Life Of Pi
Mar 11, 2010
NEWS Product Description
for use in schools and libraries ONLY. Having Encyclopedia-like intelligence, unusual for Zookeeper’s son Pi Patel sets off for America. When the ship sinks, escaped in a boat and lives lost at sea, with a decrease in the number of animals until only he and a hungry Bengal tiger remain. NEWS Amazon. com imaginative and unforgettable
Yann Martel Life of Pi is a magical reading experience, an endless blue area of the story of adventure, survival. . . More info>>
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Categories: Health Book | Tagged: Amazon, Animals, Bengal Tiger, Encyclopedia, Intelligence, Libraries, Life, Life Of Pi, Pi Patel, Product Description, Reading Experience, Survival, Tiger, Yann Martel, Yann Martel Life Of Pi |
Steve Koss
March 11th, 2010 at 12:19 pm #
With over 1250 comments already entered for Life of Pi, I first thought it might be nothing more to say about this wonderful novel. But after scanning the 100 most recent comments, I began to wonder what book many of those reviewers had read. I counted about 98 of these comments, I expect very different from the book I really read.
Let me begin with what LIFE OF PI is not. There is one man against Nature survival story. There is a history of zoos or wildlife or livestock. It is not Robinson Crusoe or Swiss Family Robinson. It is a literary version of CASTAWAY or Open Water, and is a triumph of all odds, we have much better “rescue story. To describe it as such, would be classified as Old Man and the Sea as a story About a poor fisherman or MOBY DICK as a maritime history. Or the trial as a theater, the plague as a history of the epidemic, Heart of Darkness as a story about slavery, or farming as a adventure animal.
Martel thread of history is already known: a young boy of fifteen, the son of a Zookeeper at Pondicherry, India survives a shipwreck off several days in Manila. This is the only survivor of the man, but the boat is occupied by a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, an injured zebra, a hyena, an orang-utan. relatively short order and Darwinian fashion True, their number has decreased to only two: the boy Piscene Molitor Patel and the tiger, Richard Parker. With the power of the ratio of the zoo and accidentally placed canvas, Pi (as it is called) manages to create its own domain the lifeboat and even gains alpha dominance by Richard Parker. At various points in 227 days of testing, Pi and the tiger fail to be rescued from an oil tanker, the encounter with another survivor shipwreck, and discover an extraordinary algae island before finally reaching safety.
When Pi recounts history with two representatives from the Japanese Ministry of Transport seeking the cause of the sinking of express a deep distrust, thereby providing a history, second more mundane but believable, which is parallel to the first. They may choose to believe that the more fantastic than the first appearance of irrationality (Pi is, after all, a number irrational) and necessary leap of faith, may accept or the second, more reasonable version, rely more heavily on our everyday experiences.
LIFE OF PI is an allegory, the symbolic expression of a deeper meaning through a story played by humans, animals, and in this case, even plant life. Yann Martel has created a marvelous tales involving zoology and botany, religious experience, skills and survival of the oceans to explore the meaning of stories in our lives, whether inspired by religion to explain the purpose of life or his own soul as a means to understand and interpret the world around us.
Martel employs a number of religious themes and devices to introduce religion as one of the main filters of mankind to interpret. Pi and the reality adoption Active participation in Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and established in May as a character relevant to its history through the prism of three major world religions. Prayer and religious references abound, and the adventure of what brings to mind scenes from the Old Testament as the Garden of Eden, Daniel and the lion’s den, his own work, and even Jonah and the whale. Accept Pi story of survival, as amended, any element evidence is a little different than accepting New Testament stories about Jesus. are matters of faith, not empiricism.
Ultimately, however, LIFE OF PI has a broader vision. All people are storytellers, casting their experiences and even their own life events in story form. Martel message that all humans use stories to address the reality that surrounds them stories of history as they explain their actions and attitudes of family and friends. I’ve never been able to deal with the chaotic flow of events of everyday life are not stories to help us categorize and compartmentalize the . But everyone can choose their own stories for us to do – some based on faith and religion, some based on empiricism and science. The approach we choose dictates our interpretation of the world around us.
LIFE OF PI bears some resemblance to the movie BIG FISH, also a story about how the story and we understand and rationalize our lives through tales both mundane and height. Martel paper is structured as a story in a narrative of a story, planned and executed precisely 100 chapters as a mathematical counterpoint to the infinite value non-repetitive and irrational pi. The book is by turns poignant and funny, deeply rational and scientific, but wild mystical and improbable. It is also very funny and very readable, flowing like water in which Pi floats. Anyone literature as a vehicle for the possibility of the human condition should find in the Life of PI a delicious treat.
D. Cloyce Smith
March 11th, 2010 at 2:37 pm #
This work of fiction has two distinct aspects, from May to be appreciated for its own reasons. On the one hand, is a story about a sinister story of shipwreck survivor teens. On the other hand, is a fable with overt religious tones and message.
And if a story! A young boy trapped in a lifeboat with the oddest assortment of castaways in literary history: a zebra, hyena, orang-utan and a Bengal tiger. The result is a pleasant, lively, almost credible, often gruesome romp, in a simple (but never pedestrian) writing style equal to the best “young adult” fiction available today. The first section introduces Pi living in India, with the zoo, maintenance of the family. Part horror story, part myth, most of the book recounts (MIS) maritime adventure. It’s the final pages that throw readers for a loop, as the story steers from magic realism in a postmodern final where Martel is trying to finish the point.
If the plot is to remind readers of “The Old Man and the Sea,” “Lord of the Flies,” “Robinson Crusoe” and even “Gulliver’s Travels”, the basic theme of the book, unfortunately, flirts with the “feel good” New Age banality of “Jonathan Livingston Seagull.” Some readers may find the ideas worthy of possibility, but I suspect an equal number will realize that the message Martel decomposes after careful consideration. These errors are worth discussion, but I would avoid the disclosure of the surprises of the plot.
Some elements of metaphysical books for the challenge, especially when Martel approaches the subject with a sense of humor. But the basic argument is fairly commonplace, and the author faces when he offers an alternative explanation for the experience of pi – a story that is cynical and hard and far more realistic – and then challenges the reader to choose: “the best history, history of animals” or “History will confirm what we already know. Big Martel Message: Faith in God is belief in a history of “better” atheism becomes the story you already know, and agnosticism is refusing to choose.
The most obvious defect in this reasoning is that Martel has created a false dichotomy: believers can choose among hundreds of “possible” stories for each narrative – not just two. The second problem is pure chutzpah: the “god” of this story is the author, not God, and people are very creation. There is no way around the fact that Martel, in fact, compares belief in fiction to belief in God. In addition, if we thought each story because it was better and more beautiful, many of us still “I” Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, or Zeus and Hera, or Alice and the Mad Hatter. A third related issue: since the author invents history, is able to manipulate the reader. One Another author / god writing this book could easily turn the tables, the book ends with the commitment of Pi at the asylum, unable to take care of itself and the history of useless talk to the guards. What is “better story” then;
This gives the novel greater fault: Martel never convinces the reader why it is important to select all . The book is less a memorial to the faith in God that the denunciation of agnosticism. In press conferences, for example, Martel exposes his own prejudices, referring to agnostics as “doubters” or “undecided”, and more respect for atheists. Pi also supports the novel, “To choose doubt as a philosophy Life is like choosing immobility as a means of transportation.” However, this shift makes sense: it must always be in motion or even committed to a single mode. If life has hundreds of possible stories, why you should choose one (or little) to the exclusion of all others? Or, as an agnostic would ask, why not keep an open mind and not close-minded; Fri
this, the reader finds Martel philosophical ramblings unappealing or incoherent or unsatisfying or shallow (or all the above) can still sit and enjoy the story. For all the theological misfires, “Life of Pi” might yet join a tradition of works (such as “The Chronicles of Narnia” or “The Fountainhead”), which have their own value, regardless of what you do matters underlying.
A Reader
March 11th, 2010 at 3:33 pm #
I passed this book up perhaps dozens of times in the library, before going finally. From the description on the back of the dust jacket, just do not seem to be a story that would interest me. In addition, many critical passages of the book – essentially praising the author for a book with such an alternative history in a great novel – seemed a bit like damning praise lightly.
It turns out that was half right. I did not like the story too. Well, actually, I really like the first hundred pages each, which took place on land and described our protagonist; New Indian son-of-a-zookeepper. But I found the story and then held at sea to be a bit too slow to the rhythm of my tastes. And some of The Gore – in particular the detailed examination of the different cuts of fish and marine animals – is too repetitive and, well, gross.
However, it appears that the story of a boy in a boat with a tiger is not really what the novel is “on” at all. Instead, it uses a new shading to ask a simple question: We need stories and fables to believe in God (Spoilers follow.)
On end of the novel, we face issues that are clearly still on the limits of faith. How can we believe in God when a wonderful way, vegan, pious boy tragedy not stand for good reasons, how the child may continue to believe in God when they witness, first hand, that human nature will lead more severe as 4 castaways on a life boat essentially turn into animals in less than 24 hours. How can we believe in God so powerless that his mother is brutally murdered for no obvious reason, and how can we believe in God when extraordinary measures to make this boy, soft piles murderer himself can be found God, this novel asks, only the “dry yeastless, factuality” of this world every day, where God seems to deny intevene;
The answer, Boy decides it as we can. We need the stories, myths. Then the boy is weaving a network to say, “you will believe in God” – a phrase which seems full of hope and faith in the first chapter of the book, but soaked in irony in the last chapter.
It is interesting to read other Amazon reviews – many of which are simply excellent. But it seems that many of you away from this story a sense of spirituality and view it as a faith affirming book. I beg to differ with respect. In fact, it is a book that is very pessimistic about the faith and legends that different religions use to help themselves think. Not that it completely dark faith? Pi tells us to ignore or to challenge the myths and doubts about the existence of God “is to miss the better story, and live a life that, at least in the view of IT is barely worth living. (Pi and practice what he preaches – actively observing multiple faiths even years after the horrible experience.) However, the final message – “the story with animals is better,” and “go with God is in some ways, heartbreaking, and hardly faith confirmation.
In addition, a novel that makes you think such things are hard to criticize merely because its findings could be somewhat pessimistic. And if you are affected by the type of account that wishes to continue to ruminate about the books after giving birth, it does not disappoint.
Or maybe just a book about a boy and a tiger in a boat, in which case it is probably worth reading. (Insert smiley.)
Douglas Jenkins
March 11th, 2010 at 5:44 pm #
This is the best novel I’ve read in years. It is very refreshing. In this novel there is a hint of cynicism or pessimism. It is terrible and frightening, and remains optimistic for the most moving. The only place where I sometimes inflated that Mr. Martel has been described in previous reports through books (and I write this with a smile on my face) is when history shows that “makes you believe in God . Do not worry, you will not corrupt organized religion, be it Hinduism, Islam or Christianity and try again. But perhaps the key to thrilling effect that this magnificent and daunting task is that it is rare (even unique!) Underlying spirituality. This is a book of symbols, you think first is fairly simple, slow growth (like an avalanche) in the complex. But if history is to be clear to a shocking moment, all together, the symbols were simpler and more understandable (in a more realistic) than you’ve ever imagined. I was fascinated by this book and could not put down.
Beau Thurnauer
March 11th, 2010 at 8:09 pm #
If you read or browse the bookstores will often find that appear to have a limited number of plots and a finite number of characters. The names and cities change but the stories of mixed genres together. There are writers who are more skilled at word flow than others and are more comfortable with their style, but there is a similarity that makes reading even the best volumes mundane.
joyous occasion you will discover a book like Martel’s Life of Pi is a story like no other. There is a plot unique, challenging and inspiring; The main character is a person so important and so essential to life and an author who writes with such ease and comfort than you think to discuss with you in your living room around a coffee.
main character Piscine [Pi] is stranded in a life raft with a tiger after a shipwreck. Do not let trviality clear from this plot brief overview of your discouragement. Only a writer of imagination and engineering Martel could make this work. It works very well. Read this book with an open mind as Martel details, pain, thoughts, feelings, emotional release and, in particular, its relationship with the tiger. Try hard to understand what Mr. Martel is really talking and dare to think how to react to situations presented after 200 days at sea for a total of 26 feet.
For every 20 books I read, I will be praying is like that. It is one of the few books I read that I think I could read again.