Hi Friends

                     This week I read chapter 10 ,As Pi was describing about the characters and behaviours of different animals in the previous chapters ,here he wants to emphasize on the fact that animals will escape only when they feel that their enclosures are unsuitable for them to live there .Every animal has particular habitat needs that must be met .For example ,If it is sunny or too wet or too empty ,If its perch is too high or too  exposed ,If the ground is too sandy ,If there are too few branches to make etc  then the animal will not be at peace .There fore enclosures must be right i.e within the limits of the animal’s capacity to adapt.

                     Even the animals that are captured when they are fully mature are another example of escape-prone animals .Pi is telling that all living animals contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange ,sometimes inexplicable ways ,without it ,no species would survive .

                     Animals don’t escape to somwhere but from something .  Someting within there territory has frightened them -like intrusion of an enemy ,assault of a dominant animal ,a startling noise etc.Animal always escape where there ia sence of security and they are dangerous only to those who happen to get between them and their reckoned safe spot

                   That’s it for this week

          Hi friends,                    

                               In this chapter Piscine explains flight distance—the minimum distance at which an animal will tolerate a potential predator or enemy. Getting animals used to the presence of humans, he continues, is the key to the smooth running of a zoo and may be accomplished by creating a good enclosure, providing food and water, and knowing each animal well. Taken care of in this way, zoo animals rarely if ever run back to the wild.

 Hi Friends,

                    This week I read Chapter 8 ,in this chapter Mr. Pi  describes in vivid detail the day his father fed a live goat to a caged tiger to teach Pi and his brother, Ravi about the danger posed by wild animals.Later on his father explained the nature and the behaviour of different wild animals like Himalayan bears and the sloth bears ,the hippos,the hyenas ,the orang-utans,the ostrich,the spotted deer,the arabian camel,the black swans ,the elephants and at last the guinea pigs   But, according to a sign in the zoo, the most dangerous animal of all is man.

Hi friends

                 This week, I read Chapter 7 which is bit different from the earlier Chapters what I read , as this chapter is all about Mr. Pi’s  biology teacher, Mr. Satish kumar at Petit Seminaire, an atheist communist with whom Pi feels a deep kinship. In fact, Pi says, atheists are simply people of a different faith, with strong beliefs. It is agnostics, full of doubt and uncertainty and devoid of faith, whom Pi cannot stomach.

                 Mr. Pi describes his biology teacher’s appearence as peculiar one , his construction was Geometric :he looked like two triangles ,a small one and a larger one ,balanced on two parallel lines .

                 Pi discovered his teacher, a  avowed atheist not in the classroom but at the zoo. He was a regular visitor who read the labels and decriptive notices in their entirety and approve of every animal he saw. He don’t believe in religion ,according to him religion is darkness, and a little scientific knowledge will expose religion as superstitious bosh.

                 Pi’s teacher says that God does not exist ,the reason for his teacher being  atheist  ,when he was small he was bedridden as he racked with polio.He asked himself every day where is God? It wasn’t God who saved me -it was medicine  who saved him.

                It is agnostics, full of doubt and uncertainty and devoid of faith, whom Pi cannot stomach. According to Mr. Pi to choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to chosing immobility as a means of Transportation.

                  Well Friends ,I do hope the story will be more interesting from now onwards  ,as Pi corelating the  Zoo life with  the life of human beings

                             that’s it for now

                   Hello friends This week I read yet another short chapter,Here  the main voice is voice  of the author, who tells us that Pi’s kitchen in Canada is extremely well-stocked. Author admires him as an excellent cook, his house always smells delicious .His spice rack looks like an apothcary’s shop .

                    Being in India he handles western dishes equally well like macaroni and cheese and vegetarian tacos of Mexico .His cupboards are jam packed with stacked cans and pacakages just to last  the siege of Leningrad.

                           That’s it for now .

               Hello friends this week I read Chapter 5 ,PI himself is the narrator of this chapter .

              Here  Pi describes the teasing he received as a child because of his full name, Piscine, which the other school children turned into Pissing, and how he trained his classmates and teachers to call him Pi by writing it on the chalkboard of each of his classrooms.    

The watery associations of Piscine Molitor’s full name are undeniable: piscine not only means “pool” in French but shares a derivation with pisces, or fish. As befits his name, Pi learns how to swim from Francis Adirubasamy, and he gravitates toward water. His full name performs two related and yet antithetical functions in the text: first, it emphasizes the idea that a very strong swimmer like Pi might realistically have survived in the ocean after a shipwreck; and second, it is such an odd name that is has the ring of allegory, positioning Pi as a mythic or fabled character. The literal, mathematic symbol pi, an almost impossibly long number whose combinations never repeat, also symbolizes Pi’s long journey, with all its variations.

Given the amount of energy that Pi devotes to the ideas of rituals and routine in the lives of zoo creatures, it is telling that he uses repetition to train his schoolmates and teachers into calling him Pi. One day at school, he leaps up during roll call and writes his full name on the blackboard; then he underlines his preferred nickname, Pi, and speaks it aloud. He carries out this act in each classroom, during every roll call, to the point where his fellow students start to follow along. For humans as well as animals, repetition proves to be a very effective teacher

           This week I read Chapter 4 ,Mr. Pi is narrating his Chilhood days being grew up in  Zoo ,

                  Pi’s father, Santosh Patel, used to run the Pondicherry Zoo, and Pi explains that he grew up thinking the zoo was paradise. He discusses the ritualistic habits of zoo creatures. Pi remembers the alarm-clock precision of the roaring lions and the howler monkeys, the songs that are birds’ daily rites, the hours of day at which various animals could be counted on to entertain him. He defends zoos against those who would rather the animals were kept in the wild. He argues that wild creatures are at the mercy of nature, while zoo creatures live a life of luxury and constancy. Pi tells us that the Pondicherry Zoo is now shut down and that many people now hold both zoos and religions in disrepute.

                   The zoo occupies an important place in Pi’s memory. Indeed, growing up in a zoo shaped his belief system, taught him about animal nature, and imbued in him many significant lessons about the meaning of freedom. Zoos are places of habit: there are chores that the keepers must perform every day, such as feeding and cleaning the animals and their cages, as well as animal rituals. Pi establishes early on the orderliness of the zoo and the comforting sense of regularity it gives him. Animals prefer the consistency of zoo life just as humans accustom themselves to the rituals and abundance of modern society, their own sort of zoo. Zoo animals rarely run away, even if given the opportunity, and they enjoy the abundant water and food. In the wild, by contrast, life is a constant battle for survival, a race against the odds and other creatures. Death is a constant presence and possibility. All of us living in modern society are essentially zoo creatures, defanged and protected from the wilderness waiting for us beyond the enclosure walls, walls from which Pi will soon be freed.

 This week I read Chapter 2 ,It’s a very short chapter , where  the author  Yann Martel is talking about the narrator of the Story Mr. Pi of his physical stature .He lived in scarborough ,he is a small,slim man not more than five foot ,having dark hair and dark eyes with coffee -coloured complexion with expressive face .

                             This chapter is very short and still I have  to go a long way for getting the overall face value of the hero of the story Mr. Pi (aka Piscine Molitor) 

                       In this chapter the narrator of the story Mr. Pi (aka Piscine Molitor Patel ) talking about how he got his name (Piscine Molitor) and how his uncle taught him to swim .In the very first line of the chapter the narrator tells that he was named after aswimming pool .

                       His uncle Francis Adiru baswamy (aka mamaji means uncle ) ,who was a champion and a competitive swimmer of south India at that time .Pi considered him as aquatic guru(master).But narrator’s brother Mr. Ravi used to tease Pi’s uncle ,since his uncle’s chest is so tick and the legs are so skinny that Ravi called him nickname Mr. Fish.

                      Mamaji used to swam 30 length every morning at the pool of the Aurobindo Ashram .He trie to teach Pi’s parents to swim,but he never got them to go beyond wading up to their knees at the beach and making ludicrous round motions with their arms. Mamaji was patient and encouraging to train me as a good swimmer.

                    The narrator is gushing through his vivid memories of swimming with Mamaji .He was telling that his gift to mamaji ,one birthday was two full length of credible butterfly when he was 13 .

                    Mr . Pi tells more about his mamaji .Mamaji studied in paris for two years in the early 1930 ,at this time Pi’s native place Pondicherry was a French Colony and the remaining India was under the British empire’s rule         

By binujohnieee

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• Posted on: Mon, Jan 29 2007 11:13 AM