Chattahoochee River
Sunday, March 15, 2015
The Life of Pi (reading section #2)- Shipped Animals
In this second section of reading, Pi faces various cases of adversity, the obvious one being that the ship he had been on had sunk and he was on a life boat with a tiger and a hyena. However, another notable case of adversity was when Pi and Ravi had been told that they were moving from India to Canada. Moving in general is in itself is a struggle, but moving across the Atlantic Ocean to an unknown country with an unknown culture is even more intimidating. Pi and his family decided (well the parents decided) to leave everything they have ever known and to move to Canada. I am interested mostly to this specific case of adversity because the night I had read this section was the same night I had visited the Holocaust Museum in D. C. And I remember the tour guide stating how hard it was for the Jewish people to get up and leave everything the had ever known even with the circumstances they faced. Even with the motivation the Jews had to leave their homes they didn't because of hard it was for them to leave their lives. And it's the same for Pi, obviously he is not under the same circumstances as the Jews, but how can you imagine your parents telling you that they have decided for the family to move across the world and you will not be living the same life as you once did. I'm not sure that Pi found a way to cope with his family's decision besides just accepting that his parents had already made the decision and the move had already been set in motion.
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I also noticed that there were multiple layers to Pi's adversity outside of the obvious life-threatening predicament he was in. He seemed like he was upset about having to move to another country and start a new life, and to make it worse his ship sank and he now faces the chance of starving to death or being eaten by a hyena or tiger. That's definitely some adversity.
ReplyDeleteErik, the comparison between Pi and the Jews is definitely appropriate because as Andrew noted, they all experienced multiple layers of adversity, both physical and emotional. I think one of the biggest struggles Pi is facing is perhaps the spiritual adversity as he's forced to migrate from a place where he was consumed by the practices Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam to a completely foreign land where there's no guarantee that that religious fervor will still be apparent.
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