi reminded me of the mathematics symbol for Pi, but I soon found out that it was short for an embarrassing name that sounded too much like, excuse my language, pissing. Pi was named after a swimming pool, Piscine, which is odd at first, but then it makes all the sense in the world. Pi finds himself living in the largest swimming pool there is, the ocean, and he is able to adapt to his new environment in order to survive.
Survival is key and a means to survival was food, something that Pi had in common with the Bengal Tiger. From reading this book, I learned that we are not so different from animals as we like to think we are. Pi learned to communicate with the tiger through means other than verbal, which is the most obvious thing that separates man from the beast. In this case, communicating on the tiger's level ensured Pi's survival.
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