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1、Context Yann Martel was born on June 25,1963,in Salamanca,Spain,to Canadian parents.When Martel was a young boy,his parents joined the Canadian Foreign Services,and the family moved frequently,living in Alaska,France,Costa Rica,Ontario,and British Columbia.Martel went on to study philosophy at Trent
2、 University in Ontario,where he discovered a love for writing.After graduating in 1985,Martel lived with his parents and worked a number of odd jobs while continuing to write fiction.He published a collection of short stories,The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios,in 1993 and a novel,Self,in 1996
3、,but neither book received much critical or commercial attention.In 2002,however,Martels international literary reputation was sealed with the publication of Life of Pi,a runaway bestseller that went on to win the prestigious Man Booker Prize(awarded each year to the best English-language novel writ
4、ten by a Commonwealth or Irish author)and had since been translated into thirty languages.Fox 2000 pictures bought the screen rights to Martels novel,and a feature film is expected in 2008.Life of Pi is set against the tumultuous period of Indian history known as the Emergency.In 1975,Prime Minister
5、 Indira Gandhi was found guilty of charges related to her 1971 election campaign and was ordered to resign.Insteadand in response to a rising tide of strikes and protests that were paralyzing the governmentGandhi declared a state of emergency,suspending constitutional rights and giving herself the p
6、ower to rule by decree.The Emergency lasted for eighteen months and was officially ended in March 1977 when Gandhi called for a new round of elections.The historical legacy of the Emergency has been highly controversial:while civil liberties in this emerging democracy were severely curtailed and Gan
7、dhis political opponents found themselves jailed,abused,and tortured,Indias economy experienced a much-needed stabilization and growth.In Life of Pi,Piscine(Pi)Molitor Patels father,a zookeeper in Pondicherry,India,grows nervous about the current political situation.Speculating that Gandhi might try
8、 to take over his zoo and faced with depressing economic conditions,Pis father decides to sell off his zoo animals and move his family to Canada,thus setting the main action of the novel into motion.Though only a relatively brief section of Life of Pi is actually set in India,the countrys eclectic m
9、akeup is reflected throughout the novel.Pi is raised as a Hindu but as a young boy discovers both Christianity and Islam and decides to practice all three religions simultaneously.In the Authors Note,an elderly Indian man describes the story of Pi as“a story that will make you believe in God,”and Li
10、fe of Pi continuously grapples with questions of faith;as an adherent to the three most prominent religions in India,Pi provides a unique perspective on issues of Indian spirituality.Indias diverse culture is further reflected in Martels choice of Pondicherry as a setting.India was a British colony
11、for nearly two hundred years,and consequently most of the nation has been deeply influenced by British culture.However,Pondicherry,a tiny city in southern India,was once the capital of French India and as such has retained a uniquely French flavor that sets it apart from the rest of the nation.Perha
12、ps reflecting Yann Martels own nomadic childhood,Pi Patel pointedly begins his life in a diverse cultural setting before encountering French,Mexican,Japanese,and Canadian characters along his journey.Life of Pi can be characterized as a postcolonial novel,because of its post-Independence Indian sett
13、ing as well as its Canadian authorship.Like many postcolonial novels,such as those of Salman Rushdie and Gabriel Garca Mrquez,Life of Pi can also be classified as a work of magical realism,a literary genre in which fantastical elementssuch as animals with human personalities or an island with cannib
14、alistic treesappear in an otherwise realistic setting.Martels novel could equally be described as a bildungsroman(a coming-of-age tale)or an adventure story.Life of Pi even flirts with nonfiction genres.The Authors Note,for example,claims that the story of Piscine Molitor Patel is a true story that
15、the author,Yann Martel,heard while backpacking through Pondicherry,and the novel,with its first-person narrator,is structured as a memoir.At the end of the novel,we are presented with interview transcripts,another genre of nonfiction writing.This mixing of fiction and nonfiction reflects the twist e
16、nding of the novel,in which the veracity of Pis fantastical story is called into doubt and the reader,like Pis Japanese interrogators,is forced to confront unsettling questions about the nature of truth itself.Many critics have noted the books resemblance to Ernest Hemingways novel The Old Man and t
17、he Sea.Both novels feature an epic struggle between man and beast.In The Old Man and the Sea,a fisherman struggles to pull in a mighty marlin,while in Life of Pi,Pi and Richard Parker struggle for dominance on the lifeboat.Both the fisherman and Pi learn to respect their animal counterparts;each pai
18、r is connected in their mutual suffering,strength,and resolve.Although they are opponents,they are also partners,allies,even doubles.Furthermore,both novels emphasize the importance of endurance.Because death and destruction are inevitable,both novels present life as a choice between only two option
19、s:defeat or endurance until destruction.Enduring against all odds elevates both human characters to the status of heroes.Another,less flattering comparison has been drawn between Life of Pi and acclaimed Brazilian author Moacyr Scliars 1981 novel Max and the Cats.In a 2002 interview with P,Martel di
20、scusses reading an unfavorable review of Scliars novel in the New York Times Book Review penned by John Updike and,despite Updikes disparagement,being entranced by the premise.As was later reported,no such review existed,and John Updike himself claimed no knowledge of Scliars novel.The similarities
21、between the two novels are unmistakable:in Max and the Cats,a family of German zookeepers sets sail to Brazil.The ship goes down and only one young man survives,stranded at sea with a wild jaguar.Martel claims never to have read Max and the Cats before beginning to write Life of Pi.He has since blam
22、ed his faulty memory for the P gaffe and has declined further discussion on the topic.Scliar considered a lawsuit but is said to have changed his mind after a discussion with Martel.Whatever the real story,Martel mentions Scliar in his Authors Note,thanking him for“the spark of life.”Plot Overview I
23、n an Authors Note,an anonymous author figure explains that he traveled from his home in Canada to India because he was feeling restless.There,while sipping coffee in a caf in the town of Pondicherry,he met an elderly man named Francis Adirubasamy who offered to tell him a story fantastic enough to g
24、ive him faith in God.This story is that of Pi Patel.The author then shifts into the story itself,but not before telling his reader that the account will come across more naturally if he tells it in Pis own voice.Part One is narrated in the first person by Pi.Pi narrates from an advanced age,looking
25、back at his earlier life as a high school and college student in Toronto,then even further back to his boyhood in Pondicherry.He explains that he has suffered intensely and found solace in religion and zoology.He describes how Francis Adirubasamy,a close business associate of his fathers and a compe
26、titive swimming champion,taught him to swim and bestowed upon him his unusual name.Pi is named after the Piscine Molitor,a Parisian swimming club with two pools that Adirubasamy used to frequent.We learn that Pis father once ran the Pondicherry Zoo,teaching Pi and his brother,Ravi,about the dangerou
27、s nature of animals by feeding a live goat to a tiger before their young eyes.Pi,brought up as a Hindu,discovers Christianity,then Islam,choosing to practice all three religions simultaneously.Motivated by Indias political strife,Pis parents decide to move the family to Canada;on June 21,1977,they s
28、et sail in a cargo ship,along with a crew and many cages full of zoo creatures.At the beginning of Part Two,the ship is beginning to sink.Pi clings to a lifeboat and encourages a tiger,Richard Parker,to join him.Then,realizing his mistake in bringing a wild animal aboard,Pi leaps into the ocean.The
29、narrative jumps back in time as Pi describes the explosive noise and chaos of the sinking:crewmembers throw him into a lifeboat,where he soon finds himself alone with a zebra,an orangutan,and a hyena,all seemingly in shock.His family is gone.The storm subsides and Pi contemplates his difficult situa
30、tion.The hyena kills the zebra and the orangutan,and thento Pis intense surpriseRichard Parker reveals himself:the tiger has been in the bottom of the lifeboat all along.Soon the tiger kills the hyena,and Pi and Richard Parker are alone together at sea.Pi subsists on canned water and filtered seawat
31、er,emergency rations,and freshly caught sea life.He also provides for the tiger,whom he masters and trains.The days pass slowly and the lifeboats passengers coexist warily.During a bout of temporary blindness brought on by dehydration,Pi has a run-in with another blind castaway.The two discuss food
32、and tether their boats to one another.When the blind man attacks Pi,intending to eat him,Richard Parker kills him.Not long after,the boat pulls up to a strange island of trees that grow directly out of vegetation,without any soil.Pi and Richard Parker stay here for a time,sleeping in their boat and
33、exploring the island during the day.Pi discovers a huge colony of meerkats who sleep in the trees and freshwater ponds.One day,Pi finds human teeth in a trees fruit and comes to the conclusion that the island eats people.He and Richard Parker head back out to sea,finally washing ashore on a Mexican
34、beach.Richard Parker runs off,and villagers take Pi to a hospital.In Part Three,two officials from the Japanese Ministry of Transport interview Pi about his time at sea,hoping to shed light on the fate of the doomed ship.Pi tells the story as above,but it does not fully satisfy the skeptical men.So
35、he tells it again,this time replacing the animals with humans:a ravenous cook instead of a hyena,a sailor instead of a zebra,and his mother instead of the orangutan.The officials note that the two stories match and that the second is far likelier.In their final report,they commend Pi for living so l
36、ong with an adult tiger.Character List Piscine Molitor Patel(Pi)-The protagonist of the story.Piscine is the narrator for most of the novel,and his account of his seven months at sea forms the bulk of the story.He gets his unusual name from the French word for pooland,more specifically,from a pool i
37、n Paris in which a close family friend,Francis Adirubasamy,loved to swim.A student of zoology and religion,Pi is deeply intrigued by the habits and characteristics of animals and people.document.write();Richard Parker-The Royal Bengal tiger with whom Pi shares his lifeboat.His captor,Richard Parker,
38、named him Thirsty,but a shipping clerk made a mistake and reversed their names.From then on,at the Pondicherry Zoo,he was known as Richard Parker.Weighing 450 pounds and about nine feet long,he kills the hyena on the lifeboat and the blind cannibal.With Pi,however,Richard Parker acts as an omega,or
39、submissive,animal,respecting Pis dominance.Read an in-depth analysis of Richard Parker.The Author-The narrator of the(fictitious)Authors Note,who inserts himself into the narrative at several points throughout the text.Though the author who pens the Authors Note never identifies himself by name,ther
40、e are many clues that indicate it is Yann Martel himself,thinly disguised:he lives in Canada,has published two books,and was inspired to write Pis life story during a trip to India.Francis Adirubasamy-The elderly man who tells the author Pis story during a chance meeting in a Pondicherry coffee shop
41、.He taught Pi to swim as a child and bestowed upon him his unusual moniker.He arranges for the author to meet Pi in person,so as to get a first-person account of his strange and compelling tale.Pi calls him Mamaji,an Indian term that means respected uncle.Ravi-Pis older brother.Ravi prefers sports t
42、o schoolwork and is quite popular.He teases his younger brother mercilessly over his devotion to three religions.Santosh Patel-Pis father.He once owned a Madras hotel,but because of his deep interest in animals decided to run the Pondicherry Zoo.A worrier by nature,he teaches his sons not only to ca
43、re for and control wild animals,but to fear them.Though raised a Hindu,he is not religious and is puzzled by Pis adoption of numerous religions.The difficult conditions in India lead him to move his family to Canada.document.write();Gita Patel-Pis beloved mother and protector.A book lover,she encour
44、ages Pi to read widely.Raised Hindu with a Baptist education,she does not subscribe to any religion and questions Pis religious declarations.She speaks her mind,letting her husband know when she disagrees with his parenting techniques.When Pi relates another version of his story to his rescuers,she
45、takes the place of Orange Juice on the lifeboat.Satish Kumar-Pis atheistic biology teacher at Petit Sminaire,a secondary school in Pondicherry.A polio survivor,he is an odd-looking man,with a body shaped like a triangle.His devotion to the power of scientific inquiry and explanation inspires Pi to s
46、tudy zoology in college.Father Martin-The Catholic priest who introduces Pi to Christianity after Pi wanders into his church.He preaches a message of love.He,the Muslim Mr.Kumar,and the Hindu pandit disagree about whose religion Pi should practice.Satish Kumar-A plain-featured Muslim mystic with the
47、 same name as Pis biology teacher.He works in a bakery.Like the other Mr.Kumar,this one has a strong effect on Pis academic plans:his faith leads Pi to study religion at college.The Hindu Pandit-One of three important religious figures in the novel.Never given a name,he is outraged when Pi,who was r
48、aised Hindu,begins practicing other religions.He and the other two religious leaders are quieted somewhat by Pis declaration that he just wants to love God.Meena Patel-Pis wife,whom the author meets briefly in Toronto.Nikhil Patel(Nick)-Pis son.He plays baseball.Usha Patel-Pis young daughter.She is
49、shy but very close to her father.The Hyena-An ugly,intensely violent animal.He controls the lifeboat before Richard Parker emerges.The Zebra-A beautiful male Grants zebra.He breaks his leg jumping into the lifeboat.The hyena torments him and eats him alive.Orange Juice-The maternal orangutan that fl
50、oats to the lifeboat on a raft of bananas.She suffers almost humanlike bouts of loneliness and seasickness.When the hyena attacks her,she fights back valiantly but is nonetheless killed and decapitated.The Blind Frenchman-A fellow castaway whom Pi meets by chance in the middle of the ocean.Driven by