The Life of Pi
The Importance of a Life Changing Story
In the book, “Life of Pi”, I believe Martel was aiming to express the importance of understanding that life is a story. The example of the two different stories at the end is to convey how human beings have different ways of identifying the truth in a story. Pi shows us this when he says “I know what you want. You want a story that won’t surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won’t make you see higher or further or differently. You want a flat story. An immobile story. You want dry, yeastless factuality”(Martel 302). Martel is trying to convey the message, how one human may understand a story can be totally different from how the other sees it.
At the end of the book Martel allows the reader to choose which story they believe. If you remember at the beginning of the book Martel tells us that this story will convince you to believe in God. That is exactly what he does. The two different accounts of the story seem to be a symbol of understanding religion. The first story, to me, gave off a vibe of faith because I wanted to believe that story actually happened. The second story was dry and seemed to be more factual than the first. These stories were a contrast between religion and atheism. Both stories contained the same facts but the first story made the reader want to believe it because it was a stunning account of events, like most religious books. Pi hints to this logic when he asks, “So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can’t prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals”(Martel 317). The Japanese men state that they believe the story with the animals and PI replies, “Thank you .And so it goes with God”(Martel317). This meant that the men believed in
In the book, “Life of Pi”, I believe Martel was aiming to express the importance of understanding that life is a story. The example of the two different stories at the end is to convey how human beings have different ways of identifying the truth in a story. Pi shows us this when he says “I know what you want. You want a story that won’t surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won’t make you see higher or further or differently. You want a flat story. An immobile story. You want dry, yeastless factuality”(Martel 302). Martel is trying to convey the message, how one human may understand a story can be totally different from how the other sees it.
At the end of the book Martel allows the reader to choose which story they believe. If you remember at the beginning of the book Martel tells us that this story will convince you to believe in God. That is exactly what he does. The two different accounts of the story seem to be a symbol of understanding religion. The first story, to me, gave off a vibe of faith because I wanted to believe that story actually happened. The second story was dry and seemed to be more factual than the first. These stories were a contrast between religion and atheism. Both stories contained the same facts but the first story made the reader want to believe it because it was a stunning account of events, like most religious books. Pi hints to this logic when he asks, “So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can’t prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals”(Martel 317). The Japanese men state that they believe the story with the animals and PI replies, “Thank you .And so it goes with God”(Martel317). This meant that the men believed in