Life of Pi: Setting Seminar

Life of Pi: Settings

By: Shaelyn Fernandes, Melissa Charran and Dome Famy

The

Lifeboat

Pondicherry Zoo

What comes in mind when you think of a zoo?

• The Meerkat Island's visual appearance makes Pi and the readers feel "saved"
• Later on, Pi realizes that it is the exact opposite.
• the water became acidic at night, thus explaining the skulls and the actions of the meerkats.

In your opinion, what does the Meerkat Island Represent?

Relations

India---->Zoo

Canada---->Wildlife

• India is like the zoo because it's where Pi had everything as if it was like paradise
• He had three religions and even though it shocked some they eventually accepted it-freedom
• Canada is the place where his whole family would have to start over and try to make a living there which would make it more of a struggle

CONCLUSION

Every setting in the novel "Life of Pi" opposes what the readers may perceive to be the truth. A place of entrapment becomes paradise, a lonely journey becomes an expedition filled with the most presence, and a land becomes a man's enemy.

The

Meerkat

Island

"The trees were beautiful. They were like none I had ever seen before. They had a pale bark, and equally distributed branches that carried an amazing profusion of leaves. These leaves were brilliantly green, a green so bright and emerald that, next to it, vegetation during the monsoons was drab olive." (Martel 284-285)

• Symbolizes Pi’s own despair, as well as his hope that he will ever be found.

"I preferred to set off and perish in search of my own kind than to live a lonely half-life of physical comfort and spiritual death on this murderous island."

(Martel 313)

• Some people would see this as being an escape
• The reader may assume that Pi had been feeling lonely and desperate when added to what his true feelings were (seen within the quote)
• Feelings/Emotions: fear, rage, madness, hopelessness and apathy.
• Although he felt lonely he really wasn't: had been stranded with animals as well as a spiritual presence.

• If you were in Pi's position would you have done the same as him or would you have acted differently?

• How would you describe Pi's state of mind during his first couple of days on the lifeboat?

• Most people see zoo's as a place in which animals are trapped and held captive
• Pi thinks the opposite

"Animals in the wild live a life of compulsion and necessity within an unforgiving social hierarchy in an environment where the supply of fear is high and the supply of food is low and where territory must constantly be defended and parasites forever endured."(Martel 17)

"To be a castaway is to be a point perpetually at the centre of a circle. However much things may appear to change-the sea may shift from whisper to rage, the sky might go from fresh blue to blinding white to darkest black-the geometry never changes. Your gaze is always a radius. The circumference is ever great. In fact, the circles multiply. To be a castaway is to be caught in a harrowing ballet of circles. You are at the centre of one circle, while above you two opposing circles spin about. The sun distresses you like a crowd, a noisy, invasive crowd that makes you cup your ears, that makes you close your eyes, that makes you want to hide. The moon distresses you by silently reminding you of your solitude; you open your eyes wide to escape your loneliness. When you look up, you sometimes wonder if at the centre of a solar storm, if in the middle of the Sea of Tranquility, there isn't another one like you also looking up, also trapped by geometry, also struggling with fear, rage, madness, hopelessness, apathy." (Martel 239)

Thesis

The settings in Life of Pi creates illusions to persuade the reader upon making assumptions about Pi's emotions that contradict how he is actually feeling.

Which country is more free Canada or India?