Life of Pi

Life of Pi

Yann Martel

 I would turn Portugal into a fiction. That’s what fiction is about, isn't it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence? 

I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it
will hang a man nonetheless if he’s not careful.

A good zoo is a place of carefully worked-out coincidence: exactly where an animal says to us, “Stay out!” with its urine or other secretion,  we say to it, “Stay in!” with our barriers. Under such conditions of diplomatic peace, all animals are content and we can relax and have a look at each other.

To  choose  doubt  as  a  philosophy  of  life  is  akin to  choosing  immobility  as  a  means  of transportation.

Life  will  defend itself no matter how small it is.

Whatever the reason for wanting to escape, sane or insane, zoo detractors should realize that animals don’t  escape to somewhere but from something  if there is one thing an animal hates above all else, it is the unknown.

So you see, if you fall into a lion’s pit, the reason the lion will tear you to pieces is not because it’s hungry–be assured, zoo animals are amply fed–or because it’s bloodthirsty, but because you’ve invaded its territory.

As an aside, that is why a circus trainer must always enter the lion ring first, and in full sight of the  lions. In  doing so,  he  establishes  that the  ring is  his territory,  not  theirs,  a  notion that  he reinforces by shouting, by stomping about, by snapping his whip. The lions are impressed. Their disadvantage weighs heavily on them. Notice how they come in: mighty predators though they are, “kings of beasts,” they crawl in with their tails low and they keep to the edges of the ring, which is always round so that they have nowhere to hide. They are in the presence of a strongly dominant male, a super-alpha male, and they must submit to his dominance rituals. Only  the  trainer  better  make  sure  he  always  remains super  alpha.  He  will  pay  dearly  if  he unwittingly slips to beta.

 I have so many bad nights to choose from that I’ve made none the champion.

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... Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you’ve defeated yourself

I will  confess that  I  caught  one  of his  arms  with  the  gaff  and  used  his flesh as  bait.  I  will further confess that, driven by the extremity of my need and the madness to which it pushed me, I ate some of his flesh. I mean small pieces, little  strips that I meant for the gaff’s hook that, when dried by the sun, looked like ordinary animal flesh. They slipped into my mouth nearly unnoticed. You must understand, my suffering was unremitting and he was already dead. I stopped as soon as I caught a fish. I pray for his soul every day.

I did not scream. I think only in movies is horror vocal.

-“Don’t you bully me with your politeness! Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with
hard to believe?”
-“We’re just being reasonable.”
-“So am I! I applied my reason at every moment. Reason is excellent for getting food, clothing and shelter. Reason is the very best tool kit. Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away. But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater.”

 “Tigers  exist,  lifeboats  exist,  oceans  exist.  Because  the  three  have  never  come together in your narrow, limited experience, you refuse to believe that they might. Yet the plain fact is that the Tsimtsum brought them together and then sank.”

-“We find it very unlikely.”
-“So is winning the lottery, yet someone always wins.”

-“So you want another story?”
-“Uhh…no. We would like to know what really happened.”
-“Doesn’t the telling of something always become a story?”
-“Uhh…perhaps in English. In Japanese a story would  have an element of invention in it. We don’t want any invention. We want the ‘straight facts’, as you say in English.”
-“Isn’t  telling  about  something–using  words,  English or  Japanese–already  something  of  an invention? Isn’t just looking upon this world already something of an invention?”
-“Uhh…”
-“The  world  isn’t  just  the  way  it  is.  It  is  how  we  understand  it,  no?  And  in  understanding
something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn’t that make life a story?”