The Complete Letters To Stephen Harper

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

3. The Will to Live; Life of Pi is a story about struggling to survive through seemingly insurmountable odds. The shipwrecked inhabitants of the little lifeboat don’t simply acquiesce to their fate: they actively fight against it. Pi abandons his lifelong vegetarianism and eats fish to sustain himself. Orange Juice, the peaceful orangutan, fights ferociously against the hyena. Even the severely wounded zebra battles to stay alive; his slow, painful struggle vividly illustrates the sheer strength of his life force. As Martel makes clear in his novel, living creatures will often do extraordinary, unexpected, and sometimes heroic things to survive. However, they will also do shameful and barbaric things if pressed. The hyena’s treachery and the blind Frenchman’s turn toward cannibalism show just how far creatures will go when faced with the possibility of extinction. At the end of the novel, when Pi raises the possibility that the fierce tiger, Richard Parker, is actually an aspect of his own personality, and that Pi himself is responsible for some of the horrific events he has narrated, the reader is forced to decide just what kinds of actions are acceptable in a life-or-death situation. The Nature of Religious Belief; Life of Pi begins with an old man in Pondicherry who tells the narrator, "I have a story that will make you believe in God." Storytelling and religious belief are two closely linked ideas in the novel. On a literal level, each of Pi’s three religions, Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam, come with its own set of tales and fables, which are used to spread the teachings and illustrate the beliefs of the faith. Pi enjoys the wealth of stories, but he also senses that, as Father Martin assured him was true of Christianity, each of these stories might simply be aspects of a greater, universal story about love. Stories and religious beliefs are also linked in Life of Pi because Pi asserts that both require faith on the part of the listener or devotee. Surprisingly for such a religious boy, Pi admires atheists. To him, the important thing is to believe in something, and Pi can appreciate an atheist’s ability to believe in the absence of God with no concrete proof of that absence. Pi has nothing but disdain, however, for agnostics, who claim that it is impossible to know either way, and who therefore refrain from making a definitive statement on the question of God. Pi sees this as evidence of a shameful lack of

imagination. To him, agnostics who cannot make a leap of faith in either direction are like listeners who cannot appreciate the non-literal truth a fictional story might provide.

4. I did not like this book at all. The author, Yann Martel, used some Indian terms and didn’t explain what they meant sometimes. For example, in chapter one it says, "I had the great luck one summer of studying the three-toed sloth in situ in the equatorial jungles of Brazil." (page 3). While throughout the book Martel used nice sentence structure, I did not like the structure of the chapters. For me, they weren’t separated enough. Once chapter 1 would end, chapter 2 would start immediately after that. And sometimes the chapters would have nothing to do with the chapter before. chapter 1 is about the three-toed sloth, and chapter 2 is, I’m guessing, a description of "present day" Pi; "He lives in Scarborough. He’s a small, slim man—no more than five foot five. Dark hair, dark eyes. Hair graying at the temples. Can’t be older than forty. Pleasing coffee-coloured complexion. Mild fall weather, yet puts on a big winter parka with fur-lined hood for the walk to the diner. Expressive face. Speaks quietly, hands flitting about. No small talk. He launches forward." (page 9) and that is the complete chapter 2. So overall, the author had a difficult structure to follow and the story line was very slow and that is why I didn’t like this book.

5. Here is a summary of the book in case you didn’t understand it earlier, Life of Pi by Yann Martel is a fantasy adventure story, but with an underlying theme that I never expected. Let me begin with a brief synopsis. This is the story of Piscine Patel, nicknamed Pi, and his misadventures. He is a young teenage Indian boy, son of a zoo owner. Importantly, he is a practicing Hindu, Christian, and Muslim. His experiences growing up with animals, his family, and his faiths are the main topic of the first part. The second part of the book is about his misadventures at sea. His family decides to immigrate to Canada, bringing most of their zoo animals with them to sell in North America. They board a cargo ship, but the ship sinks, and Pi spends a total of 227 days floating in the Pacific Ocean, with a hyena, zebra, orangutan, and a Bengal tiger for company. The first three animals die one by one, but the tiger and Pi survives until they float and reach the Mexican shores. This is the longest and in my opinion, most gruesome part of the book. The final part of the book is an interview between Pi and a couple of Japanese maritime officials. Pi narrates his story of his ordeal at sea with the animals. However, the Japanese officials find his story incredulous and unbelievable, so Pi provides another story, without the animals. The Japanese officials find parallels between the two stories, and later on, Pi asks the officials which story they prefer, to which they respond that they prefer the animal story. Pi ends the conversation with "…and so it goes with God." (page 400)