Life Of Pi

ANALYSIS:

vocabulary

buoy = bouée

drown = couler

There is a film made after the novel which will be released on 19th December 2012 in France.

You can watch the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9Hjrs6WQ8M

Story before the passage: Pi was aboard a ship which left Pondicherie for Canada and which has just sunk (= coulé) with all his family inside. They were supposed to settle in Canada and start a new life.

Story in the passage: (This is an excerpt from chapter 37 in the novel which contains 100 chapters) Pi’s first impulse when he sees the tiger working hard trying to swim is to save him but when he realizes what is about to do he changes his mind and tries to prevent the cat from climbing on board but in the end, they end up together on the same boat.

Both characters are in the middle of a storm/tempest at sea on the Pacific Ocean: “Everything was screaming: the sea, the wind”.

The characters:

Richard Parker’s the tiger’s name ...: Why does the tiger have a family name? Giving the animal human characteristics may be seen here an attempt to personify the animal in an anthropomorphic property. One may wonder if the tiger is going to converse with Pi later in the novel.

… whereas Pi’s the boys name.

Ravi: Pi’s elder brother

This association/relationship between the narrator and the tiger makes the reader wonder: are they friends? or will they become friends?

By the end of the scene, Pi realizes what he has done and its consequence, that is to say: he’s just saved a tiger from drowning but now the two of them are on the same lifeboat, which Pi realizes is a dangerous situation.

“Oh my God” “I had a ...three-year-old Bengal tiger in my lifeboat”.

there is a substantial number of:

- questions such as: “Do you see the lifebuoy?” including some rhetorical questions such as : “Why can’t reason give greater answers?”

- exclamations such as: “ I can’t bear it!”

- and onomatopoeias : “TREEEEEE!” (sound of the whistle) or “HUMPF!” (sound of Pi making an effort) (in capital letters)

Direct speech is also present throughout (= tout au long du) the scene: ”Tell me it’s a bad dream.”

Even if Pi uses direct speech, his interventions constitutes in reality a monologue even if he addresses the tiger.

Presence of religion: “Jesus, Mary, Muhammad and Vishnu” in an unusual combination. Thanks to this accumulation and transformation of the usual expression of astonishment “Jesus, Mary and Joseph”, Martel includes a comic ingredient in an otherwise very vivid and perilous situation.

“Vishnu preserve me, Allah protect me, Christ save me!”

This appears to be Pi’s chaotic last hour.

What Pi doesn’t know is that apart from the zebra and the tiger, there’s also a hyena on board, soon to be joined by an orang outang. This company evokes Noah’s Arch.

Magic realism

trip journal/logbook: all the artifices of an autobiography but in fact it’s a pseudo autobiography.

bildungsroman

start of Pi’s odyssey (// Ulysses) he will be several hundred days at sea.

progressive entrance into the magic world (contrary to Alice in Wonderland). The reader end up trusting the narrator.

Not only epic

Analepsis

window effect

Context

source: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/lifeofpi/context.html

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 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, but neither book received much critical or commercial attention. In 2002, however, Martel’s 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 written by a Commonwealth or Irish author) and had since been translated into thirty languages. Fox 2000 pictures bought the screen rights to Martel’s 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 Indira Gandhi was found guilty of charges related to her 1971 election campaign and was ordered to resign. Instead—and in response to a rising tide of strikes and protests that were paralyzing the government—Gandhi declared a state of emergency, suspending constitutional rights and giving herself the power 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 Gandhi’s political opponents

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