Anyone reading Life of Pi?

[lorijds]

I just finished reading this for a local-on-line book discussion. My dh isn't going to read it, he doesn't have time, with school starting soon.

Anyone care to discuss it?

Which story is real? The one with the tiger, or Pi *as* the tiger? Is the story one big metaphor for religion? In the back of my book, it has some discussion questions. Some I don't care about, but one makes comment on the colors of religion--green for Islam, orange for Hinduism, what was Christianity?

What the heck was the island? Was that just an illusion? Or even more, what did it symbolize? The island was healthy and lifegiving during the day, but at night is was carnivorous and deadly.

Thoughts?

Lori

[IdentityCrisisMama]

Gotta run but I loved the book and will be back...Oh, the island --- freaky, I forgot about that! Fun...

[Glittergal]

Ugh! I just finished this book and was blown away by the ending!

It totally confused me, got me thinking and really made me wish I had someone to discuss it with. I guess I didn't pay attention to the questions at the end (I borrowed the book so don't have it to look at). My biggest question was, was it a real? I was so convinved it was throughout the book, especially with the authors note in the beginning.

When he told the other story, where the animals were the people, I just felt sad and thought it made more sense.
I'm not really answering your questions, am i? it was the first book in awhile that really made me think at the end.

anyone else have any thoughts on the book?

[rainsmom]

I just started it.......so Ill check back in a few days when Ive finished to discuss......

[lorijds]

But how much of it is just symbolic of our ideas of religion?

He told the shipping people the story they could believe, because they simply could not believe the other story. They admitted it was plausable, but it was utterly unbelievable. But my question is, did he make up the story completely for the shipping fellows? Or is it the "real" story? Is the other story, the one with the animals, the one that more conveys how he felt, but maybe isn't necessarily what actually happened? Does that make sense? That the animals are in there, because they represent the feelings and emotions and insanity and basicness of the situation more than mere humans would? Or were the actual physical animals really there? And does it matter?

What does this say about our own beliefs, our own spiritual beliefs? We close our minds to what we simply cannot believe, no matter how hard we want to. We choose to believe the stories (ie religion) that sounds most likely to us. This is why I am an athiest. I simply *cannot* believe in any type of diety. I have stumbled across a couple religions that I have desperately *wanted* to believe; but I just *can't*. I really really wish that I could. So, am I like the guys from the shipping company? Or am I like Pi, believing what I experience without questioning whether it is reality or not, simply believing and rejoicing in it? I would rather be like Pi, but I suspect I'm more like the japanese guys from the shipping company, simply too spiritually immature to believe in something I can't work my mind around.

Any thoughts? Has anyone else interpreted it in a similar manner; or better yet, has anyone else gotten something completely different out of it?

Lori

[TranscendentalMom]

I read it last summer so its been awhile...I LOVED the book. Not so much for the story but how it made me think. After I closed it, I had the experience of wanting to believe that the animals story was real. I actually tried to trick my mind into believing it because it bothered me so much. So for me, it felt like the author had forced me to experience my mind trying to believe something it wanted to, yet being haunted by what I knew was the truth...the other story. So maybe it is challenging religious beliefs. Is that why he says in the beginning that the story will make you believe in God? To set you up? What was point of the part of the story where he practised Hinduism, Christianity and Islam simultaneously?

I still can't figure out what the island was about...and everyone I've asked scratches their head on that one.....maybe that's the point....some things happen randomly and yet we try to quantify and derive meaning from them when they simply have no point.

On a side note...Lori, I'm sure you've thought about this already but I can't help but to say that just because you haven't found a religion you can believe in doesn't mean you are an atheist. I think many atheist people are really true spritual people underneath as they have the guts to look at life so honestly...and end up more awakened than those you think they already are. Personally, I don't know if I believe in a diety as in a God with personal characteristics...but I definitely believe in some kind of "organizing force" or "being" that created the universe and continues to live in us. For me, its like looking at a beautiful work of art and assuming that there must have been an artist who painted it...it seems impossible that something so beautiful and precise could have formed by random paint spilling on a canvas. Just my thoughts....

[LiamnEmma]

I just finished it today, and I was blown away by the alternate story and then even more so by the abrupt finish immediately following. I expected some kind of...hmmm...debriefing--some comment on which story was the truth. But that would take away from the whole point, wouldn't it?

In relation to his practice of the three religions, I spent most of the book likening the three religions to the animals in the boat...I didn't really assign any one animal to any religion necessarily. Well, maybe I assigned Catholicism to the tiger just because I believe that Christianity in general as an organization (including Protestantism in the organization, not just Catholicism) has been so aggressive in increasing the believers throughout the world by infiltrating areas where it has not previously been (plus, I just finished The DaVinci Code immediately before Pi, :LOL)...and ultimately Pi, with his own belief system(s), was victorious, rather than any one of the belief systems taking over in place of another in his mind...

I haven't had much time to really process it yet so these are my immediate reactions to it. I think that it's easier for us generally to understand animalistic instinct when we relate it to nonhuman animals rather than other types of animals and we take the information without question or judgement...Richard Parker was simply doing what his brain told him to do, without malicious intent...but when we assign a person to Richard Parker, our brains move into cognitive dissonance and we're unable to stomach it all. Very crafty of the author in my opinion. When we hear the second story, we breathe out forcibly and our brains slam shut with the brutality of it all. How could a person throw a mother's severed head at her child?!?! What kind of animal would do this? aha

Great book. Wonderfully written. I could taste the salt.

[zealsmom]

I read this during our most recent trip to India. Ugh! I was soooo annoyed by the ending. Mostly because I think I believe that what really happened is his alternate story at the end and so I felt taken for a ride. And geez, I get that you are in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. My goodness, didn't it feel like it was just dragging on to you all?

I think my reaction to this book is due in part to two different people telling my I 'needed' to read it and that it had "changed (their) life!" Tough stuff to live up to, I guess.

[L.J.]

I loved the book and hated the ending too.

I felt let down & disappointed. I felt like him changing the story at the end was compromising himself. Maybe I just couldn't accept the fact that there really were no animals and that it was humans all along. I still like to think that it was the animals with him along for the ride.

As for the island, I'm still unsure what all that was about. I may have to re-read it again & look for more symbolism or look at it from a new perspective.