Life of Pi

Romans 8:18 - For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time [are] not worthy [to be compared] with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

Author's Note:  In Life of Pi, Pi Patel goes through a lot of hard times; he has to face touch decisions, death, and temptation.  This piece is all about why we need pain.  I tried to use alliteration, repetitive initial patterns, reversed patterns, anastrophe, and personification. 

Lost.  Alone.  Gripping on to sanity is all I can do.  Lying in this boat with nothing but the smell of saltwater and sorrows, I hope and wish for a miracle.  My skin burns -- the salt and sun burning through the layers of my flesh.  I pray.  Nothing.  I lose hope.  Fearing my death, fearing my loneliness, fearing the continuation of this nightmare.  Every obstacle that I faced was a hardship.  I lost my belief.  I gave into temptation.  My weakness is greater than my strength, because I let the best of fear out run my hope.  Why am I feeling this -- the regret, sadness, guilt, pain?  Why can't the world be painless, effortless?  Why don't we have time to just freeze the moment?  We need pain.  Without it we would have nothing to do with our time.

Life would be pointless, because we would never learn.  To have all the time in the world is a dangerous concept; we wouldn't need to try anything.  Forever to do something with our lives we would have -- that is if we ever chose to something.  We wouldn't make a difference, we wouldn't explore the world, we wouldn't change.  Living would be death.  We need the uncertainty and the possibility that tomorrow we wouldn't have the chance to attempt anything.  No one would live as though they were to die tomorrow.

With all that time, we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves.  People wouldn't express their love or any emotion for that matter; life would be black and white.  As human beings, we need fall apart every now and then -- get our feelings hurt, become broken down, and let out a tear every once in a while.  That's the only way we can grow and become stronger.  Without pain we wouldn't have emotion.  No one would know what it was love or hate, or laugh or cry.

Pain is also the one horrible thing that gives us a reason tolerate it.  It helps us.  Without pain, we would not have happiness and possibilities; we would forever live a life of pure death.  Pain is what keeps us alive.  Life is worth living because we have pain.  Where there is pain and suffering, there is love and hope.  In life, we should crack, but not enough to shatter; the amount of agony that you feel will be what drives you away.  The weakest people fall and wait for someone to help them up.  The strongest people fall and get back up to help others that have fallen.

Conventional Chaos

Author's Note: For this prompt we had to explain why we use lists and their significance to us and Pi.  For this I tried to use paradox, repetitive initial patterns, and antithetical patterns. I also focused on writing different kinds of sentences.

Lists: a way of organizing, keeping track, and preventing one thing from happening.  Chaos.  It's our way of controlling.  We use lists like we use rules and handbooks.  We need guide lines.  We need direction.  We need conventions.  It can be helpful sometimes, but a restraint too.  There are times where we need to keep our minds open to possibilities instead of limiting ourselves.

All through our childhood we are trained to follow rules; we have to raise our hand before we speak, move through the day listening for cues on what to do, and do nothing but what we are told.  Lists are another form of directions for us.  They are task lists and organization tools that help us control what we have.  No one can manage the chaos in the world.  You can try to contain it, but that would be pointless.  Why we use lists I am not sure of.  I guess we just like to feel authoritative.  The certainty, reassurance.

Pi is like us -- using the idea of taking inventory  to limit himself and keep track of what he has.  He is stuck in the middle of the ocean trying to stay alive and the list that he makes tells him what to do and what he can use.  The manual that he found also instructs him on how to survive.  Lists are boundaries.  A grip on life, control is what we seek.

Discovery requires and open mind, something that lists can't give us.  Perfection holds us back like guides do.  Pi is no longer in the conventional assurance of a swimming pool; he's in an ocean and if he wants to survive he has to face reality and realize that there are some things that cannot be predicted.  He needs to explore different realms.  I think as people, we should stop living in conventions too, because right now our lives aren't real.  

Human Behavior

Author's Note: In this piece I discussed the human qualities of animals and wrote a short parallel piece to a scene in the book.  In this piece I tried to use personification, repetitive initial patterns, reversed patterns, and climatic patterns.

Animals behave in ways that are of analogousness to humans.  Yann Martel uses many animals to portray humans in this story.  Sometimes we can comprehend the meaning of a story better than a sentence telling you what to do.  For example, using one of Aesop's Fables such as the Tortoise and the Hare is more understandable and relatable that someone telling you to not be overconfident and that looks can be deceiving.  Showing the relationship between animals and us demonstrates how we are alike.  In a way, we can learn from animals.

Throughout the story the zoo plays a key part.  Martel shows how a zoo is like family, but in that house, not everything is perfect.  Orange Juice the orangutan reminds me of mother -- the person who holds the family together.  She is a mother.  She felt lost without her children.  She felt  sadness when the hyena stripped the zebra of its life.  She felt enraged towards the situation.  "She pulled back her lips, showing off enormous canines, and began to roar."  Like a mother losing a child to death, the orangutan cried.  Strong and mighty as she was, still a tear fell from her eye.  Orangutans are human.  With emotion, life, death, sympathy . . . Their qualities are of ours. 

Animals are related to us; they are perceived and classified differently because of their look and behavior.  Pi may have been on a boat with nothing but animals, but he did have characters -- character's with minds of people.  The orangutan was a mother in fear of a criminal, the hyena.  All through this horrid scene the zebra was a child; Pi watched this helpless creature endure the pain.  On the boat, the animals resembled humans in an awful scene that none of us want to see in the days that we live.  A life lost in another's hand that is.

The mother timidly appeared from behind the wall.  She slowly stood up and regain he courage, only to see her child helpless and weak just waiting for this to end.  Mother screamed and cried, but nothing would cease the horrid scene she was about to witness.

"Mom," the child said faintly.  Child's arm out stretched as if it was waiting for Mother to hold its hand.

Dear God, Spirits, Anybody . . . Help me.  She pleaded, she begged, she screamed.  No one heard.  All was silent and sorrowful.  Mother sat and watched.  A hushed "sorry" escaped from her mouth.  She stifled her cries. 

The child kicked and squirmed only to agitate the criminal.  The criminal struck and let go an dark smile, its evil mind congratulating him on what he had committed. 

Mother screamed, she couldn't take it, she never could.  Criminal fled leaving her alone, weeping over the body of her child.   She cried and cried and cried.  No one heard.

What Lies in the Garden

Author's Note:  Normally, I just write narrative poems or free verse poems, but I haven't tried how to do a specific type of poetry, so I thought I would try.  This is a Shakespearean sonnet about the Garden of Eden.  There was a chapter in The Life of Pi where the basically explain every detail of the Garden of Eden.

Into the Garden,

Where the apple was bitten,

And many do not see beyond,

The new way of life that has dawned,

What is most intriguing,

Is the thought of seeing,

All of what is in the plot,

Four legged creature trot,

Nearby the trees that sparkle,

Under the rainbows so blissful,

You would wish to be in no such place,

Accept Eden a land of grace.