Review of Life of Pi
Submitted by mediumgeek on Thu, 09/03/2006 - 21:14
The first part of the book describes Pi's years growing up as the son of a zoo owner and there are many descriptions about animal behavior in this part. I got the feeling I was watching an "Animal Planet" documentary, something which almost made me give up on the book. The most interesting thing in the first part of the book was its humorous take on Pi's adventures with religion. Pi wasn't able to choose just one religion to follow, so he got involved with three different ones, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism.
In part two of the book, we finally get to the part where Pi is on the boat together with Richard Parker. Unfortunately, that part doesn't manage to stay particularly exciting either. The story is rather long winded and dry. It wasn't until the end when I got blown away with a brilliant ending. It managed to partially save the weaker parts of the story by hooking the ending into the entire story and finally some of the long winded passages had a purpose..
To sum up, the story was weak and didn't really manage to engage me. It had some cute moments, such as when Pi meets all the three religious people that believed Pi was a follower of their religion at the same time. The big picture was however quite smart and in the hands of an talented author it could have been a masterpiece. I can still recommend it, for its ending alone. The book for example would make an excellent bookclub discussion.
========= SPOILERS =====================
========= SPOILERS =====================
========= SPOILERS =====================
The fact that Pi survives the 227 days together with Richard Parker the tiger, is no surprise. That is unfortunately obvious from the beginning of the book. When Pi finally reaches land, the tiger runs away, and he is saved by local people. A committee from the shipping company is sent to interrogate Pi, and they refuse to believe Pi's story. Pi gives them another, more brutal story which replaces the animals on the boat with his family and some people from the ship. The reader is left wondering which story is true and whether the entire animal lifeboat story was just made up in Pi's delusional mind.
I myself decided that it wasn't that important to choose which ending was the correct one. I felt that it was telling me more important things than that. That we sometimes need to spice up things, give ourselves hope and meaning to stay alive during difficult times. So what if there was really no tiger on the boat? If imagining one keeps you going in gathering food and keeping you alive, what is the harm in that?
Towards the end of the book Pi had actually found an uninhabited island that he could have stayed on. It would have made more sense to stay there than heading out to open sea again without knowing if he would ever reach land. Pi "finds out" that the island is actually man-eating island and decides to leave. To make decisions that really make no sense we need to convince ourselves most of all that we are making the right decision. Humans are quite good at that, and this is nothing other than an exaggerated case of which lies humans can tell themselves to convince them of something.
I felt the book was telling me that maybe believing in something that isn't always logical, like religion, isn't always that bad? We sometimes need to ease the pain of difficult situations or something to excuse our non logical behavior. We sometimes need a little bit of faith to keep on going. This really clashes with everything that I believe. To be more specific, that we shouldn't believe blindly. I can however admit that if your faith or belief doesn't hurt anyone else then maybe it is all right in certain situations...
There is a chance I was just bored of the book and was desperately looking for a deeper meaning in it. I however have to admit that I truly liked the ending and find it extremely sad that this clever little story was written in such a weak way.
Life of Pi by Yann Martel is about a Indian boy who grows up in a family that owns a zoo. When Pi is 16 years old, his family decides to sell the zoo and move to Canada. While transporting some of the animals with them to sell, the big freighter that they are on is shipwrecked. Pi finds himself on a lifeboat accompanied by an orangutan, a zebra, a hyena, and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. Pi gets to spend 227 days on the boat with Richard Parker, and a big part of the book is about his attempts to survive together with a huge tiger at sea.
![](http://www.mediumgeek.com/images/blog/life_of_pi.jpg")
The first part of the book describes Pi's years growing up as the son of a zoo owner and there are many descriptions about animal behavior in this part. I got the feeling I was watching an "Animal Planet" documentary, something which almost made me give up on the book. The most interesting thing in the first part of the book was its humorous take on Pi's adventures with religion. Pi wasn't able to choose just one religion to follow, so he got involved with three different ones, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism.
In part two of the book, we finally get to the part where Pi is on the boat together with Richard Parker. Unfortunately, that part doesn't manage to stay particularly exciting either. The story is rather long winded and dry. It wasn't until the end when I got blown away with a brilliant ending. It managed to partially save the weaker parts of the story by hooking the ending into the entire story and finally some of the long winded passages had a purpose..
To sum up, the story was weak and didn't really manage to engage me. It had some cute moments, such as when Pi meets all the three religious people that believed Pi was a follower of their religion at the same time. The big picture was however quite smart and in the hands of an talented author it could have been a masterpiece. I can still recommend it, for its ending alone. The book for example would make an excellent bookclub discussion.
========= SPOILERS =====================
========= SPOILERS =====================
========= SPOILERS =====================
The fact that Pi survives the 227 days together with Richard Parker the tiger, is no surprise. That is unfortunately obvious from the beginning of the book. When Pi finally reaches land, the tiger runs away, and he is saved by local people. A committee from the shipping company is sent to interrogate Pi, and they refuse to believe Pi's story. Pi gives them another, more brutal story which replaces the animals on the boat with his family and some people from the ship. The reader is left wondering which story is true and whether the entire animal lifeboat story was just made up in Pi's delusional mind.
I myself decided that it wasn't that important to choose which ending was the correct one. I felt that it was telling me more important things than that. That we sometimes need to spice up things, give ourselves hope and meaning to stay alive during difficult times. So what if there was really no tiger on the boat? If imagining one keeps you going in gathering food and keeping you alive, what is the harm in that?
Towards the end of the book Pi had actually found an uninhabited island that he could have stayed on. It would have made more sense to stay there than heading out to open sea again without knowing if he would ever reach land. Pi "finds out" that the island is actually man-eating island and decides to leave. To make decisions that really make no sense we need to convince ourselves most of all that we are making the right decision. Humans are quite good at that, and this is nothing other than an exaggerated case of which lies humans can tell themselves to convince them of something.
I felt the book was telling me that maybe believing in something that isn't always logical, like religion, isn't always that bad? We sometimes need to ease the pain of difficult situations or something to excuse our non logical behavior. We sometimes need a little bit of faith to keep on going. This really clashes with everything that I believe. To be more specific, that we shouldn't believe blindly. I can however admit that if your faith or belief doesn't hurt anyone else then maybe it is all right in certain situations...
There is a chance I was just bored of the book and was desperately looking for a deeper meaning in it. I however have to admit that I truly liked the ending and find it extremely sad that this clever little story was written in such a weak way.
Bad religion...
The bad part of religion is not that people believe in GOD, it's that they stop thinking, listen to the "priests" of that religion and try to try to talk other people, that there religion is the RIGHT one.
It's like if you where sitting in the boat together with and Pi was trying to talk you into that there is a tiger but all the time you see his uncle. Then when you refuse to see the tiger, he gets violent and tries to kill you because you wouldn't listen to his rants and rave how you would go to a "hell" when you die because you wouldn't believe in his tiger. That's what’s wrong with religion, believing in “priests†that get there message from GOD when all they do is trying to use you and trying to talk other people into your religion, a personal religion, what ever you believe in is fine.
Agree
I agree completely!
But if Pi is alone on the boat then what is the problem in him believing there is a tiger there? As long as there is no uncle there, of course. Yes, believing in something isn't the problem, the problem arises when you believe in it blindly and it starts affecting others around you negatively.