I read the book Life Of Pi by Yann Martel. It is about a boy named Piscine Molitor Patel. He is the son of a zookeeper and he lives in Pondicherry, India. Him and his family live in the zoo, and so Pi has a chance to study each animal and their life.
Pi understands religions. He goes to all the different houses of prayer in his town, and always opens his mind to the clergy's stories. Pi studies Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity, and thinks none better than another. Over time, the clergy learn that he is practicing all of these religions, and they kick him out. Pi did not give up. He continued to pray by himself to God, Allah, and Vishnu.
Pi's family is a middle class family. This is due to the fame of their zoo. People from all over India come to see their zoo. When Pi is fifteen, the political party that his family opposes becomes successful, and his father decides to move the family, and the animals, to Winnipeg, Canada, where the animals will be sold.
Pi doesn't know what to think of this. Pi has never been out of the country, rarely leaving Pondicherry. He doesn't really want to move away, but, he tells of having no friends other than his older brother, Ravi.
It takes a year to get the paperwork done, but finally they leave on the Japanese cargo ship Tsim-Tsum. Pi has a bad time on the boat. He does not become seasick, but rather becomes disappointed in the crew. The crew constantly gets drunk, and the officers never speak with Pi's family. He reassures himself that it will be over soon. At one particular stop in Manila, Pi notices the officers talking to the mechanic about a possible problem with the ship's engine.
The Tsim-Tsum sinks, taking Pi with it. Pi is pushed into a lifeboat by a crewman, and is the sole survivor of the shipwreck. Sole human survivor, anyway. In Pi's lifeboat are a hyena, an orangutan, and a wounded zebra. Even though Pi had been around animals his entire life, Pi was deathly afraid (and had a right to be).
The hyena quickly killed the other two animals, while Pi hid for his life. The hyena, however, did not attempt to kill Pi. Pi discovered an adult Bengal Tiger in the life boat under the tarp. The tiger killed and ate the hyena.
Pi realizes that the worst part of being trapped on a lifeboat is loneliness, and at least he had Richard Parker (the tiger) as company. The second worst thing, as Pi finds out, is hunger, and even though surrounded by water, thirst.
Pi becomes very brave when he is hungry, and decides that even the crew of the Tsim-Tsum would've packed emergency rations. Pi sneaks through Richard Parker's den and finds a locker full of equipment on food. Pi's mission was successful. Pi becomes used to living with Richard Parker, even though Richard could easily kill Pi for food. Pi has no fear. Pi establishes his territory in the boat, and during the process gets himself knocked off the boat by Richard countless times. But he is persistent, and eventually succeeds.
Pi is very smart. Pi knows that tigers need a lot of food, and that Richard Parker will eat him if he gets the chance. He decides that the only way to survive is if Richard Parker survives as well. He does not proceed to just keep him alive, he tries to tame him, and by the end, he has Richard jumping through hoops and using only half the lifeboat. Pi somehow makes a seaworthy raft in another chapter, using just oars and lifejackets.
More than anything else though, Pi is lucky. First of all surviving a shipwreck that kills fifty others is lucky, let alone making it to land without dying. And I still haven't mentioned Pi's miraculous survival with Richard Parker. Especially when Richard is about to attack Pi and somehow, a rat finds itself in Pi's hand, and Pi is saved. Also, about to die, Richard and Pi find themselves on an island full of algae, fresh water, and meerkats. Another time, Pi has been having a terrible time fishing, Richard is getting hungry, when a flock of flying fish lands in the boat.
Pi is interesting character, with some interesting opinions on life. Developing Pi's character in the beginning of the book is necessary in making the book very good.
I loved this book. This is the second-best book I have ever read (The Scarlet Pimpernel). This may be surprising to some people, and I have a feeling that this book generates a strong reaction from all readers, whether good of bad, it doesn't matter.
It is very sad that I almost did not have the opportunity to read this book. The first couple of days I brought it to school, it caught a lot of eyes and drew a lot of attention. Apparently this book was read by most of the grade last year, and I had no idea about this. Anyway, all comments it recieved were negative. A few included "Boring the whole way through," "Terribly confusing,""Disgusting as hell," "Just a terrible book," "You won't like it," or even as subtle as "It only gets good in the end." (the last of which I found to be quite the opposite with me). My thoughts now take me to the possibility that a certain not-so-likeable teacher may have forced students to read this book last year, and now the students forever associated Yann Martel's gem with this infamous educator. These remarks left me wondering if I should even start the book. Reading the inside cover for a second time, it wasn't as good as before, and I ended up deciding to put my book project on the back burner until I could find something else to read. I ended up reading the book out of pure curiosity in the end, and also because it sounded more interesting than, say, The Paperboy Of Chicago or something of the sort.
Good thing I picked this book. I found out right away what everybody else classified as boring. A lot of people think that the book would be a lot better without the nearly one hundred page exposition, or at least an abridged version of it. However, deleting a single sentence ruins the whole story in my opinion. As I have stated farther above, this part is necessary in learning Pi's character. The book only has effect if you know Pi from head to toe. The author writes that " I will not write a book if I don't say everything I wish to say." Not everything Martel has to say relates directly to the book, but even these words are necessary and make the book fuller. I do admit that it is impossible to read the first one hundred pages in rapid succession, and I prescribe lots of rest and recovery between Martel's first one-hundred pages. The last two hundred go much quicker, of course until the end of the climax, in which perhaps the longest, most tedious of all chapters takes place, slowing the story down quite a bit.
Reading the book I have two regrets. Both are in the last fifty pages, and both are frustrating to read. One is on the subject of Pi's landfall in Mexico. Richard Parker jumps out and enters the forest without a formal, or for that matter informal, goodbye. He justs walks away from the man who fed him and kept him alive. My regret here is not that Martel tries to avoid the cliche storybook goodbye sequence in which the tiger puts his front paws upon the boy's shoulders and licks his face, before trotting away with a definite smile on his face, but that Martel shows Pi as dismissing the matter as unimportant and going on with his life. Just being a sideline spectator on these actions made me stop abruptly, vowing to continue the next day, only with half as much hope.
My other regret happens to be on Pi's interview with the Japanese men. Let me say something before I start with this. Let's say this is an autobiography. Readers know that the story is true, and first-hand, and can practically feel the rolling of the boat. This book would earn very high marks, and would be world famous because of the certain divine miracle. The author would paint great masterpieces for readers, comparable to Vincent Van Gogh.
Let's say this story is a biography, despite the first-person point of view. Readers know that the story is true. This is the most important thing. The story probably also has good description, but certainly not as good as the autobiography, and just the fact that a book is an autobiography will propel its ratings over a biography of the same name. The picture painted would be an exact copy of the painting by the autobiographer, but it loses its feeling of real paint and the brushstrokes can not be seen anymore.
Let's say the story is a fiction story. The story may be false, but this is expected of most novels. The story has amazing description, but the story has lost its feeling of reality and has spiraled off into another direction entirely. That being said, the book achieves great marks, because the story holds more interesting conflicts and is exciting the whole way through. Using the painting metaphor, the picture here would be a 100% genuine Picasso, with bright colors, and forces the imagination upon a seer to be stretched.
Let's get back to the point here. The end of the book reveals Pi's journey to be not only fiction, but maybe even fictitious story inside a fiction book. Pi's journey was taken, but perhaps not with animals, alone, and many parts of the story may be false. We learn that Pi may have been lying the whole time, when he tells another story to the interviewer. You can imagine what effect this has on the reader. The picture painted is a few colors splotched on canvas in a thougtless way, meaning nothing whatsoever.
Maybe I only dislike this ending because, cheater that I am, I started the report before finishing the book. I have no heart to start the first section over. I will end up saying that I had "insufficient information" to otherwise report on Pi's being. Maybe Pi was telling the truth. Martel does well to keep the reader hoping that maybe Pi's first story was true, and the second was made up to satisfy the interviewers.
Somehow, the thing that I seem to have loved the most in the book was just Martel's style of writing. I have no idea what makes me love it, but I feel like a bit of it has rubbed off on me. This story has changed the way I view the world, and I reccommend it to everyone. Hopefully you will be a love it as well.
Just one more thing. When I finished this story, I noticed something. A book is like a baseball game that can be won or lost. Understanding is worth a game ending grand slam, and your team will lose in extra innings if you do not follow through. In this instance in particular, I feel as though I have beaten the Yankee-like novel. 4-0.
No comments:
Post a Comment