The Avid Reader (and enjoyer of all subjects)

Is there some tough vocabulary on here?  If your response is yes, please double click that word.  Answers.com will provide the answer for you!

What are Discussion Circles?  Discussion circles are when I put a few questions on here and answer them myself.  If you have read the specified book, you can go along and answer them too, via comment.

——–Discussion for “Life of Pi” by Yann Martel (taken from book)——–

1.  Pi’s full name, Piscine Molitor Patel, was inspired by a Parisian swimming pool that “the gods would have delighted to swim in.”  The shortened form refers to the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, the number 3.1415926…, a number that goes on forever without discernable pattern, what in mathematics is called an irrational number.  Explore the significance of Pi’s unusual name.

THEAVIDREADER:  The number ∏ is special in that it does not repeat or terminate.  Pi Patel has many layers of meaning, unending just like the special number ∏.

2.  One reviewer said that the novel contains hints of The Old Man and the Sea, and Pi himself measures his experience in relation to history’s most famous castaways.  How does Life of Pi compare to other novels and films?

THEAVIDREADER:  There are many types of survival-like stories (like Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet,  Robinson Crusoe’s Daniel Defoe, and Elizabeth George Speare’s Sign of the Beaver.  Of all survival books, however, Life of Pi most resembles The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, in which a man on a boat has to face the merciless sea.  (Yann Martel’s tone in Pi Patel’s adventure even seems like Ernest Hemingway’s tone–short yet descriptive.) Life of Pi is also similar to Call it Courage.

3.  How might the novel’s flavor have changed if the sole surviving animal had been the zebra with the broken leg?  Or Orange Juice?  Or the hyena?  Would Pi have survived with a harmless animal or an ugly animal, say a sheep or a turkey?  Which animal would you like to find yourself with on a lifeboat?

THEAVIDREADER:  With a 450-pound Bengal tiger as Pi Patel’s companion, the story is much more exciting and suspenseful–the reader continuously wants to find out if Pi will survive, or be eaten by the tiger.  Had the hyena and the tiger killed each other and Orange Juice, but not the wounded zebra, Pi would have no fear, could sleep contentedly, and would not have to blow the whistle to train the zebra.  The zebra would also die out soon, because there are almost no plants within reach that the wounded zebra eat, and Pi would be alone.  The same would apply to Orange Juice, who wouldn’t eat Pi.  The hyena would eat what the tiger would eat, but it would still not want to eat Pi himself.  I’d like to find myself with an animal like a beaver or mongoose on a lifeboat.  They are carnivorous, meaning they would have no trouble surviving on fish and turtles, but they won’t eat humans; they can still help me with zookeeping/caring responsibilities; they aren’t animals I don’t see often, meaning that I can spend hours of observation; and they won’t take up a lot of space like bears or wild cats would.

4.  How do Mr. Patel’s zookeeping abilities compare to his parenting skills?  Discuss the scene in which he tries to teach his children a lesson in survival by arranging for them to watch a tiger devour a goat.  Did this in any way prepare Pi for the most dangerous experience of his life?

THEAVIDREADER:  Even though manipulating the death of a goat may sound like a nefarious act, but there were two pros:  (1) the tiger got its food (which is trivial), and (2) Mr. Patel could not have looked into the future and saw his only surviving son on a boat with a tiger as an only companion, but ironically this just prepared Pi for his encounter with Richard Parker.  If Mr. Patel hadn’t showed Pi how dangerous tigers were, Pi would have gone up close and even patted the tiger, whereupon the tiger, finding food, would have killed him easily.

5.  Pi imagines that his brother would have teasingly called him Noah.  How does Pi’s voyage compare to the biblical story of Noah, who was spared from the flood while God washed away the sinners?

THEAVIDREADER:  Aside from Pi, no one in the Patel family in this book was a strong believer in a religion.  God washed away the people who didn’t believe in him, while he saved Pi because Pi was a strong believer. 

6.  Is Life of Pi a tragedy, a romance, or a comedy [or none]?

THEAVIDREADER:  In my opinion, the protagonist Pi Patel loses his whole family, family belongings, and countless animals from the zoo when the Tsimtsum sank, but that’s not all–Pi started to face many difficult problems, and his will to succeed against enormous odds and to live marks Pi’s transition from youth to adulthood.

7.  Pi defends zoos.  Are you convinced?  Is a zoo a good place for a wild animal?

THEAVIDREADER:  I disagree with the notion of animals being captivity.  Animals in captivity behave differently from their fellow species in the wild; therefore visitors at zoos will never be able to observe the animals’ true behavior.  Wild animals could be taken away from their families just to let people look at them–that doesn’t seem fair.  Rather, there should be a large, special enclosed area saved for families of different species of an ecosystem–people should do nothing to help or hinder these wild animals.

8.  Nearly everyone experiences a turning point that represents the transition from youth to adulthood, albeit seldom as traumatic as Pi’s (ooh, fancy vocab words).  What event marked your coming of age?

This one is mainly “for the crowd”.  So?