Skip to main content

In Martel's Life of Pi, what life-changing decision does Pi's father make at the end of Part One?

Due to India's political and financial instability during the mid-1970s, Pi's father decides that it is best to sell the Pondicherry Zoo and move his family to Canada. Mr. Patel can't sell all of the animals to one zoo in particular, though. He has to sell off different animals to different zoos, which turns out to be a huge international project. By the end of Part One, the Patel family, along with most of the zoo animals, boards the Japanese ship Tsimtsum on June 21, 1977. For the Patel family, they are not just moving; they are changing cultures. They are moving away from their ancestral country to a new home in an unfamiliar country. At the end of Part One, Pi says the following:



"I wildly waved goodbye to India. The sun was shining, the breeze was steady, and seagulls shrieked in the air above us. I was terribly excited.


"Things didn't turn out the way they were supposed to, but what can you do? You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it" (91).



Unfortunately, only Pi will survive the voyage and make it to Canada, which becomes an even more life-changing saga in the next part of the book. 

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

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.
Post a Comment
Read more