posted
I searched to see if there was an existing discussion of this book and couldn't find one, so forgive me if it's been beaten already.
Am I really late with this book? Has everyone else already read it? It feels like it and that I'm just the slow learner here. I don't usually venture into modern fiction just cause I'm afraid it will be a)crap or b)smut and I'm not a big fan of either. I guess I should say that I don't venture into it unless a trusted friend and intelligent person recommends it to me with feeling. Thanks to Katie for recommending this book to me in some ancient thread that's long gone.
*Spoilers*
I really enjoyed this book. First of all, it's story telling at it's very very best. And what a story!
I loved that the main character was a Christian, a Muslim, and a Hindu all at the same time. I was fascinated by his descriptions of his conversion process to each faith. I learned a lot.
I love the background about zookeeping and three-toed sloths. I don't know exactly where the sloths fit in yet, I need to read the book again, but I still really enjoyed it. I love that I know how to tame a tiger now.
I loved the writing style. It had the feeling of a stream of consciousness style without the disjointed disorganization.
I love that the author kept interjecting italicized chapters about Pi, describing his kitchen, his house, his person, his wife...it reminds us that the story doesn't have a sad ending.
I love that the tiger's name is Richard Parker.
I love the conversation at the end with the Japanese navy officers and the humor that existed throughout the book despite the tragic circumstances in which he found himself.
*end spoilers*
I wasn't tied to this book in a way that I couldn't put it down and had to read it in less than 2 days. Instead, it was a really leisurely read for me. I found the style and subject matter refreshing and interesting and I learned a lot.
If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.
If you have read it, what did you think of it? What were your favorite things about it?
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posted
I read it around Christmastime and didn't really see what all of the fuss was about. It was well-written and engaging, but didn't stir me in any particular way.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
wow thats funny, i JUST finished it 2 days ago. Boy, this is an amazing book. Give it a century, and ittl be a classic. This book will be studied in classes across america. I really enjoyed it, not so much in an entertaining sense - but more of a fun sense of literature sense. Its also very wise...
Posts: 1604 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
I could have sworn I posted something about this book a month or so ago, but a quick search revealed nothing.
In any case, I really enjoyed this book to.
*spoilers*
My favorite part was the with the meerkats.
Aside from the fun of this book, I was a bit bothered by the ending. The whole interview process left me doubting the entire story and what had really happened. If someone had warned me to look at the book differently from the beginning, I would have not been so bothered.
*end spoilers*
Overall, I highly recommend this book and it was designated by librarys in AZ as the one book that everyone should read during the month of April.
Posts: 995 | Registered: May 2003
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posted
peter, I felt the same way at the end. I kind of thought "Now why in the heck did he have to go and tell that sort of plausible story to make me doubt everything?" But, I still believe that the animal story is the one that happened to him (in the novel of course) because of what he said at the end.
(paraphrasing) Pi says something like "Which story is better, the last one or the one with the animals?" and the interviewers answer "The one with the animals." And then Pi says "And so it is with God." To me, that was his answer of which story really happened to him.
In response to those that had a hard time getting into it, I can say that I totally understand because he does go into a lot of zookeeping and religion stuff at the beginning, I guess it could be kind of dry. It was really fun stuff to learn though.
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posted
But thats the whole point of the book! You are the guys who are skeptical at the end, and youre meant to learn the lesson he teaches them! Its quite brilliant.
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posted
I haven't read it yet, but as soon as I get done reading The Lighstone 2: the silversword, I'm going to read it.
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posted
I read it because my mother was reading it, and she said it was very good. Most of the way through the book, I was enjoying it but not to the point that I would want to read it over and over again. But then the last bit with the interviewers--wow, it made it so...ee. The adjective escapes me. I loved it.
posted
C, I'm so glad you read it! I loved this book. The entire thing was wonderful, but I loved the ending even more. That was so great. I too greatly appreciated the little notes about his current life - I don't think I could bear the tension for an entire book length otherwise. The alternative explanation made me cry. Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
I loved that book. It makes me almost wish I had multiple religions. I loved the part when-
SPOILER
Richard Parker talked, the island filled with man eating plants...
I ought to read it again... Maybe I will if I can snag it at the library on Wednesday, or if they let me with these OVERDUE FINES!
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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The story seemed almost plausible up to the part about the floating island of meerkats. That and the part about eating the tiger turd...blech!
The details about gathering water from the solar stills were especially realistic.
That ending was so jarring!
[/spoilers]
To me it becomes a tale about our personal interpretations of real events that happen in our lives and the stories we tell ourselves in order to maintain our sanity.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
I just finished reading this book and I am so excited by it. I do think I will read it again. I think it was interesting how the boat was compartmentalized. He slept directly above R.P. and when he opened the locker they were separated.
Also, he thought R.P. was gone from the boat until after the hyena killed Orange Juice. Am I right in remembering that? That's one of the reasons I want to re-read it.
I imagine he was so interested by the metabolism of sloths for the same reason he hoarded food- because he'd lived in the extremity of starvation for so long. Also, Sloths are another one of the very improbable faces of nature. It couldn't have evolved gradually (There are also no steps in nature between a Giraffe and it's predecessors- at least none in the fossil record).
I highly recommend the book on tape. It was that much more entertaining.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Genius, postmodernism without pretension; wisdom without sanctimony: this book should be required for every seventh grade class, for, along with Animal Farm, LotR, Catch-22, Gilgamesh, the Oydessey, The Fixer and The Once and Future King, it forms the basis of a great middle school reading list: what Johnny Tremain and A Wrinkle in Time are for Elmentary, it is for middle school.
P.S. skillery: the novel is supposed to be magical realist.
Posts: 1332 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
I absolutely adore this book! Also: the children's paperbook as it is half as expensive as the adult one.
My favorite parts of the story was when he was adjusting to his life alone with Richard Parker; eg. when he slept on the makeshift raft and suffered a wet miserable night. It's such scenes like that where Pi's pragmaticism and remarkable gift for self-analysis shines through.
I wasn't especially engaged with the earlier descriptions of India, but it didn't harm the book. I do agree the process of religious conversion was interesting, although I found those sections more interesting in shaping the comfortable world and people that, we the readers, know will be wrested from Pi shortly.
I had no problem accepting the island, but his encounter with the other rafter was the most improbable and least clear part of the novel. Still, it was hardly an impediment to the enjoyment of the novel.
The end was fantastic--I loved the doubt inserted into the story! I think it ties into the religious themes: the world has a history of seemingly improbable events and stories which humans make of as they will. Some believe them, and others seek for probable and comfortable answers. However, at the core of these fascinating stories are fascinating real people, and ultimately, this book is about such a person.
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This book had a huge effect on me. The tiger was not real...(that's what I believe anyway). Pi had to imagine it was a tiger, an orangutan and a zebra, instead of his mother and two other people. Otherwise he would have died of grief and hopelessness. The belief that there was a tiger on his boat kept him alive and gave him a way to make sense of the horrible things he had witnessed. (A man could never become a cannibal, but a tiger certainly could do it....)
Posts: 464 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:I read it around Christmastime and didn't really see what all of the fuss was about. It was well-written and engaging, but didn't stir me in any particular way.
I had a similar reaction. I rather liked the triple-religion thing, and I liked the story and everything, and I could tell it was a very good book but it didn't, as twinky says, stir me deeply.
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posted
It's funny comparing a person's view on the story (animal vs human) to their view on religion (non-religous vs religious). From my experience, it's seemed that more of the religious people I knew were willing to believe the animal version of the story, whereas the non-religious folks were more inclined to believe the human version of the story.
Posts: 193 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Kwea: I started reading it, but never got into it, and still haven't finished it.
Kwea
That's me as well. And that made my parents very upset because they both loved it. But I just couldn't get into it.
Posts: 6026 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
I thought I was the only one who is three or four religions simultaneously. I wonder if it's more widespread than I thought.
I haven't read the book but it sounds intriguing. As long as it doesn't imply that people who believe in religion believe it despite the fact that it isn't true. The fact that so many religious people here seem to like it make me think it must not imply that. Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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An aside: in my ethics in law class a couple of years ago, we discussed an old English case where a man was on trial for murder. Four people--three men and a boy--were stuck on a lifeboat after their ship had sunk. One killed the boy who was sickly and all three men ate him. The man who killed him was tried for murder. The boy's name was Richard Parker.
Posts: 866 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
[MORE SPOILERS] It beats Thirsty None Given.
I'm puzzled that anyone besides Pi would believe the animal story. But then, I thought K-Pax was clearly a mental patient and not an extraterrestrial.
I had dreams about the island last night. I think the island was necessary to his paradigm that this tiger was eating 10 lbs. of meat a day. But then he became aware that if he continued to operate on that level of delusion, he would die. The main problem with the island is why nothing happened to them when it was overcast or stormy.
I thought it was good to learn a little bit more about Indian culture, though not much. It's a major gap in my view on the world.
P.S. As I'm re-reading it, Chapter 8 has a lot of foreshadowing of his dissocation. He equates zoology with religion in many ways. He describes the day his father made them watch the tiger feeding, and the cage is divided into levels like the boat by the tarpaulin. The idea of animalis anthropomorphicus or projection of the self onto an animal, is the seed of his coping.
It occured to me also that the Frenchman was a fifth animal, whom Pi projected himself onto. It was the Frenchman who devised the raft, and when he meets the Frenchman, he has a lone boot to trade. And who is it that actually wanted to eat the heart and liver?
posted
I wish someone would just tell me the whole plot in a post. I am curious about this book, but not quite enough to actually read it. I love being spoilered. It doesn't ruin my pleasure in things at all to know what happens in advance, it enhances it.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
I'm the same way. When we were watching Signs, I paused the movie and made my husband tell me the end or I refused to watch the rest. He thinks I'm weird. I'm comforted by knowing at least vaguely what's going to happen. I also read the end of mysteries near the beginning sometimes, or I get too anxious to finish them.
Of course, I suppose if I search "Life of Pi" I can find a good spoiler summary.
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posted
I'm exactly the same way, kq. I too get very anxious sometimes with books and read the ending. I've been trying to find out the ending to Signs for years now.
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I do not know much about Hinduism, but doesn't Shiva have a bunch of mouths? One of the gods did/does, I thought. I was thinking the island stood for some sort of Indian deity.
I loved this book very much.
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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posted
Has anyone read Yann Martel's short story collection, the Helsinki Roccamatios (sp)?
I really enjoyed it, especially the title story although it was really sad, but it seemed to get mixed praise on Amazon, so I'm wondering what others thought.
Posts: 484 | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
maybe i'm just stupid...but for some reason I went into the book thinking it was based on a true story...I spent the first 3/4 of the book believing this...When Pi started talking to the other blind castaway I read the back cover again and realized it was fiction...I guess this sort of changed my view of the book. ?
Posts: 217 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
Rudolph, I had the opposite thing happen to me with Herman Melville's Typee. I never read the introductions and stuff on books until after I'm done with the book, and like Melville is a novelist! He wrote Moby Dick and Billy Budd and stuff, right? So naturally I assumed Typee was a novel. It kept being pretty surreal, though. More and more unexplained things happened, that I expected were foreshadowings and would be explained later. But they kept piling on one after another, and I couldn't even keep up with everything and remember all the threads that he'd left hanging, so I could wait for their resolution. Finally about 4/5ths of the way through, I stopped and read the introduction and had a good laugh at myself. Turns out the whole thing was a memoir of something that actually happened. Melville did, in fact, jump ship on some island in the Pacific, go to live with the natives for a year or two, then hitchhike a ride home with another ship. When he got back to England, he wrote it all up, and it was his first book. Apparently it was pretty popular and launched his career as a writer.
I didn't realize, before that, how very different a novel is from a memoir. In novels, all the elements of action have a purpose. They all fit together as a harmonious whole, and make a sort of sense. In memoirs, no such constraints exist, and all the elements in the book that I had held in suspension thinking that I would find out what they meant never came to any sort of resolution at all. It was great! Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
Okay, I read it. Finished it last night. I do agree that it's a wonderful read, and very worth the time.
I fell in love with Pi early on. I liked his viewpoint about animals and religion both. But I think the moment I actually fell in love with him was when he touched his daughter's nose "one, two, three, four".
I'm still not sure how I feel about the book. I loved the story. Could not put it down. The end, I'm unsure about. It seemed to make it less of a book than it really ought to be, to me. I'm still thinking about it.
For the record, I'm very religious (I share Pi's infatuation with multiple religions), and I believe the second story he told the interviewers was the true one, was what actually happened. But I'm still pondering the other story, and what it means. Good stories mean more than one thing.
Assuming the second story he told to the investigators is what was really true, and the first story is the metaphorical way in which he understood everything that happened to him, then what would the island of the meerkats have been in real life? Has anyone figured that out?
Also, the tiger was clearly himself. Orangutan was mom. Hyena was the cannibalistic cook, and Zebra was the beautiful Taiwanese sailor. So why did Richard Parker speak with a french accent at the end? If Pi (as RP) murdered the cook (hyena) for killing his mom (orangutan). Then who was left afterwards? Was he alone on the boat? Or did the cook survive somehow, to talk to him in the person of RP, later on when they were blind and delirious? If the cook lived, then which one of them was the tiger? I read really fast and miss stuff sometimes. Was there another character on the boat that I'm confusing with the cook?
And the island of the meerkats.... what was that?
Did y'all take it to mean that the truth doesn't matter as much as the story we tell ourselves about it? Or that God may not be true, but he makes the best story, so it's better to believe in him than not, regardless of whether or not he's true?
I was with him up to that sentence "and so it is with God". That's when the book was retroactively transformed (mostly) for me into a sort of religious tract... something the Jehovah's Witnesses handed me that I blinked at and didn't recognize.
A wonderful, engaging, delightful story, but one that left me feeling a little bit cheated at the end. It felt slightly dishonest to me. What do you think? Perhaps I'm just looking at it wrong. Telling myself the wrong story about the author and why he wrote this book.
posted
I just remembered that the orangutan mother had two boys, two male orangutan children, just like Pi's mom had two boys.
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posted
Now I'm thinking back to the zoo and wondering if all the animals were really people, and his father had a job in an office or something. Maybe he was Human Resource manager at the place.
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posted
See Tatiana, I couldn't bring myself to believe that the second story was the true one. I felt like it was the story he told the investigator just so they would leave him alone.
but I'm also very stubborn and can't stand the thought of such a detailed journey being his hallucination or made up story. Posts: 6415 | Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
The problem with Life of Pi is that it's too self-consciously allegory, and the "first story" -- which is meant to be the meaningful "story" that demonstrates the value of faith, and which includes various Adamic metaphors that are supposed to be useful to the reader -- is actually far less gripping, visceral, and well-written than the "second story" it presumably mirrors. In other words, the first story is not a better story; it's just more uplifting fiction.
I think the issue is that Martel equates being uplifting with being better. And if he's at all right about certain "types" of people preferring story one to story two, what I think is more likely is that people who would prefer to believe a happy lie to an unhappy truth will prefer the first story, hands-down.
That he seems to equate a preference for the first story with the desire for religious faith leads to a conclusion I'll leave to the cynical agnostic.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Narnia, BunnV agrees with you. He felt the first story (the one with the animals, call that story A) was what actually happened and the second one (call it story I) was just invented for the benefit of the investigators because they refused to believe the truth. Or to believe that the truth is often improbable and weird and doesn't sound plausible.
I think the book is meant to be somewhat ambiguous about which of these stories is true. The first thing that happens when you start pondering stories A and I, trying to decide what really happened, is that you remember that the book is a work of fiction, and so you have to add story S, the story that Yann Martel is telling you and me, and try to understand why he wrote it this way, and what he's trying to convey to us.
Then, when we discuss it with each other, we have to admit that story S is actually several very different stories. The way *I* see story S is obviously totally different then yours and BunnV's version of story S. Maybe we should label those stories S1, S2, ... etc.
S1 can be the story in which story A really happened, and Pi just made up story I for the benefit of the investigators. Pi gives them something quotidian enough, and sad, paltry, dark, and ugly enough to resonate with their officialdom-selves. If you accept this, then story S1 becomes a sort of light tale which is very entertaining and has a wonderful affectionate tone, delightful characters, a lot of cool stuff about animals and survival, and a small lesson about the inadequacy of officialdom at the end. (Correct me if I am mischaracterizing story S1. It's not my story, so I probably can't paraphrase it well.) It's a good story, and quite satisfying.
S2 is the story I read in the book. In S2, story I is what actually happened to Pi. The orangutan was his mother, the Zebra was the chinese sailor, the hyena was the cook, and the tiger has to be Pi himself, at least up to the point where he kills the hyena. The horror of losing his family, watching his mother be murdered, having to deal with the human beings (especially himself) acting this way, and learning how to survive, was overwhelming, as it would be for any 16 year old boy, particularly a gentle, loving vegetarian boy like Pi. But he was very connected to God, and so God showed him how to understand and come to terms with what was happening. He reminded him that humans are of course animals first of all. The lesson with the goat that his father had taught him came back. The horror of the blood everywhere, the way the cook slowly killed the poor sailor, it put the events into the pattern which he had seen with the tiger and the goat. People's actions in extreme circumstances are much more understandable when you see them through these eyes. He was able to love Richard Parker, despite his brutality, because he was a tiger, and that's how tigers behave.
You have to add in here the Hindu reverence for animals which is foreign to our culture. They realize (because of their belief in reincarnation) that animals are beings like ourselves, and they hold them in high regard, and look upon them with great affection. The first step, maybe, is loving animals as people, then Pi shows us that the second step is loving and accepting humans, including all the horror and brutishness of how they sometimes behave, as we can animals.
That's part of S2, for me. If A is the metaphorical interpretation of I, which gave Pi the ability to see and understand what was really going on under the surface, and therefore to survive, then we've been given the map between reality and metaphor for the first episodes of the story. But what is the map between the Meerkats and the floating island part of A, and what really happened, I? I can't come up with anything, because we're given so little to go on. All we know is that the bones in the bottom of the lifeboat are actual meerkat bones. Analyzing the thematic elements of the island, I see that the ocean fish are trapped in the ponds, and killed by fresh water. The meerkats are easily killed by R.P. because they have been so used to having no predators, because life has been so kind to them, that they have lost their defenses. And finally, the island represents a safe haven, in which Pi and RP could survive indefinitely, and yet it eats people, swallows them up, leaving nothing but their teeth. All these elements to me seem to evoke the idea of traps, in which what seems attractive on the surface (fresh water, no predators, easy survival) is actually killing in the long run. There's no I episode given by which I can understand this, so I have to look to the book as a whole, and wonder if he means our civilization, our technological easy life, is an attractive trap which is spiritually killing us. That's just a wild guess. But it seems to be close, to be almost it. Maybe if I think about it longer, this will become clearer to me.
Then comes the trick at the end, the statement "And so it is with God". But this post is already way too long, so I will save my S2 version of this part for another post.
quote:Originally posted by Narnia: but I'm also very stubborn and can't stand the thought of such a detailed journey being his hallucination or made up story.
I don't think one bit of it was made up. I think this it was the way he chose to see it, the story that was true for him. Each episode really happened, just he transformed it in his mind into a form in which its true being showed more clearly. "That's what fiction is about, isn't it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence?"
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
I re-listened to most of the book. Some interesting points I didn't bring up before:
He describes the dream-rag, that he moistened and put over his face to induce hallucinations. I think this was an explanation for the green island, and he leaves the island when he realizes that remaining too long in the dream will lead to his death.
The blindness and conversation with the frenchman happen after he fails to catch a turtle.
The zebra is already in the boat in Pi's first description of his debarkation. Re-reading the beginning, he is already considering himself to be Richard Parker, but also he is the chef because:
In the animal behavior chapters it discusses how an Omega animal has the most to gain from being adopted by the Alpha animal.
I think the Animal story was the Hindu story. I don't really know enough about Hinduism to speculate further, except that Hindu and the Zoo were the worlds of his upbringing and youth.
A storm damages his raft. Failing to catch the turtle results in a Post-Traumatic episode that brings on the encounter with the chef (whom he confuses as Richard Parker) which is a Christian story- bloody, horrible, and infused with the struggle against Evil (remember the refrigerator with the lamb carcass in it.) Also, the Frenchman had nothing to offer but a single boot, which is a touchstone to the boot Pi used for bait in his first fishing attempt.
He recovers from this, their ultimate hope of a boat is sighted but passes them by (nearly runs him over). Through the dream-rag he enters the green island, which he says at the outset of the section is the color of Islam. The structure of the island seems Arabesque as well- their decorations are of that form in order to avoid animistic idolatry. Though I can't tell you why meerkats of all things.
The last story, given to the investigators, is another lens of faith, as he said in a couple of different places that zoology was a form of faith for him- albeit "dry, yeastless factuality". The first pages present this confounding, as done the encounter with Mssrs. Kumar (Not sure if I spelled that right.)
Another interesting thread was that of blindness and the connection of anxiety to his eyesight. When Mr. Kumar is coming to the zoo, he rubs his eyes till he can't see right. He can't remember his mother's face. He goes blind when the memory of the chef emerges (unless it's the other way around.)
I'm less sure of a connection between his descriptions of the first two fish he killed and the two people the chef killed. I think I fell asleep on the discussion of his first turtle kill, but that could have been analogous to himself and the chef.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Wow, that makes sense pooka. I haven't read the book since I started this thread, *checks*, 2 years ago. I'd forgotten all that. I'm grudgingly starting to accept the fact that the second story is the true one. What you said about the dream rag makes a lot of sense. I'll have to reread it now, but I don't think it will be as good now that I know it's all an allegory. Posts: 6415 | Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
I don't like allegory, but I think this is something different.
On the outer level, the level of S, more than any other level, because it's fiction and because the author deliberately left it ambiguous, we are left to choose the story that fits best, the one that rings true to us, the one that is the better story. That's what he wants us to do, what he's showing us how to do, I think. So Narnia, you and BunnV did read the real story. I feel sure that the author would validate that.
I dislike allegory specifically because with allegory the author is leading you by the nose, telling you what you have to think about the events. The author, in allegory, already has all the answers. You're just supposed to decipher them. The story doesn't have its own internal reason for being. It's just a pretty casing for some opinion about the world that the author is presenting as fact. Reading it is not doing anything that matters. It's busy work, like working 20 algebra problems of the same type. Allegory is didactic, and rather patronizing, don't you think?
Reading real fiction is a creative act of generation. It's not just following along and figuring out what the author meant. The stories are telling the truth, and the characters are real people. We recognize them and know them. We make statements like, "Oh he would never have done that!" about them, or "that would not have happened." We think about them and ponder the meanings of what happened. We decide who we like and who we don't like, what the characters should have done and where they made their fatal mistakes. We decide from reading lots of good real fiction all our lives, what sort of people we want to be, and how we want to live our lives. Reading real fiction is doing something that matters.
I think this book is much more real fiction than it is allegorical. First of all, it's very consciously fictional. For instance, when I read about the priest, the imam, and the guru all spotting his family at the same moment in the park, I said to myself "that would never have happened". It was a funny episode, but one out of a farcical comedy. I think the author did this to remind us that it WAS fiction, to foreshadow the end. I still felt cheated, but looking back and seeing the ways he warned us makes me feel less so. The statement at the start that it was a story that would make you believe in God, for instance, was another foreshadowing of what was coming.
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posted
pooka, I like your interpretation of the island, as a dream-rag induced hallucination, a happy place he could get to, but that would kill him in the end. That fits too. Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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