Skip to main content

Life of Pi


BOOK REVIEW

"Every page offers you something of tension, humanity,surprise, or even ecstasy"

4.5/5

If you are interested in philosophy or psychology or disaster management, Life of Pi is a must read for you. After all who won't be interested in reading the account of a teenager trapped in a life-boat with a Royal Bengal Tiger, well to be more accurate, a Royal Bengal Tiger, a zebra, an orangutan and a spotted hyena and survived the Pacific for 227 days before finding land.

Story of Pi Patel starts on a light note with laden with comic description of how he was named and how he followed 3 different religions but at the same time several important philosophies are presented by the author, veiled in humor.  Author, Yann Martel, has discussed the subtleties of human psychology by comparing it with animal behaviour. Through the midway book become more pessimistic and has been reviewed as over-descriptive and dull by many but I found those description quite convincing and interesting as he describes the tumultuous events generating a series of emotion. It very aptly describes the battle of with despair. How a man who has accepted his death struggles to survive.

However my special liking for the novel can attributed to resemblance in our writing style where an account of an event is used to profess a philosophy. Martel has relied on reader's mind rather than his vocabulary and thus instead of being expressive he has used a simple vocabulary that can trigger imagination which makes Life of Pi an easy and interesting read.

"All's well, that ends well." The proverb has been wonderfully employed in the novel as it offers three different climaxes for three different sets of people. One for a theist , other for an atheist and agnostics are left to be with their perennial doubts.  The final philosophy of the book is worth mentioning there are certain things that you can't find out. Moreover, whether they are true or false have no implications on how things are in your life. For example : Some one tells you an experience that is outlandish, you have three options trust him, deny him or stay forever in doubt. No your choice can't make difference to the truth but if you trust him you life is more interesting as you have met a person with such an interesting experience. Same is with god, you belief makes no difference but it allows you to speculate more possibilities and mysteries to you life.

Altogether, Life of Pi is an amazing read but it demands some imagination and introspection on reader's part.  



  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Diary of a Workaholic

"Yeah! you are the busy guy", this taunt has somehow become integral part of my life. I hear it all the time,  times when I forget to call my mom for weeks and friends for months or when I fail to receive their calls, or when I have to break my way out of an ongoing conversation,every time it emanates from a different source I feel the predicament of whether to consider it as an accusation or take it as a compliment (I hate sarcasm as most of the times I fail to get the intended meaning so I take the meaning that suits me, so for all those who think I am busy, Thanks :P), and I don't blame them as I have clearly failed to keep my work out of my life. The realization is intimidating, yes, I am a workaholic.The one who can't just shake off his responsibilities. The one who takes his jobs to his bed, dreams about it and then wakes up again with the thoughts of the same. Yes, I am one of those who goes through all the perils to get things don...
4 comments
Read more

Array of Chaos Part 3: GOD

There are few moments in life you always despise, the moments when you can’t interpret your own thoughts, you can’t identify with yourself. This article is written in one of such weak moments, since these moments are characterised by the fuzziness of thoughts which offer no such underlying relations, thus the article lacks a unifying theme in itself and is more of a realisation of various unrelated emotions. This is the third part of an article which has been trisected. #GOD Is there a God? Again a paradox, sometimes I wonder whether everything is ambiguous in life or is there definitive reality. Even this can lead to a debate of illusion and reality. May be this is the reason I m so fascinated by life there are several questions which appear so simple but everyone has his own answers , all those answers are correct. You don’t have to follow a set of defined procedure to reach the solution; life on the other hand gives opportunities to explore your own solution which is d...
3 comments
Read more

The Namesake: A Critical Review

"The reader should realize himself that it could not have happened otherwise and that to give him any other name was quite out of the question." – Nikolai Gogol, "The Overcoat My copying of the epigraph is to revere the literary precision that Jhumpa Lahiri has maintained throughout “The Namesake”. “The Namesake” is a story of dreams, despairs, diversions and disillusionment. It is the story of a generation which tries to cling to their traditions in their newly found abode and of a generation which is trying to free themselves from the same traditions being imposed upon them. It is the story of the angst of the Bengali immigrants in a foreign land and the conundrum of ABCD (American Born Conflicted Deshi’s) on being exposed to two contrasting cultures of East and West.  “But she has gathered that Americans, in spite of their public declarations of affection, in spite of their miniskirts and bikinis, in spite of their...
Post a Comment
Read more