Independent+Novel+Study

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 * Chase Crawford**
 * Current Page: 100% Completed.**

**By: Yann Martel **
 * Life of Pi**

**Journal Entry One **

__(1) 1) Why did you choose this novel?__ //I chose the novel, “Life of Pi” because of a story my sister had told me once. When she was younger, around the age of twelve, she loved to write. One of the stories she had been working on was about a boy, on a boat with a tiger. She was very proud of this book. So she was strolling through the book store when she saw a book, with a “tiger on a boat”, on the cover. She read the back and was furious to find out that it was remarkably similar to the book she had wrote. “They stole my book!” she said. Even today, almost twelve years later, she still talks about how that author Yann Martel stole her book. //

__(3) 2) What has happened before the book began?__ //There was a great lot that happened before the book began. At the beginning of the book, the boy named Piscine Molitor Patel, (AKA Pi) talks on and on about how much he has gone through with his recent move. He is moving from India to Canada along with his brother Ravi, his father Santosh, and his mother Gita, and leaving all their friends, whether they be school friends, work friends, or animal friends behind him. He loves life at the zoo, and thinks it's paradise. To be stripped from said paradise, will make him deeply depressed. //

__ (6 )__ __ 3) __ __What is the setting of the novel? Is the setting important or could the novel be happening anywhere? Why?__  //The setting of the novel is a big deal in this point in the story. He is making the biggest move of his life, all the way across the world; from India to Canada. Although he will miss the warmth of India, and all of his animals - he will love Canada. The setting is sort of important, because it would not be as impactful if he had moved from Alberta to British Columbia. He changed continents. He is leaving his old life behind, to start anew. However, I do believe if they had said that the boy had moved from Africa to Nebraska, or from Mexico to Russia, that it would have made little impact on the story. //


 * Journal Entry Two **

__ (5) 1) Who is telling the story? __  //In the story, there are actually two narrators. There is a narrator - speaking from the authors point of view, and a narrator speaking from Pi's point of view. The concept of two narrators in intriguing, but can be sometimes hard to follow. In the story, the author takes a role - and even meets with Pi in a cafe.//

__(7) 2) What is the first problem the main charector encounters?__ //The first problem the main character encounters is the depression, and loneliness from moving to Canada from India. Pi his whole life behind him, and it has effected his emotional, and mental health. He misses his zoo animals a lot, and wishs they could have come with him. Nonetheless, he really does like Canada. In India, he was brought up on Hinduism, and when he was 15, became a Muslim. In Canada, he sees signs of all sorts of different religions, most of which he had read about. He saw statues from the Christian faith, and statues of Buddhist Monks. All these different religions come to a surprise to him; to see them all gathered in one place. In India, all they had was Hinduism. Pi decided that he would not be one religion, but all of them. The people were stunned and confused to hear that Pi had multiple religions, and tried to convince him that it was wrong, but he stood by his beliefs.//

__ (4 )__ __ 3) __ __What is going on when the story begins?__ //When the story begins, Pi is moving to Canada from his home country of India. It is going to be an immense change for him and his family. He is quite depressed that he left his friends - and most of all, his zoo animals behind. He will like Canada a lot, but he will be in a constant state of nostalgia when thinking about his home town. Pi more or less recites what has happened before the story started.//

__2) What information do you need to know before reading the novel?__
 * Journal Entry Three **

//You don’t need to know much information about the story prior to reading. The cover is, in a sense foreshadowing on what is going to happen later on in the story. The cover shows a man on a boat; in the middle of nowhere. It seems like a classic story about a man getting lost, but the catch is that there is a tiger on the boat with him. The tiger would perk your interest and make you want to read onwards.//

__8) How does the author get you to read on or hold your interest?__

//The clashing of religion in the story is what one could think was the authors way of keeping people interested in the story. Throughout this section, he tells about how he is not Hindu, Christian, or Muslim, but all at the same time. Everyone thinks this is strange and unacceptable, but he thinks that they are all the same, in their own way. He loves to worship god, and since nobody can agree on what god is, he must worship all of them. Another way the author holds the reader’s interest is by including himself in the story. He speaks in first person, and actually meets the main character – Pi. The author meets him in a coffee shop, years after the book’s main setting took place. Pi even has a wife. This unique style of writing is intriguing to some, and one could be led to read on.//

__11) Comment on the style of the novel. Is it easy or hard to follow the events?__

//The clashing of narrators, in my personal opinion, is sometimes hard to follow. You forget at times whether you are reading a scene from the past, or reading a scene from the present. Throughout the chapters the story rapidly switches back and forth through narrators, one being the author, and one being the main character, Pi. This reminds me of the twilight series, in which the perspective switch’s and is hard to follow. I extremely dislike this style of writing, but I am going to have to get through it to continue reading the story. In the end, I believe the past will mesh nicely into the present, and will cease to switch back and forth; but for now we just have to stick with what we are given.//

**Journal Entry Four**

__13) To which age group is the book aimed towards. Support your answer with an example.__ //I believe, because of the sophisticated writing, it is aimed at readers aged 16 - 19. I picked 16 because some of the language in the story is harder to understand, and could be confusing to some younger readers. I picked 19 as the maximum because of the genre of the story. Most 20 year olds will not want to read about a boy stuck on a boat with a tiger. They would be more into, for example books from Steven King. "A germ of religious exaltation, no bigger than a mustard seed, was sown in me and left to germinate//. It has never stopped growing since that day". //This is a quote from the story which I believe is a prime example of thebooks sohpisticated writing style. It is riddled with poetic devises, and larger, more uncommen words.//

//__22) Why would you (or wouldn't you) reccomend this book to a friend?__// //I would deffinetly not recommend this book to a friend for many reasons. These reasons enumerate as follows. Firstly, the book follows a very interchanging storyline. There are different plots for both the past, and the present, and when they intermix, it often gets confusing. I do not care for the fact that there are two narrators, it makes it extremely hard to folow. For example, they were sitting in a coffee shop near the start of the book, talking about his past, when BAM. The boat sinks. How did this all come into existence? Who knows. I sure didn't, at least until they told us two chapters later. Secondly, (and this bugs me an awful lot) the chapters are only a paragraph or two long. You can see the starting of three different chapters on nearly any page you look at. I think the author just wanted to make the book look bigger, when there is 100 or so chapters, but as a reader, it bugs me.// __//23) Did the book meet your expectations? Why or why not.//__ //The big, did not meet my expectations. I honestly thought that it would be a pretty interesting book, sorta like Hatchet was, but it turned out to be quite a dissapointment. The clashing of narrators at the beggining was the first turn off, followed by many more to come. That first turn off probably made me look at the book more negitively, and made me not look at the positive aspects of it, but my opinion still stands. As well, as soon as I saw that the first page of the book covered an entire three chapters, I expected, and braced for the worst. I am still pretty happy I read this book however, since my sister claims she wrote it. If she did write it however, I doubt she would have added the 100 chapters that could have been reduced to 30.//

**Focus Assignment**
 * Plot Outline**

In the first section of the book, it starts off with Pi as an older man. He is speaking in the first person, talking about his experiences as a child, to an author. He found religion and zoology to be a particularly interesting subject in his studies. On June 21st, 1977 they set sale to Canada on a ship, with the hopes of starting a brand new life there. The cargo ship contained crew and many cages full of zoo animals.

In the second part of the story, suddenly, the ship sinks. Pi is thrown off the ship by some crew members and into a small dingy. His journey is far from over however, because during his escape, he manages to be on a dingy with an Adult Bengal Tiger, a Zebra, a Hyena, and an Orangutang. Not long after the storm that brought the first ship down subsides, the tiger has disappeared. The hyena kills the zebra, and the Orangutang, before the tiger decides to show himself again. The tiger kills the hyena soon after, and that leaves just Pi and the tiger alone on the dingy. Pi lives off anything he can find, including filtered sea water, turtle blood, and at one point, tiger feces. Pi also manages to feed the tiger, who he soon then trains. During their adventure, Pi comes across another castaway. The castaway tries to attack and eat Pi, but the tiger destroys him — and I mean DESTROYED. The lifeboat pulls up to a strange island, in which they live on for a couple days. Whilst exploring, Pi discovers a fruit with human teeth in it. He then decides that the island eats people... He and the tiger get back on the boat and begin sailing once again. After a long ordeal, they finally wish ashore in Mexico. The tiger runs off almost immediately and Pi is rushed to a hospital.

Thirdly, and finally, Pi is interviewed by the Japanese Ministry of Transport, asking about what happened. When Pi tells them the story, they do not believe it. However, when he tells it again, but this time, with humans instead of animals, they believe him. The stories match up, so they decide not to go further with this investigation. Pi is then to go off, live his life, and someday, tell his story again.

Journal Entry

16) What was the climax of the novel?

//I believe that the climax of the novel is when Pi's raft finally lands on the shore of Mexico. It is when the main plot is resolved, but you are also left saddened by the fact that the Bengal Tiger just ran off. It is the single point where everything that happends after, is more of a summary. No more large twists or turns occur after the boat lands on shore, and everything is back to the way it was. Only without his family// 20) Is the novel believable? //I do not think that the story is believable at all. First, a Hyena could deffinetly not take on a Orangutang, it wouldn't even be a fair fight. Second of all, a Bengal Tiger would soon become hungry. When Pi had no food to provide for him, the tiger wouldn't have thought twice before chomping him into bits. Thirdly, what are the odds of coming across another castaway? The world is a big place, and the odds of coming across one would be less then slim. Also, he set sail in India, and ended up in Mexico. That would be quite the travel, through many storms, not to mension dangerous wildlife.// 21) What main things helped resolve the plot? //Some of the main things that help resolve the plot are seldom to come by. It is more or less a journey by sea, and you are bound to turn up somewhere, at some time. The book has been about the matter of when, and what happends along the way. Pi meets another castaway, who ends up trying to kill Pi for food, but the tiger soons deals with him, the best way tigers do. They found a secluded island, in which they found a fruit which had human teeth in it, so Pi concluded that the island eats people. A rediculous hypothesis, but he was also delerious from the lack of water and food. The plot ended up being resolved by Pi and the Tiger landing on the shore of Mexico.//

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