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Post by Dubious Disciple (xdc) on Jul 11, 2012 21:08:25 GMT -5
 it's my interpretation, yknot, because of course anything is possible in fiction. Even subduing starving tigers. But the ending is so powerful to me, when pi admits the truth, breaks down in front of them, promises they'll never see Richard Parker again, proves it by sharing the cookies ... he has undergone an incredible religious experience, an overwhelming emotional attack, and survived it by the power of his mind. It is really the only way I can make sense of the book, regardless of other peoples' interpretations. It's also a wonderful tease ... building that beautiful, elaborate story and then tearing it down in a few pages. I can imagine the author laughing his head off at us and how we became emotionally invested in a lie. The book remains fascinating to me, helping us "agree to disagree" ... and for that reason alone, a boon to religious tolerance. Each of us recognize our own reality. A great lead-off read for our book club. |
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Post by What Hat on Jul 11, 2012 21:18:40 GMT -5
it's my interpretation, yknot, because of course anything is possible in fiction. Even subduing starving tigers. But the ending is so powerful to me, when pi admits the truth, breaks down in front of them, promises they'll never see Richard Parker again, proves it by sharing the cookies ... he has undergone an incredible religious experience, an overwhelming emotional attack, and survived it by the power of his mind. It is really the only way I can make sense of the book, regardless of other peoples' interpretations. It's also a wonderful tease ... building that beautiful, elaborate story and then tearing it down in a few pages. I can imagine the author laughing his head off at us and how we became emotionally invested in a lie. The book remains fascinating to me, helping us "agree to disagree" ... and for that reason alone, a boon to religious tolerance. Each of us recognize our own reality. A great lead-off read for our book club. But still your interpretation is one of several that are possible. There are numerous problems and inconsistencies in accepting the second story as correct. One of the problems is that Pi shows every indication of concocting the second story in order to shed the investigators who just won't believe the real story. And where would Pi's mother have found a raft of bananas? |
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Post by Dubious Disciple (xdc) on Jul 12, 2012 10:01:40 GMT -5
The investigators WANT to believe, but their jobs require rationality and they are not allowed. They recognize the first story as the better story. You are supposed to feel sorry for them, they can't simply "choose" like pi to be irrational (pi chose his name of his own accord). Don't you feel just a little sorry for evolutionary biologists who, because of their rational education and experience, cannot believe the story of Adam and Eve and the tree of life? These investigators probably don't even believe in pi's magical tree in his Eden, either. Poor fellas. Why do you keep insisting the raft was really made of bananas? That would be inconsistent with the "true" version of the story. |
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Post by Dubious Disciple (xdc) on Jul 12, 2012 10:17:18 GMT -5
As I think about this, I find myself a lot like pi...or at least a pi-wannabe. I think he has conquered. I think it's important to recognize both stories as "true" in their own way. He can relate the mystical version for the people who are capable of living on a more beautiful level, and he can dredge up the icky historical facts for the people who insist on that kind of truth. His ability to hold both stories and not try to mix the two is his great victory.
This is what I've tried to do in my writing. Readers of my book on Revelation get the icky facts. Readers of my sequel on John's Gospel get a beautiful overlay of the same story.
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Post by dmmichgood on Jul 12, 2012 19:42:38 GMT -5
The investigators WANT to believe, but their jobs require rationality and they are not allowed. They recognize the first story as the better story. You are supposed to feel sorry for them, they can't simply "choose" like pi to be irrational (pi chose his name of his own accord). Don't you feel just a little sorry for evolutionary biologists who, because of their rational education and experience, cannot believe the story of Adam and Eve and the tree of life? These investigators probably don't even believe in pi's magical tree in his Eden, either. Poor fellas. Why do you keep insisting the raft was really made of bananas? That would be inconsistent with the "true" version of the story. I don't think evolutionary biologists have any problem with the story of Adam & Eve & the tree of life. I know I don't have any problem with either one. Evolutionary biology is built on a factual body of knowledge that is very reasonable. The story of Adam & Eve is typical of other creation stories before anyone reasoned along the lines of scientific inquiry. It filled a need for people trying to understand their world. |
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Post by dmmichgood on Jul 12, 2012 19:45:03 GMT -5
Your books sound great! Where can we get copies?
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Post by Dubious Disciple (xdc) on Jul 12, 2012 21:48:00 GMT -5
Your books sound great! Where can we get copies? I did it again, lol...accidentally modified dmmichgood's post. I'm surprised they still allow me to wear the "mod" patch. Hope I put it back the way it was...Anyway... Revelation: The Way It Happened has been out a year and a half, you can get it at any bookstore online or brick-and-mortar. Or buy it from my website: www.thewayithappened.comJohn's Gospel: The Way It Happened (the sequel) will be available in January. |
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Post by dmmichgood on Jul 12, 2012 22:42:30 GMT -5
Your books sound great! Where can we get copies? I did it again, lol...accidentally modified dmmichgood's post. I'm surprised they still allow me to wear the "mod" patch. Hope I put it back the way it was...Anyway... Revelation: The Way It Happened has been out a year and a half, you can get it at any bookstore online or brick-and-mortar. Or buy it from my website: www.thewayithappened.comJohn's Gospel: The Way It Happened (the sequel) will be available in January. |
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Post by What Hat on Jul 15, 2012 19:29:14 GMT -5
The investigators WANT to believe, but their jobs require rationality and they are not allowed. They recognize the first story as the better story. You are supposed to feel sorry for them, they can't simply "choose" like pi to be irrational (pi chose his name of his own accord). Don't you feel just a little sorry for evolutionary biologists who, because of their rational education and experience, cannot believe the story of Adam and Eve and the tree of life? These investigators probably don't even believe in pi's magical tree in his Eden, either. Poor fellas. Why do you keep insisting the raft was really made of bananas? That would be inconsistent with the "true" version of the story. On page 337, in relating the second/ true version, Pi says, "Mother held on to some bananas and made it to the lifeboat." In the first version the ape was holding on to the bananas. Which do you think more likely? |
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Post by What Hat on Jul 15, 2012 19:35:04 GMT -5
I did it again, lol...accidentally modified dmmichgood's post. I'm surprised they still allow me to wear the "mod" patch. Hope I put it back the way it was...Anyway... Revelation: The Way It Happened has been out a year and a half, you can get it at any bookstore online or brick-and-mortar. Or buy it from my website: www.thewayithappened.comJohn's Gospel: The Way It Happened (the sequel) will be available in January. The Revelation book is excellent. I wrote one of the reviews on Amazon, but I guess I'd have to out myself in order to tell you which one. |
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Post by What Hat on Jul 15, 2012 19:39:36 GMT -5
Your books sound great! Where can we get copies? I did it again, lol...accidentally modified dmmichgood's post. I'm surprised they still allow me to wear the "mod" patch. Hope I put it back the way it was...Anyway... Revelation: The Way It Happened has been out a year and a half, you can get it at any bookstore online or brick-and-mortar. Or buy it from my website: www.thewayithappened.comJohn's Gospel: The Way It Happened (the sequel) will be available in January. It's because the "modify" button appears where the "quote" button appears when we're not moderating. I hit the wrong button all the time, but fortunately haven't destroyed anyone's post .... yet. |
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Post by Dubious Disciple (xdc) on Jul 15, 2012 22:16:49 GMT -5
The investigators WANT to believe, but their jobs require rationality and they are not allowed. They recognize the first story as the better story. You are supposed to feel sorry for them, they can't simply "choose" like pi to be irrational (pi chose his name of his own accord). Don't you feel just a little sorry for evolutionary biologists who, because of their rational education and experience, cannot believe the story of Adam and Eve and the tree of life? These investigators probably don't even believe in pi's magical tree in his Eden, either. Poor fellas. Why do you keep insisting the raft was really made of bananas? That would be inconsistent with the "true" version of the story. On page 337, in relating the second/ true version, Pi says, "Mother held on to some bananas and made it to the lifeboat." In the first version the ape was holding on to the bananas. Which do you think more likely? ohhh!!!! I totally missed that. But how dare you call his mother an ape. |
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Post by What Hat on Jul 16, 2012 11:24:33 GMT -5
On page 337, in relating the second/ true version, Pi says, "Mother held on to some bananas and made it to the lifeboat." In the first version the ape was holding on to the bananas. Which do you think more likely? ohhh!!!! I totally missed that. But how dare you call his mother an ape. Of course you missed it. You were wearing the wrong glasses. |
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Post by Dubious Disciple (xdc) on Jul 18, 2012 8:36:56 GMT -5
speaking of glasses, I'm told the movie version will be out in November, including a 3-D version.
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Post by What Hat on Jul 18, 2012 15:56:29 GMT -5
speaking of glasses, I'm told the movie version will be out in November, including a 3-D version. Ang Lee is the director! Should be good. Much of the cast is Indian. Check this site - www.lifeofpimovie.com/The stills look amazing. |
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Post by dmmichgood on Jul 18, 2012 21:03:50 GMT -5
speaking of glasses, I'm told the movie version will be out in November, including a 3-D version. Ang Lee is the director! Should be good. Much of the cast is Indian. Check this site - www.lifeofpimovie.com/The stills look amazing. Thanks, that looks like it will be great! |
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Post by Dubious Disciple (xdc) on Jul 25, 2012 3:36:24 GMT -5
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Post by emy on Jul 25, 2012 10:50:53 GMT -5
Could be why our author chose that name! |
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Post by Dubious Disciple (xdc) on Jul 25, 2012 13:36:16 GMT -5
freaky stuff, isn't it? I mean, the original Richard Parker.
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Post by What Hat on Jul 26, 2012 19:44:16 GMT -5
freaky stuff, isn't it? I mean, the original Richard Parker. Where did you dig this up? Just curious. It's quite interesting. |
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Post by Dubious Disciple (xdc) on Jul 27, 2012 8:03:12 GMT -5
somebody on goodreads mentioned it.
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Post by sacerdotal on Aug 15, 2012 12:03:53 GMT -5
Could be why our author chose that name! It also may give a clue to the "real" story- that it was real people in the lifeboat and that they resorted to cannibalism. |
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Post by emy on Oct 30, 2012 13:48:20 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Nov 27, 2012 7:37:33 GMT -5
speaking of glasses, I'm told the movie version will be out in November, including a 3-D version. Ang Lee is the director! Should be good. Much of the cast is Indian. Check this site - www.lifeofpimovie.com/The stills look amazing. We saw the movie this weekend. The cinematography is beautiful. We didn't see the 3-D but the 2-D was perfectly delightful. I can't comment on how well the movie followed the book as I haven't read the book. My wife read the book shortly after it first came out and was fuzzy on the comparison. My daughter had read it more recently and was quite happy with the outcome vis a vis the book. She felt they missed out some golden opportunities for some of the great humour in the book, particularly the part where Pi meets another shipwrecked person as she thought there was some funny dialogue between them.....they left out that meeting altogether. It was nearly 2 hours long so I suppose it was pretty long anyway. However, some of the non-dialogue scenes, beautiful as they were, could have been snipped here and there and they could have easily found another 5+minutes or so to include more dialogue. Worthwhile viewing imo. |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 27, 2012 9:05:09 GMT -5
Here is my synopsis of the story based on what I extracted from the movie, particularly in respect to the fact/fiction aspect.
When Pi was young, he was pretty much isolated from normal relationships in his community, to a large degree because of the pronunciation of his name "Piscine", misused by other children and some adults as "pissing". His isolation and active imagination led him on his quest for God at a young age.
His strength of character shown by his successful effort to change his name to "Pi" foreshadows the strength of character he would need to survive the shipwreck. His mastery of the mathematical Pi also indicated his intelligence which would also foreshadow his survival, and most of all his active imagination which was probably the most critical to his survival (I will expand on that controversial thought).
In spite of his emergence into a more socially functional person, his primary early lessons in life on relationships remained what he learned and knew so well in the zoo, and this formed the basis of his coping method on the lifeboat. His father's lesson with the tiger and the goat must have had a tremendous impact on him and how he viewed relationships.
When they shipwrecked, there were people, not animals, on the boat. Things were gruesome so the way Pi coped with it all was to assign an animal-type to each of the survivors. The cook was the worst of them all and the source of most of the trauma with other people on the boat which probably led to his assignment of animals to the lifeboat members. Eventually, there was only him left (not sure about the tiger but I will take his portrayal for it that he seems to indicate to the Montreal writer that he himself was Richard Parker).
The island was not real. He was probably delirious and the island became analogous, perhaps simply to the dangers he faced on the lifeboat while trying to sleep at night.
He told two stories to the investigators. In a sense, both stories were true. The animal story was what he lived in his effort to cope with the horrific experience. The true story in the movie was told by Pi so factually-sounding that it must have been the real one, but it was such a terribly painful story, he preferred the animal story.
The investigators made mention in their report of the Bengal tiger so that's where I became unsure about whether or not the tiger was on the boat.
The search for God was present throughout the movie, and Pi made the promise to the writer (to the audience of course) that he would believe in God after his story. Was he successful? Well, the movie did a good job in giving me an awesome sense of God, but not in the form of a man-like creature, but as a less defined "Power of the Universe". Pi makes no claims of dealing with God on a man to man-like basis. However, there was portrayed a sense of infinite power all around him, easily seen in the environment in the lifeboat experience.
Anyway, I could be miles off what the book is trying to do, that's just what I extracted from the movie.
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Post by Dubious Disciple (xdc) on Nov 27, 2012 15:21:03 GMT -5
That's pretty close to the book CD, but perhaps the book did a better job of retaining the mystery ... making you wonder which story was true. You mentioned the tiger, how the investigators wondered about the tiger. Did the movie also mention the animal skeletons found on the boat, from the island? Apparently, Pi not only turned people into animals in order to cope, but he did so very successfully ... to the point of creating an alternate reality.
Which is where God comes in. God is not just a creation, but a very successful one ... a new, complete reality, with trails of evidence.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 27, 2012 16:19:42 GMT -5
That's pretty close to the book CD, but perhaps the book did a better job of retaining the mystery ... making you wonder which story was true. You mentioned the tiger, how the investigators wondered about the tiger. Did the movie also mention the animal skeletons found on the boat, from the island? Apparently, Pi not only turned people into animals in order to cope, but he did so very successfully ... to the point of creating an alternate reality. Which is where God comes in. God is not just a creation, but a very successful one ... a new, complete reality, with trails of evidence. They only mentioned in the report that the tiger had accompanied Pi. I wasn't previously aware of two alternative endings, so when it did come rather suddenly and he recounted the people story, my mind quite quickly jumped from skeptical about the people story to believing the people story as the actual events, and that the animal story was fictional. That's just the way it struck me, although the movie does not confirm one way or the other. At the end, Pi asks the writer (the audience) something like "which is the best story?". The writer smirks but doesn't answer, leaving the audience to decide for themselves. Obviously the animal story is by far the best story, and hey, there is no harm in believing it! At lot like religious myths.....it's ok up to a point to accept them as reality because they are somebody's reality. |
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Post by What Hat on Nov 29, 2012 19:16:00 GMT -5
That's pretty close to the book CD, but perhaps the book did a better job of retaining the mystery ... making you wonder which story was true. You mentioned the tiger, how the investigators wondered about the tiger. Did the movie also mention the animal skeletons found on the boat, from the island? Apparently, Pi not only turned people into animals in order to cope, but he did so very successfully ... to the point of creating an alternate reality. Which is where God comes in. God is not just a creation, but a very successful one ... a new, complete reality, with trails of evidence. They only mentioned in the report that the tiger had accompanied Pi. I wasn't previously aware of two alternative endings, so when it did come rather suddenly and he recounted the people story, my mind quite quickly jumped from skeptical about the people story to believing the people story as the actual events, and that the animal story was fictional. That's just the way it struck me, although the movie does not confirm one way or the other. At the end, Pi asks the writer (the audience) something like "which is the best story?". The writer smirks but doesn't answer, leaving the audience to decide for themselves. Obviously the animal story is by far the best story, and hey, there is no harm in believing it! At lot like religious myths.....it's ok up to a point to accept them as reality because they are somebody's reality. In a good story you should be able to argue it either way without coming up with a definitive answer. |
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it's my interpretation, yknot, because of course anything is possible in fiction. Even subduing starving tigers. But the ending is so powerful to me, when pi admits the truth, breaks down in front of them, promises they'll never see Richard Parker again, proves it by sharing the cookies ... he has undergone an incredible religious experience, an overwhelming emotional attack, and survived it by the power of his mind. It is really the only way I can make sense of the book, regardless of other peoples' interpretations. It's also a wonderful tease ... building that beautiful, elaborate story and then tearing it down in a few pages. I can imagine the author laughing his head off at us and how we became emotionally invested in a lie.
