Life of Pi
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Yann Martel
Images from GoogleImages, notes and lessons compiled by Jaime Rodrigues
and modified by Emily Cosmos
What’s the better story?
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❧Life itself is the most wonderful fairytale of
all. —Hans Christian Andersen
❧The universe is made of stories, not atoms.
—Muriel Rukeyser
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Storyteller.net
Art Slides
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❧ How do we perceive events? The following paintings
were entered into a contest to represent Life of Pi
through art.
❧ After looking at the slides, I will show the quotes again
and you will respond with a Quickwrite in response to
the art or the quotes.
❧ What ideas do these slides give you for your own
creative response to the novel?
What’s the better story?
❧
❧ Life itself is the most wonderful fairytale of all. —Hans
Christian Andersen
❧ The universe is made of stories, not atoms. —Muriel
Rukeyser
❧ Quickwrite Suggestions: What is your reaction to one or
both of these quotes? What is your favorite story? Why?
Why are stories important? Turn one of these quotations
into a story. What “stories” (other than Pi’s) are told by the
student artwork you just saw?
What’s the better story?
❧
❧ “This second time to India I knew better what to expect
and I knew what I wanted: I would settle in a hill station
and write my novel. [...]. The weather would be just
right, requiring a light sweater mornings and evenings,
and something short-sleeved midday. Thus set up, pen
in hand, for sake of greater truth, I would turn Portugal
into a fiction. That's what fiction is about, isn't it, the
selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to
bring out its essence? What need did I have to go to
Portugal?” (Author's Note.1.5)
What’s the better story?
❧
To give you more tools to analyze
THEME in Life of Pi and in your
passage analyses, take notes on
the following . . .
Suspension of Disbelief
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• Use of fantastic or non-realistic elements in literature
• Coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1800s
• Idea that the reader will suspend judgment in a
fantastic work if the author infuses human interest and
a degree of truth
• Willingness/semi-conscious decision of an audience to
overlook limits/inaccuracies of a medium
• Going beyond the boundaries of what one would
typically believe
• Only works to the point that a story maintains its
believability!
Verisimilitude
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➢ Connected with suspension of disbelief
➢ In literature, the sense that something is real or at
least believable
➢ If a text has verisimilitude, readers are often willing
to suspend disbelief
➢ Talk to a partner - In what way does Life of Pi has
versimilitude? Did you have to suspend your
disbelief in order to appreciate the novel?
What’s the better story?
❧
❧ “I have a story for you.” – Yann Martel
❧ This is, in a sense, Martel’s six-word memoir for Pi
❧ This story is Pi’s journey. His story is the space
where he faces fears, breaks down, grows, becomes
a man.
❧ What is an identity?
❧ How is Pi’s story linked to his identity?
❧ How does your story create/ influence/ show your
identity?
What’s the better story?
❧
❧ A six word story:
“For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.”
– Hemingway
❧ What happens to a story when we write it down?
❧ How is it different when it’s our story that is written
and shared?
Wonder of the Natural
World
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Anthropomorphism
❧ The attribution or ascription of human characteristics
to inanimate objects, animals, forces of nature etc.
(from wiktionary)
❧ Beyond personification, anthropomorphism makes
animals human-like.
Anthropomorphism
❧
❧ Why do authors portray animals this way?
❧ How does Disney anthropomorphize animals?
❧ What are other examples of anthropomorphism?
❧ How are pop culture (Disney) examples different
from those in Life of Pi or other examples from
literature?
Wonder of the Natural
World
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What examples do we see throughout the text Martel
showing us Pi’s “wonder” at nature?
What are the effects on the reader?
What results from the link between humans and
animals in the book? What light is shed on human
nature through animal behavior?
Theme: Religion
➢
❧
“A germ of religious exaltation, no bigger than a mustard
seed, was sown in me and left to germinate. It has never
stopped growing since that day.” (1.16.1)
➢ Look back at your notes from your classmates’
Background to Life of Pi presentations on religion. Look
through your annotated book for notes on religion.
➢ What connections did you notice while reading, or what
do you notice now? What symbols recur? Why does
Martel include so many details and allusions to religion?
How could you interpret this painting
in terms of religion or God?
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Casper, oil on
Canvas
Romanticism
THE TYGER
By William Blake
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare sieze the fire?
...
When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Evening: Landscape with an Aqueduct, 1818
Théodore Gericault (French, 1791–1824)
Oil on canvas
❧
Royal Tiger, 1829
Eugène Delacroix (French, 1798–1863)
Lithograph, second state of four
“In this terrible, beautiful picture, Delacroix demonstrated the Romantic
penchant for tragedy, torment, and violence in scenes that showed nature”
❧
Sunset, ca. 1850
Eugène Delacroix (French, 1798–1863)
Pastel on blue laid paper, mounted on paper board
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All images courtesy of metmuseum.org
Thoughts?
❧
❧ What do these images have in common?
Romanticism
❧
❧ Movement in art, literature, philosophy
❧ Focuses on:
❧ Nature
❧ Symbolism (“objects are charged with a significance
beyond their physical qualities” (Abrams 185).
❧ Idealistic, not necessarily realistic
❧ Examination of internal truth
❧ (A Glossary of Literary Terms)
Romanticism
from the “The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner”by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the moon.
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
Romanticism
❧
❧ How has Martel Romanticized the following:
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India?
The animals?
The zoo?
The boat sinking?
❧ What do the Romantic qualities of the novel convey
about the themes of Survival and Wonder of the Natural
World?
Symbols
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❧What symbols did you find in the novel?
Animals
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Lifeboat
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Richard Parker
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The Island
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Motifs
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Animal behavior: Zoo details in Part I;
Father teaching a lesson feeding Mahisha;
Interaction of hyena, orangutan, zebra &
tiger on lifeboat; RP & Pi; Marine life.
Why does Martel include so much detail
about this? What does it point to?
Motifs
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Hunger & thirst:
What examples did
you find?
Why could the focus
on this mean,
symbolically?
Motifs
❧
What other motifs did you find in the novel?
Theme: Survival
❧
❧What symbols did Martel use to represent
survival?
❧What narrative techniques does he use to
get the reader to focus on survival?
Survival: the Sea
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• Dream interpretation dictionaries suggest that the ocean or
sea holds some of the following possible meanings:
– The sea is the origin of life, therefore it symbolizes birth, creativity
and life
– Ocean depths may symbolize wisdom and knowledge
– Turbulent or stormy seas suggest a sense of anxiety or feeling
overwhelmed
– Calm seas represent good fortune or “smooth sailing”
– The ocean is vast and large which can represent the vastness of
life and especially emotions
– Some suggest that the image of an ocean represents spiritual
renewal or refreshment.
Mr. Okamoto’s conclusion…
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As an aside, story of sole survivor, Mr. Piscine Molitor
Patel, Indian Citizen, is an astounding story of courage
and endurance in the face of extraordinarily difficult and
tragic circumstances. In the experience of this
investigator, his story is unparalleled in the history of
shipwrecks. Very few castaways can claim to have
survived so long at sea as Mr. Patel, and none in the
company of an adult Bengal tiger. (Martel 319)
Daily Prompt 15
“Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.”
- Pablo Picasso