Welcome statement


Parting Words from Moristotle (07/31/2023)
tells how to access our archives
of art, poems, stories, serials, travelogues,
essays, reviews, interviews, correspondence….

Monday, February 18, 2013

Review: Life of Pi (the book)

The author of Life of Pi
An inconclusive
theological analogy


By Morris Dean

After reading Yann Martel's 2001 novel Life of Pi, I went back and read Jonathan Price's review of the movie (December 9). I haven't seen the movie yet, but it appears that the movie story and the book story have several significant divergences. It wouldn't do to dwell on them.
    The book is structured in three parts, plus a foreword by the author. The foreword appears to abet the fiction that follows, attempting to cast it as a true story that the author learned about from someone he met who told him if he wanted a compelling story to write, he should go find Piscine Molitor Patel. "Pi" could tell him "a story that will make you believe in God."

    In Part One, Pi describes his life in India prior to his family's packing up their zoo animals and embarking on a ship to Canada when Pi is sixteen. This part has several mysterious third-person chapters interspersed throughout and set in italics. Slowly it dawns on you who the narrator is and whom he's talking about.
    By far the largest part, Part Two describes Pi's adventure in a lifeboat on the Pacific Ocean after the ship goes down.
    And Part Three describes Pi's being interviewed in Mexico by two investigators who are trying to find out why the ship sank.
    How Life of Pi attempts to make the reader believe in God is quite clever, and I admire Martel for the attempt. In Part Three, Pi of course tells the investigators the story just recounted in Part Two, but the two men find the story incredible, and they aren't inclined to believe it.
    If you have read our review of the movie or perhaps just heard about the movie, you probably know that that story involved Pi's being in a lifeboat with an orangutan, an injured zebra, a hyena, and a Bengal tiger. How could anyone survive in a small boat with a Bengal tiger for even a few days? The hyena ate the zebra, and the tiger ate the orangutan and the hyena. It's the food chain in microcosm. The only things that enable small, weak, 16-year-old Pi to rise to the top of the chain in the lifeboat is his brain and his courage. And some luck, of course.
    Okay, fair enough that they don't believe his story, Pi says, then proceeds to tell them an alternative story of what happened in the lifeboat, this one involving three other humans instead, including Pi's mother and a cook and a sailor from the ship. Pi then says he'd like to ask the investigators something:

"Yes?" [one of them says]
    "The Tsimtsum sank on July 2nd, 1977."
    "Yes."
    "And I arrived on the coast of Mexico, the sole human survivor of the Tsimtsum, on February 14th, 1978."
    "That's right."
    "I told you two stories that account for the 227 days in between."
    "Yes, you did."
    "Neither explains the sinking of the Tsimtsum."
    "That's right."
    "Neither makes a factual difference to you."
    "That's true."
    "You can't prove which story is true and which is not. You must take my word for it."
    "I guess so."
    "In both stories the ship sinks, my entire family dies, and I suffer."
    "Yes, that's true."
    "So, tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?"
    Mr. Okamoto: "That's an interesting question..."
    Mr. Chiba: "The story with animals."
    Mr. Okamoto: "Yes, the story with animals is the better story."
    Pi Patel: "Thank you. And so it goes with God."
    That is, if you think a story in which God exists makes a better story, then you'll likely believe it; if you find an alternative story more to your liking (which may be because it is more credible to you), then you'll likely believe it. Pi, whom Part One has revealed to be a devout Hindu, Muslim, and Christian at the same time—not serially as our reviewer seems to have taken the movie to suggest—thinks that a story in which God exists is far and away preferable to a story in which he does not.
    And the person who supposedly told Yann Martel about Pi's adventure, with the comment that Pi's story will "make you believe in God," obviously felt the same way and seems to have presumed that most people would feel that way. I suppose that still yet in the history of the world, most people probably would.
    But I think that this is simply the tautology that if you tend to believe in God, you will probably believe in God, but if you tend not to believe in God, you probably won't. And since the tendency is largely determined by what you're taught and there's still lots of religious teaching going on....
    Still, I think the novel's "God analogy" is clever and fairly well done, although I found passages of the book tedious, especially some excessively detailed sections of Part Two. (They might have given their space to a more detailed rendering of the alternative story for what happened in Part Two.)
    There are, however, some very interesting things about the first version of the lifeboat adventure—in particular, how Pi was able to tame the tiger by using methods similar to those used in a zoo, which had already been described in Part One. Perhaps because the adventure with the animals (as opposed to mother, cook, and sailor) was told in such convincing detail, I actually found it more believable that Pi was in the lifeboat with the orangutan, zebra, hyena, and tiger than with the other humans. But this could argue against the God analogy as well as it could argue for it. It depends on who's putting the argument.
_______________
Copyright © 2013 by Morris Dean
Note: More review of Life of Pi is given in this week's "Thor's Day" column.

Please comment

10 comments:

  1. Writing a novel takes time and commitment. A lot of time and a lot of commitment. I would hope this novel(after all the time and commitment) did more than just ask the question:
    "So, tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?"

    ReplyDelete
  2. Morris, to paraphrase the character in the book, "and so it goes with fiction." If one is inclined to believe that far too many novels, and most movies, are a waste of time, it sounds like this book and movie would offer much evidence to support that belief.

    Something that would be on interest, however, would be calculating how long it would take the tiger to kill and eat all the others in the lifeboat, assuming one wants to buy into that version of the tale. The problem, or perhaps blessing, of that plot line, is there would be no one to tell the tale, because Pi - being the smallest and weakest - would be the first to be eaten. Of course, if a lifeboat was discovered with the remains of a human, hyena, orangutan, and zebra on board, and if a tiger started stalking and killing people along the coast of Mexico, now THAT could be an interesting story.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Of course, if a lifeboat was discovered with the remains of a human, hyena, orangutan, and zebra on board, and if a tiger started stalking and killing people along the coast of Mexico, now THAT could be an interesting story.

    I would even read that---

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ha, Konotahe, and to think that I almost included a final paragraph about the book's being an "adventure story," a sort of book I am generally not inclined to read. (Life of Pi is the current selection of my community's book-discussion club....)

      Delete
  4. Could call it 'Life After Pi: A Sequel Actually Worth Reading'

    And could offer two versions, one in which the tiger slays people in droves, the other where it is killed by a great white shark while swimming ashore. Which could beget a story about a great white shark washing up on shore after dying from the wounds the tiger gave it before being killed, with an alternative version as well, of course...

    On a serious note, I hope the public will notice that Moristotle has provided a great service by giving people an idea of what they are in for if they decide to read 'Life of Pi' or watch it. The two-version concept seems irritating just to ponder; I can only imagine how people would feel if they had spent hours on it.

    This seems a plot line ripped out of prime time TV where faithful viewers are shocked as the star of a show is killed in the last episode of the season, only to discover months later they had instead been trapped in the brain of one of the other characters, who was having a dream about the star being killed.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Motomynd, I am glad you were not being serious in your first paragraph. See my comment to Konotahe about not really being inclined to read "adventure stories."

      Delete
  5. Morris, after reading your comment about 'Life of Pi' being the monthly selection for your book-discussion club, and thinking about all the buzz the book has generated in NPR and other normally clear-headed media, I am torn between continuing to dismiss the concept in my first paragraph as tongue-in-cheek, versus trying to rush a manuscript to a publisher before someone else beats me to it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Motomynd, with your extraordinary ability to write polished prose quickly, combined with your life experiences and creative imagination, I have no doubt that you could get to a publisher before anyone else. I would only hope that the published result would not be a work that was a waste of time for people to read and enjoy. If you could vouch that it was not, I'd recommend it to my book club associates.

      Delete
  6. Morris, I can only say that if people deem "Life of Pi" enjoyable and not a waste of time, I suspect any number of your writers could craft a sequel about which most readers would feel the same. Creating the same buzz, on the other hand, might be a problem.

    "And so it goes with belief," thought the tiger, turning away from his meal and stifling a small burp. "If people hear the same words enough times, they believe. If not, they don't. It doesn't change the ending, yet they somehow seem to feel better about it."

    And with that he began to walk quietly through the large-leafed trees in this strange new forest, moving silently toward the next cluster of huts a short distance up the coast. Unlike the people in the villages, who moved languidly under the weight of their beliefs and convictions, the tiger moved light and fast, caring only about the next easy meal so close at hand.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Motomynd, As I indicated by "tedious" in my review,I didn't find Life of Pi that enjoyable a read, and but for another book-club member's having selected it, I would not have read it.
          By far the best part, for me, was Part One, about Pi's family, its zoo, and his enthusiasm for religion, which, if not admirable, was at times funny—an unwitting caricature of the foibles of religious practice.
          The two paragraphs you show from your potential novel from the tiger's point of view indicate that I might enjoy your book more, since it would seem to be going to have depths of meaning that transcend a "mere adventure story."
          Martel's attempt to transcend seems amateurish compared to what you might achieve, in my opinion.

      Delete