Life of Pi

Courtesy of www.couchsurfing.org

The backstory:

This past Monday I met up with a guy named Chris that I met through couchsurfing for a book swap and a beer. (It can be a little tricky to find books in English in Spain other than the Twilight series....)

He's from Perth but has been traveling through Europe (E and W) for 5 months now. I gave him Banker to the Poor and he gave me Life of Pi, which I've been meaning to read for a few years. He's buena gente, and it was an excellent excuse for a Monday afternoon adventure. The book is falling apart and missing one page. It has obviously known more people and cities in its life than I have. A used book is a good thing.


The book:

The story of a boy named Pi (like 3.1415...) and his life. His father owned a zoo. I've never been a huge zoo person, but after reading the descriptions of zoos and all sorts of animals and the ways they are like humans in this book, I've found myself craving a zoo visit. My friend Natalie sent me a link a few weeks ago that I didn't give enough thought to until I started this book. Apparently two twin panda babies were born in the Madrid Zoo about a month ago. I may have to go visit them after I finish this book. Until I finish it, I don't think I'll be doing much. It has me completely enganchada (hooked). I almost missed my metro stop today because I was reading too intensely.

http://gawker.com/5658528/behold-the-most-adorable-newborn-panda-twins-ever




On hyenas (p115):

"...in this state, the hyena's behavior was highly unpredictable and it could decide to attack me without warning. After a number of laps it stopped short at the stern bench and crouched, directing its gaze downwards, to the space below the tarpaulin. It lifted its eyes and rested them upon me. The look was nearly the typical look of a hyena -- blank and frank, the curiousity apparent with nothing of the mental set revealed, jaw hanging open, big ears sticking up rigidly, eyes bright and black -- were it not for the strain that exuded from every cell of its body, an anxiety that made the animal glow, as if with a fever. I prepared for my end. For nothing. It started running in circles again.

When an animal decides to do something, it can do it for a very long time. All morning the hyena ran in circles going yip yip yip yip yip. Once in a while it briefly stopped at the stern bench, but otherwise every lap was identical to the previous one, with no variations in movement, in speed, in the pitch or the volume of the yipping, in the counter-clockwise direction of travel. Its yipping was shrill and annoying in the extreme. It became so tedious and draining to watch that I eventually turned my head to the side, trying to keep guard with the corner of my eyes. Even the zebra which at first snorted each time the hyena raced by its head, fell into a stupor.

Yet every time the hyena paused at the stern bench, my heart jumped. And as much as I wanted to direct my attention to the horizon, to where my salvation lay, it kept straying back to this maniacal beast."

(This description struck me because of how similar the hyena's behavior is to that of about half the students in my first grade classes (6 years old) at the school where I'm teaching. The repetition, the yipping, doing the same thing over and over for a very long time, the tediousness, among other things....First graders aren't usually as violent as hyenas, and adult humans probably are similar in a lot of ways, but it's not as obvious as it is with first graders.)



On noticing details and necessity (p 139)

"There were six oarlocks, U-shaped notches in the gunnel for holding an oar in place, and five oars, since I had lost one trying to push Richard Parker away. Three oars rested on one side bench, one rested on the other and one made up my life-saving prow. I doubted the usefulness of these oars as a means of propulsion. This lifeboat was no racing shell. It was a heavy, solid construction designed for solid foating, not for navigating, though I suppose if we had been thirty-two to row we could have made some headway.

I did not grasp all these details--and many more-- right away. They came to my notice with time and as a result of necessity. I would be in the direst of dire straits, facing a bleak future, when some small thing, some detail, would transform itself and appear in my mind in a new light. It would no longer be the small thing it was before, but the most important thing in the world, the thing that would save my life. This happened time and again. How true it is that necessity is the mother of invention, how very true."



On fear (p 163-164)

"I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread.

Fear next turns fully to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, while your sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of your body. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear.

Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you’ve defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.

The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don’t, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you."