. Spinning .

Nice little twist at the end, something that satisfies a writer's soul. Martel brings up the notion of story, and what is fiction and what is truth as Pi retells his story briefly to a group who interviews him when he is washed up on shore and saved.

By changing the elements of his original tale to eliminate the magical realism of the animals, and an island that eats life, he is more readily believed. However, the tale is not quite so entrancing. The struggle of man against man is dramatic; the struggle of a single man against the natural enemies of beast and sea and sun is more exciting. 

Perhaps this is where Pi's religious faith comes in; the notion of choosing his god by the elements of power, strength, love, or whatever, knowing that the colorful beauty of Hinduism holds its appeal for him. We choose to believe in what can be seen many different ways, by our own needs.

And, spoilers; though I'm sure no one reads my reviews without realizing that I care not a whit for such things, particularly since I'm discussing rather than reviewing, and more in a non-usual manner.

But this: A man-eating island!

Too cute:

Okay, pi.

It is quite likely one of the least controversial of ethical questions: cannibalism. I say least controversial because most people agree that it certainly shouldn't be an accepted practice, and only if forced by threatened survival–and then, only if the eatee is already dead–would some resort to it. Pi has been faced with even this, and he, not surprisingly, succumbs.

How strong is the will to survive that we can overcome all beliefs–including religious–to adapt ourselves to the situation at hand? I just took a couple of tests online about ethics and moral questions focusing on making choices of sacrificing one person for the many (recalling, of course, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas). There was no scoring, no commenting on my answers, yet I was anxious to see how I would have done. My own gut feelings were based on not being willing to trade one life for several, particularly in an ambitious and purposeful manner, though I lessened my standards on those that were not clearly of my own decision but rather as a possibility. My basis for choice was that while I am being told that to not risk the life of one, I am surely allowing the others to die, I don't accept that. But then, I never aced the "assume that" questions on tests either.

One thing I find interesting is that although Pi mentions his gods or his religions, even claims at one point to pray several times a day, and even though he states that his family is never out of his mind, I find that the story conflicts with this. There is likely a purpose to Martel's playing up of the religious aspect in the beginning of the book, but I'm not quite catching it here unless it is to prove that man's own nature sets his own ethical beliefs and values, without the need for a religious influence.

This is nice:

Interesting pattern of both passage of time and changes in character:

In describing his method of killing for food, Pi displays a distinct change from the boy who loved animals, who was in fact a vegetarian to the practical human he has become. What this does bring back to mind is a very early episode in the book where his father, needing to teach his sons that the zoo animals were basically still instinctually wild and therefore dangerous, he feeds a goat to a lion and makes the boys watch.

This would also indicate to me that Martel plans his story out a lot more carefully than it would seem to read.

Interesting to note here that Martel plays with the notion of time in many ways. He has brought in characters that have changed the time frame from present to past, meaning the narrator retelling Pi's story and then Pi's story as it continues. But there's a more subtle yet interesting way that time is being used.

By telling us that Pi's ordeal at sea lasted 227 days (p. 239) and reinforcing that as seven months, Martel can then mention instances out of the timeline, such as when he catches a turtle, or watches the sharks, without needing to bring in any time frame references other than what would be required to imply the presence of the tiger, and Pi's hold on the lifeboat. Though there is a natural continuation of story as the food supply runs out, or earlier, when the hyena, zebra, and orangutan were still alive, aside from that, there is only the ocean, a boat, a raft, a boy, and a tiger.

Clever, and it also serves another purpose, that of reinforcing that one day would be much the same as another at sea when one is drifting without direction. Now what's that tell us about life and time?

Chapter 78 has some fine writing and some nice insight into how our character of Pi has matured in face of the situation of survival.  While the previous chapter got into some fairly gross specifics of what he has come to find palatable for both himself and Richard Parker, it also gave us a good idea of his strategy in taming the tiger so that the two could successfully share this struggle. There is no doubt that Pi's experience as the son of a zookeeper comes in handy here; his knowledge of a wild animal's needs–and for that matter, one which was born into the much different aspects of living in a zoo environment–serve him well. You or I, on the other hand, would've long ago been eaten. But what was interesting is that rather than the animal adjusting to communicate, Pi's superior intellect allows him to accept that communication is more readily achieved on the animal's level.

But here's where there's some deeper digging into the experience:

Pi has told us that he was out at sea for I think, 272 days. He is sixteen years old. Yet he has adapted to being driven not by wants, but by needs, and is grateful and appreciative for what he surely would have scorned in his safer, earlier life. One would think that if 7 months adrift wouldn't leave one hopeless, nothing could. Yet we see this same human hope in times of war, in concentration camps, in prisons, in other times of what looks certain to be either unending strife, or death.

It is, I suppose, the human spirit. One wonders, however, to what length Richard Parker's instincts would have taken him; the same urge to survive, of course, but he has learned that he is better off not eating the last meal on board, Pi himself, as Pi has proven to be of value in providing him his needs.

While there is nothing in particular that I can call awesome in Martel's writing style, the voice and diction of the story is such that the reader does feel comfortable inside the storyworld. There were some very well put sentences, and the structure of the story builds on the adventure even as the situation remains within the conflict of boy versus sea and tiger.

One thing that surpises me is the emphasis that was put on Pi's dedication to religious knowledge, and yet how that has not come into play except for a quick prayer to one of his gods for either blessings or thanks. Pi seems to be quite a level-headed character who is very observant and has all the more realistic instincts for survival rather than relying upon his faith in higher powers. It makes me curious as to why Martel had chosen to dedicate so much space to Pi's quest for religion when he is relying upon his more empiracal knowledge of animals and natural occurrences in his ordeal.

But even as the story appears to drag a bit from the 100-plus-pages of this time adrift on the sea, the writing is well enough executed to hold interest, and the pacing is picked up by minor changes in the situation once we have gotten used to the tiger aboard the boat. Even the reader, it would seem, is more focused on the interaction of the three (boy, tiger and sea) than seeking a resolution via sighting land.

Even as I wonder how a boat, a boy, and a tiger on the high seas can go on for a couple hundred pages, I see Martel filling up paragraphs with lists and details. While it is interesting enough, and does bring a certain sense of Pi's character to the story by his observations, I wonder why I find myself skipping through a bit. Lists are naturally scanned by the mind, looking for recognizable objects or words.

There may be a more likely reason, that of my own failure to link the details to a metaphorical image. Not all authors choose to bring out or clarify their symbolism, but it seems as though Martel does give us some clues:

It is true that adversity and adversaries can give us a reason to to keep fighting, just as love and contentment will do.  So the tiger, Richard Parker, does serve as a force in Pi's survival, even as he threatens it. There is something else the tiger possibly represents, that being the inner fears, distrust, doubts, etc. we all face within ourselves that Pi is facing in this adventure. Up until this journey, he had a pretty stable, loving, and protected place in the world. Between India and Canada, the two grounded worlds, Pi floats on the sea of transition.

For it looks like this is Pi's reality, and it's gone on a long while now and looks (okay, I skimmed ahead) like it's going to go on for most of the rest of the book: a boat, a boy, a tiger, hyena and dead zebra.

Is the fact of the reality (though I've claimed to take whatever is thrown at me as 'real' as the rest of the story) what has made me less anxious? I find myself losing interest, even as the adventure and danger remain. Is this the author's fault; has he dragged the episode on too long? Or is it mine, unwilling to be captivated by action adventure and wanting to dig back into the characters and meaning.

Then again, I may be missing the 'meaning' of the lifeboat and its inhabitants. Shall I assign them all a metaphor?

Well, there's plenty of adventure here, enough to please the most discerning action-seeking reader. But it's also a question of reality–even exaggerated reality–as to this episode in Pi's young life.

As I ended my last post, does it really matter? Fiction is, by definition, blatantly not real, though of course, all words, sentences, story ideas, etc. are based on some experience–even via reading–of the author. Therefore, is something fiction within fiction to be doubted?

Verisimilitude demands a certain continuity of story, meaning that something like Marquez's Remedios the Beauty (100 Years of Solitude) rising up into the sky while folding sheets with the other women shouldn't be. Shouldn't be what? If Remedios isn't real (she isn't; she's a character created by GGM), then what does it mean if she suddenly behaves unrealistically?

I came upon this question early in my literary studies with Octavio Paz's My Life With The Wave. Despite the incredulous students who snickered about a wave being real, and those who insisted it was a metaphor, I took it just as the author handed it to me: the guy had an ocean wave for a girlfriend. It got realer (!) still when she become clingy and demanding and he tried to dump her. But I never doubted that she was indeed a water being, even so far as to wonder how they had sex (c'mon, it's an interesting speculation).

How do we take our magical realism? How necessary is it that we follow some sort of pattern or form when we break that pattern? Can we not, after all, inhabit a fictional world with characters who have three eyes and yet shop at Wal-Mart?

I love it when fantasy is so close to the truth that it is hard to tell the difference. Pi and his family have left India for Canada when their ship sinks and Pi finds himself on a lifeboat alone with a 450-lb. Bengal Tiger named Richard Parker. And a lame zebra, a hyena, and an orangutan named Orange Juice.

But the sinking of the ship is rather oddly mystical; there is no screaming, no running around, no people except for a couple of Chinese crewman who have tossed Pi overboard onto the lifeboat.  Pi, watching the ship disappear beneath the sea, sees no other lifeboats around, yet he is certain that all the others–including his family–are safe and will be amused by his tale of riding an oar he's stuck under the tarp of the boat (he jumped out once he saw the tiger) for several days.  He does not complain of hunger or thirst, but tells the reader (or the author, Martel) about the behavior of the animals both onboard and within their natural habitats.  He believes that the tiger has abandoned ship, and his main worry is the hyena.

It could be real, but is it? Pi is about sixteen when this adventure takes place; a man when he relates the story. What is exaggeration and what is fact?

But then, this is fiction; does it matter?

Just realizing now that the italicized chapters are those of author intrusion; Martel perhaps, as narrator, rightly in the future, looking back at his first meetings with the character, Pi.

Maybe close reading is not close enough, or too close to see.

Martel's use of this in what I am now considering to be a work of fiction, despite the opening Author's Notes, is likely to keep the reader in close proximity to the story–by keeping him close to the storyteller. This is effective (I'm sure, though I'd missed the whole point up till now) in perhaps building the dramatic effect of the story by ensuring that there is a future for the character, and tying together the boy of the story to the man of the author's chapters.

Not that I would take a novelist's opinion on religion any more as fact than I do some movie star's slant on politics, when there is a seed of thought to ponder, a different perspective, it's always an added bonus to a story:

Pi has just embraced the Muslim religion–in addition to the pull of Christianity and his own beloved Hindu. His curiosity has led him into further study and practice and he seems to find something of value in each. What he has also thought about is the importance of the moral sense, which he feels is more important to seek and follow than an intellectual understanding of things, and this is what brought him to the statement quoted above.

Martel interjects a different timeline, one that is future to the story of Pi's childhood and teenage years. In there he has considered the words of a friend who gave him the phrase "dry, yeastless, factuality,"

It's a wonderful phrase and yet I wonder if it depicts accurately a philosophy; I would think that facts, though perhaps lacking imagination once they've been established, instead are truly based and dependent upon man's imagination to discover them. "Yeastless" would indicate inability to grow, and yet many of the "dryest" facts are mere building blocks of creativity that continues outward. Otherwise, the wheel would not have bred the car.