My Life with Pi

I was not thrilled at first with the concept of reading a book that has a tiger on the cover, and talks about the number pi. Learning to not judge a book by its cover seems to apply to my situations right about now. At first I did not care for the book, or the characters. Calling this book a great work of science was like calling a journal entry about at Star Wars convention a great work of science: it was mentioned in the background, and it had occasional trace elements, but really it seemed like an over generalization that appeared to be the closest related category. However, as the class expounded and as we talked together, wrote together, prepared together and visualized together, the quality of this book began to be seen by me. It began to grow and become a great book, which deserves to be talked about more.

Critical Analysis

Yann Martel was able to create a house (a story) with many well placed bricks (sentences), paintings (imagery) and lighting (character development and emotion). Picking just one example of any of these categories would not do the book or Mr. Martel as an author justice; but attempt it I shall. On page 95, at the very beginning of the chapter, there is a sentence that reads “It made a sound like a monstrous metallic burp.” Last I checked, ships don’t burp, but the way it was phrased humanizes the ship as well as the ocean and the situation. Simply stating that “it made a loud noise” wouldn’t really cause much thought or be viewed as a well thought out sentence. But by simply giving that ship the human quality of burping, the sentence – and the situation – come to life.

“The sea briefly imitated every land and feature – every hill, every valley, very plain.” (108) and “Precisely where I wanted to be most still – my legs – was where I trembled most.” (106) are sentence variations that we have learned about in class. The first sentence emphasizes every feature as it names them after the hyphen; the second sentence uses hyphens to emphasize legs. Had it been emphasized by parenthesis or commas, the effect wouldn’t have been so drastic. While this story could have survived without these hyphens and repetitions of the word “every”, they certainly help had variation to the story, and the emphasis of what is going on in young Pi’s life. Describing the situation of handling a capsizing boat while simultaneously dealing with a tiger on your life boat is made more visible by the varying sentences that Yann Martel uses.

The imagery used on page 122 and 123 is very vivid and easy to imagine, whether or not you wish to. It becomes all too real when one properly reads the description of the colors, the situations, the movements, the innards. It is a very powerful paragraph in creating imagery. I will probably never see a hyena eat a zebra alive from the inside, but with Yann Martel's words, I will never need to; my mind has seen it already.

It is hard to find any example of the development of a character or one sentence that shows an emotional connection. If there was a chapter that captured this all, it would be chapter 61. The situation of needing food, needing to survive, being scared yet assertive, and eventually shocked and grateful are all things we have felt in life, and cause us to connect (even minimally) with Pi. It was in this chapter, that I began to share my emotions with Pi, to be with him in the boat: my life with Pi.