. Spinning .

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?