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149 of 157 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I Once Caught a Bengal Tiger This-s-s-s Big, February 9, 2005
With over 1250 reviews already registered for LIFE OF PI, I first thought there could be nothing more to say about this marvelous novel. But after scanning the most recent 100 reviews, I began to wonder what book many of those reviewers had read. Had I relied on 98 of those reviews, I would have expected a far different book than the one I actually read.
Let's begin with what LIFE OF PI isn't. It's not a Man against Nature survival story. It's not a story about zoos or wild animals or animal husbandry. It's not ROBINSON CRUSOE or SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON. It's not a literary version of CASTAWAY or OPEN WATER, and it's not a "triumph against all odds, happily ever after" rescue story. To classify it as such would be like classifying THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA as a story about a poor fisherman or MOBY DICK as a sea story. Or THE TRIAL as a courtroom drama, THE PLAGUE as a story of an epidemic, HEART OF DARKNESS as a story about slavery, or ANIMAL FARM as an animal adventure.
Martel's story line is already well-known: a fifteen-year-old boy, the son of a zookeeper in Pondicherry, India survives a shipwreck several days out of Manila. He is the lone human survivor, but his lifeboat is occupied by a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, an injured zebra, a hyena, and an orangutan. In relatively short order and true Darwinian fashion, their numbers are reduced to just two: the boy Piscene Molitor Patel, and the tiger, Richard Parker. By dint of his zoo exposure and a fortuitously positioned tarpaulin, Pi (as he is called) manages to establish his own territory on the lifeboat and even gains alpha dominance over Richard Parker. At various points in their 227-day ordeal, Pi and the tiger miss being rescued by an oil tanker, meet up with another shipwreck survivor, and discover an extraordinary algae island before finally reaching safety.
When Pi retells the entire story to two representatives of the Japanese Ministry of Transport searching for the cause of the sinking, they express deep disbelief, so he offers them a second, far more mundane but believable story that parallels the first one. They can choose to believe the more fantastical first one despite its seeming irrationality (Pi is, after all, an irrational number) and its necessary leap of faith, or they can accept the second, far more rational version, more heavily grounded in our everyday experiences.
LIFE OF PI is an allegory, the symbolic expression of a deeper meaning through a tale acted out by humans, animals, and in this case, even plant life. Yann Martel has crafted a magnificently unlikely tale involving zoology and botany, religious experience, and ocean survival skills to explore the meaning of stories in our lives, whether they are inspired by religion to explain the purpose of life or generated by our own psyches as a way to understand and interpret the world around us.
Martel employs a number of religious themes and devices to introduce religion as one of mankind's primary filters for interpreting reality. Pi's active adoption and participation in Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity establish him as a character able to relate his story through the lens of the world's three major religions. Prayer and religious references abound, and his adventures bring to mind such Old Testament scenes as the Garden of Eden, Daniel and the lion's den, the trials of Job, and even Jonah and the whale. Accepting Pi's survival story as true, without supporting evidence, is little different than accepting New Testament stories about Jesus. They are matters of faith, not empiricism.
In the end, however, LIFE OF PI takes a broader view. All people are storytellers, casting their experiences and even their own life events in story form. Martel's message is that all humans use stories to process the reality around them, from the stories that comprise history to those that explain the actions and behaviors of our families and friends. We could never process the chaotic stream of events from everyday life without stories to help us categorize and compartmentalize them. Yet we all choose our own stories to accomplish this - 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 a faint resemblance to the movie BIG FISH, also a story about storytelling and how we understand and rationalize our own lives through tales both mundane and tall. Martel's book is structured as a story within a story within a story, planned and executed in precisely 100 chapters as a mathematical counterpoint to the endlessly irrational and nonrepeating value of pi. The book is alternately harrowing and amusing, deeply rational and scientific but wildly mystical and improbable. It is also hugely entertaining and highly readable, as fluid as the water in which Pi floats. Anyone who enjoys literature as a vehicle for contemplating the human condition should find in LIFE OF PI a delicious treat.
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73 of 79 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Exciting (if gruesome) story in shallow theological waters, September 23, 2003
This work of fiction has two distinct aspects, either of which has the potential to be relished for its own sake. On the one hand, it's a grim adventure story about an adolescent shipwreck survivor. On the other, it's a fable with overt religious overtones and a Message. And what a premise for a story! A young boy trapped on a lifeboat with the oddest assort of castaways in literary history: a zebra, hyena, orangutan, and a Bengal tiger. The result is an enjoyable, brisk, nearly believable, often gruesome romp, in straightforward (but never pedestrian) writing style equal to the best "young adult" fiction available today. The first section introduces Pi living in India with his zoo-keeping family. Part horror story, part fable, the major portion of the book recounts his (mis)adventures at sea. It's the final pages that throw readers for a loop, as the story steers from magic realism to a post-modern finale in which Martel tries to wrap up his point. While the plot will remind readers of "The Old Man and the Sea," "Lord of the Flies," "Robinson Crusoe," and even "Gulliver's Travels," the thematic underpinnings of the book, unfortunately, flirts with the "feel good," New-Age banality of "Jonathan Livingston Seagull." Some readers might find the ideas worth contemplating, but I suspect an equal number will realize that Martel's message disintegrates after serious reflection. These faults deserve discussion, but I will avoid disclosing any of the plot's surprises. Some of the book's metaphysical elements rise to the challenge, especially when Martel approaches the subject with a sense of humor. But the basic argument is rather trite, and the author stumbles when he offers an alternative explanation for Pi's experiences--a story that is cynical and stark and a lot more realistic--and then challenges the reader to choose: the "better story, the story with animals" or "the story that will confirm what you already know." Martel's Big Message: Faith in God is belief in "the better story"; atheism is picking the story you already know, and agnosticism is refusing to choose. The most obvious flaw in this line of reasoning is that Martel has set up a false dichotomy: believers can choose from hundreds of "possible" stories for any narrative--not just two. The second problem is sheer chutzpah: The "god" of this story is the Author, not God, and its world is entirely the Author's Creation. There's no way around the fact that Martel, in effect, compares belief in fiction to belief in God. Furthermore, if we believed in every story because it was better or prettier, many of us would still "believe" in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, or Zeus and Hera, or Alice and the Mad Hatter. A third, related issue: since the author invents the story, he is able to manipulate the reader. Another author/god writing this book could easily turn the tables, ending the book with Pi committed to an asylum, unable to care for himself, and uselessly babbling his story to his caretakers. Which is the "better story" then? And that leads to the novel's biggest failing: Martel never convinces the reader why it's important to choose at all. The book is less a brief for belief in God than a denunciation of agnosticism. In press interviews, for example, Martel exposes his own prejudices, referring to agnostics as "doubters" or "fence-sitters," and that he has greater respect for atheists. Pi argues similarly in the novel, "To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation." Yet this metaphor makes no sense: one doesn't always have to be on the move or even commit to a single mode of transportation. If life presents hundreds of possible stories, why must we choose one (or even a few) to the exclusion of all others? Or, as an agnostic might ask, why not remain open-minded rather than close-minded? Nevertheless, the reader who finds Martel's philosophical ramblings unappealing or incoherent or unsatisfying or shallow (or all of the above) can still sit back and take pleasure in the story. For all its theological misfires, "Life of Pi" might yet join a tradition of works (like, say, "The Chronicles of Narnia" or "The Fountainhead") that stand on their own, regardless of what you might think of their underlying themes.
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118 of 138 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Deserves 6 stars, June 28, 2002
If you read often or browse the bookstores you find that there seem to be a limited number of plot designs and a finite number of characters. The names and cities change but the stories all sort of blend together. There are some authors who are more skilled at word flow than others and seem more comfortable with their style but a similarity exists that makes reading even the best volumes mundane.Then you get the joyful opportunity to discover a book like Martel's Life of Pi. This is a story like no other. There is a plot unique, thought provoking and inspiring; a main character who presents a persona so important and so basic to life and an author who writes with such ease and comfort that you think he is speaking with you in your living room over coffee. Main character Piscine [Pi] is stranded in a life raft with a tiger after a ship wreck. Don't let the seeming trviality of this brief plot review dissuade you. Only an author with the imagination and genius of Martel could make this work. It works so very well. Read this book with an open mind as Martel details his suffering, his thoughts, his feelings, his emotional drain and most importantly his relationship with the tiger. Try hard to understand what Mr. Martel is really talking about and dare to think about how you would react to the situations presented after 200 days at sea in a 26 foot raft. For every 20 books I read I pray one will be like this. It is one of the few books I have ever read that I think I could read again.
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