Skip to main content

In Martel's Life of Pi, what rituals and practices does Pi perform while lost at sea? Why do you think he creates such rituals or practices?

In Martel's Life of Pi, Pi discovers that he must keep himself busy each day in order to keep himself from going insane. A daily schedule of events allows him to find some sort of structure in his life at sea. His daily schedule is found in chapter 63 and contains everything from looking after the boat and Richard Parker to saying his prayers. He believes that this schedule helps him to survive as follows:



"I kept myself busy. That was one key to my survival. On a lifeboat, even on a raft, there's always something that needs doing. An average day for me, if such a notion can be applied to a castaway, went like this:  wake up, prayers, breakfast for Richard Parker, general inspection of the raft and lifeboat . . ." (190).



Pi catalogs the whole day from morning to night and breaks it down into five different sections. Within these five sectioned-off parts of his daily life, Pi not only checks the boat and the tiger, but he also prays just like a Muslim would. For five or six weeks, Pi says that this schedule helps him; however, he eventually forgets the schedule because it forces him to focus on time too much. As a result, he abandons looking after the boat using a schedule because of the following reasons:



"Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the notion of time" (192).



Pi never stops praying, though. In chapter 74 he practices his rituals and prayers even though he becomes discouraged at times. He says that God is love, and it is hard to have faith in God and love when he lives under such hopeless conditions. For instance, his clothes disintegrate right off of his body, which causes him to fall into despair. He describes this despair as "hell beyond expression." His response, however, is to pray and to think about his family. He says the following about the times he feels such despair:



"I thank God it always passed . . . I thought of my family, of how they were spared this terrible agony. The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shining point of light in my heart. I would go on loving" (209). 



Thinking of his family and God always helps to bring Pi back from hopelessness to his desire to survive. Without focusing his mind on family, God, or love, Pi may have given up all hope for survival and died. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more