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TheShroomHermit
Divine Hermit of the Everything


Registered: 02/19/02
Posts: 7,575
Loc: border of Canada and Mexi...
Last seen: 8 months, 13 hours
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The Life of Pi
#3785280 - 02/15/05 07:15 PM (19 years, 4 days ago) |
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In the novel, The Life of Pi, the main character, Pi Patel, survives a shipwreck in the Pacific Ocean in which his entire family dies. He spends months aboard a lifeboat before drifting to the Mexican coast. While recovering, he is visited by Japanese government officials trying to discover the fate of the sunken ship. Pi proceeds to tell them his tale, of sharing his dinghy with a Bengal tiger (and a few other animals from his father?s zoo, until the tiger eats them), encountering fish-eating algae and tree-dwelling rodents on a mysterious island, and running miraculously into a starving, lifeboat-paddling Frenchman in the middle of the Pacific (who, by the way, is also eaten by the tiger). They cannot believe him. He then tells another version of his story, without the astonishing and miraculous details.
Pi: ?But before you go, I?d like to ask you something.? ?Yes.? ?The Tsimtsum sank on July 2nd, 1977.? ?Yes.? ?And I arrived on the coast of Mexico, the sole human survivor of the Tsimtsum, on February 14th 1978.? ?That?s right.? ?I told you two stories that account for the 227 days in between.? ?Yes, you did.? ?Neither explains the sinking of the Tsimtsum.? ?That?s right.? ?Neither makes a factual difference to you.? ?That?s true.? ?You can?t prove which story is true and which is not. You must take my word for it.? ?I guess so.? ?In both stories the ship sinks, my entire family dies, and I suffer.? ?Yes, that?s true.? ?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?? Mr. Okamoto: ?That?s an interesting question?? Mr. Chiba: ?The story with animals.? Mr. Okamoto: ?Yes. The story with animals is the better story.? Pi: ?Thank you. And so it goes with God.?
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deafpanda
Stranger
Registered: 05/07/04
Posts: 984
Loc: Inguland
Last seen: 12 years, 4 months
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Hah I forgot about that. I read it a while ago and just remember it now as a story about a kid in a boat with a tiger and some other animals.
Good book.
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SneezingPenis
ACHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!111!

Registered: 01/15/05
Posts: 15,427
Last seen: 6 years, 9 months
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Re: The Life of Pi [Re: deafpanda]
#3785506 - 02/15/05 07:57 PM (19 years, 4 days ago) |
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I had one big problem with this book. In the beginning it says "here is a story that will make you believe in God". This book doesn't do that, doesn't even try to do that, nor makes any references towards that preamble later on. It was a very well written book, and a fairly good story. But that seems to be part of a trend in books now. Mention in some way something about jesus or God BAM! you have a huge market of christians. The Celestine Prophecy is a great example of this.
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mecreateme
YoUisMEEMsiUoY


Registered: 05/13/04
Posts: 2,727
Loc: Memphrica
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Of course, the obtuse can never believe in God, even when it is dictating these words to you right now.
The simple fact that you read the book should make you believe in God.
-------------------- No ONE wants to know the ultimate TRUTH, as soon as YOU find IT out, YOU want to forget IT. You are everything's way of feeling itself. Happy Schwag, everygodly!
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SneezingPenis
ACHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!111!

Registered: 01/15/05
Posts: 15,427
Last seen: 6 years, 9 months
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So, by reading any book, one should believe in God? no wonder its so easy to be a christian.
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Alan Stone
Corpus

Registered: 11/23/02
Posts: 986
Loc: Ten feet up
Last seen: 18 years, 7 months
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The "real" story - according to the Japanese interrogators - would have made a pretty lousy novel, too. I guess the book can't make you believe in God so much as make you believe in the value of the God idea.
-------------------- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. - Aristotle
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