LIFE OF PI

Life of PI is a Canadian fantasy adventure novel by Yann Martel

published in 2001. The protagonist, Piscine Molitor PI Patel, an Indian boy
accepted from Pondicherry, explores issues of spirituality and practicality
from an early age. He survives 227 days after a shipwreck while stranded on
a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.
The novel, which has sold more than ten million copies word wide, was
rejected by at least five London publishing houses before being accepted by
Knopf Canada, which published it in September 2001. The UK edition won the
Man Booker Prize for Fiction the following year. It was also chosen for CBC
Radios Canada Reads 2003, where it was championed by author Nancy Lee.
The French translation, LHistoire de Pi, was chosen French CBC version of
the contest Le combat des livres, where it was championed by Louise
Forestier. The novel won the 2003 Boeke Prize, a South Africa novel award. In
2004, it won the Asian/Pacific America Award of Literature in Best Adult
Fiction for years 2001-2003. In 2012 it was adapted into a theatrical feature
film directed by Ang Lee with a screenplay by David Magee.

To start with the main character Pi Patel, an adult Canadian, reminisces

about his childhood in India. His father owns a zoo in Pondicherry. The
livelihood provides the family with a relatively affluent lifestyle and some
understanding of animal psychology. Pi describes how he acquired his full
name, Piscine Molitor Patel, as a tribute to the swimming pool in France. After
hearing schoolmates tease him by transforming the first name into Pissing,
he establishes the short form of his name Pi when he starts secondary
school. The name, he says, pays tribute to the irrational number which is the
ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. In describing his
experiences Pi describes several other unusual situations involving proper
names. Two visitors to the zoo, one a devout Muslim and one a committed
atheist, bear identical names. A memorably ferocious tiger at the zoo bears
the name Richard Parker as the result of a clerical error in which human and
animal names were reserved.
Pi is raised a Hindu who practices vegetarianism. As a fourteen-yearold he investigates Christianity and Islam and decides to become an
adherent of all three religious, saying he just wants to love God. He tries to
understand God through the lens of each religion and comes to recognize
benefits in each one.
Shifting government policies led to a decision by Pis father to sell the
zoo and emigrate with his wife and two sons to Canada. The second part of

the novel begins with Pis family abroad the Tsimtsum, the Japanese freighter
that is transporting animals from their zoo to North America. A few days out
of port from Manila, the ship encounters a storm and sinks. Pi managers to
escape in a small lifeboat, only to learn that the boat also holds a spotted
hyena, an injured Grants zebra, and orangutan. To Pis distress, the hyena
soon kills the zebra and the orangutan. At this point Pi learns that a 450pound Bengal tiger has been hiding under the boats tarpaulin: Richard
Parker, who had boarded the lifeboat with ambivalent assistance from Pi
himself. The tiger kills and eats the hyena.
Frightened, Pi constructs a small raft out of rescue floatation devices,
tethers it to the stem of the boat and retreats to it. He begins conditioning
Richard Parker to take a submissive role by using food as a positive reinforce
and seasickness as a punishment mechanism while using a whistle for
signals. Pi asserts himself as the alpha animal and is eventually able to share
the boat with Richard Parker.
Pi recounts various events while adrift in the Pacific Ocean. At his
lowest point, exposure renders him blind, feeble and unable to catch fish. In
a state of delirium he talks with a marine echo that he eventually identifies
as Richard Parker finally speaking up. Later Pis boat comes ashore on a
floating island network of algae and inhabited by meerkats. Pi gains strength
but his discovery that the islands plant life is carnivorous forces him to
return to the boat. Two hundred and twenty-seven days after the ships
sinking, the lifeboat washes into a beach in Mexico. Richard Parker
disappears into the nearby jungle without a glance back.
The last part of the novel describes a conversation between Pi and two
officials from the Japanese Ministry of Transport who are conducting an
inquiry into the shipwreck. They meet him at the hospital in Mexico where he
is recovering. Pi tells them his tale but the officials reject it as unbelievable.
Pi then offers them a second story in which he is adrift on a lifeboat not with
zoo animals, but with the ships cook, a Taiwanese sailor with a broken leg,
and his own mother. The cook amputates the sailors leg for use as fishing
bait, then kills the sailor and Pis mother food. Pi then kills the cook and dines
on him.
The officials note parallels between the two stories and conclude that
hyena symbolizes the cook, the zebra the sailor, the orangutan Pis mother,
and the tiger Pi. Pi points out that neither story can be proven and neither
explains the cause of the shipwreck. He asks the officials which story they
prefer. They choose the story with the animals. Pi thanks them and says And
so it goes with God.
REACTION

To sum up, I can say that Pi never give up in his struggles. Though he is
alone, he arrive hand to manage his situations without depending to others.
He stood up and raised his hope that he can still survive on that isolated
island. I can connect it in my life that no matter what problem I am
encountering god is always on my side guiding me though my journey.
HAMLET
In the 20th century, feminist critics opened up new approaches to Gertrude
and Ophelia. New Historicist and cultural materialist critics examine the play
in its historical context, attempting to piece together its original
environment. They focused on the gender system of early modern England,
pointing to the common trinity of maid, wife, or window, with whores outside
of that stereotype. In this analysis, the essence of Hamlet is the central
characters changed

Dramatic Structure
Hamlet departed from contemporary dramatic convention in several ways.
For example, in Shakespeares day, plays were usually expected to follow the
advice of Aristotle in his Poetics: that a drama should focus on action, not
character in hamlet, Shakespeare reverses this so that it through the
soliloquies, not the action, that the audience learns Hamlets motives and
thoughts. The plays is full of seeming discontinuities and irregularities of
action, except in the bad quarto. At one point, as in the Gravedigger scene,
Hamlet seems resolved to kill Claudius: in the next scene, however, when
Claudius appears, he is suddenly tame. Scholars still debate whether these
twists are mistakes or intentional additions to add to the plays theme of
confusions and duality. Finally, in a period when most plays ran for two hours
or so, the fulltext of Hamlet-Shakespeares longest play, with 4,042 lines,
totaling 29,551 words-takes over four hours to deliver. Even today the play is
rarely performed in its entirety, and has only once been dramatized on film
completely, with Kenneth Brannaghs 1996 version. Hamlet also contains a
favorite Shakespearean device, a play within the play, a literary device or
conceit in which one story is told during tha action of another story.
REACTION
Hamlet is one of Shakespeares four most important tragedies the other
being Macbeth, King Lear and Othello. The way Shakespeare handles the
character of the protagonist of the play is unique in every aspect. The eNotes
study guide on Hamlet notes: Hamlet endures as the object of universal
identification because his central moral dilemma transcends the Elizabethan
period, making him a man for all ages. In his difficult struggle to somehow

act within a corrupt word and yet maintain his moral integrity, hamlet
ultimately reflects the fate of all human beings. This projection of fate of all
human being is probably the most important aspect of the character of
Hamlet and must be kept in mind while writing personal reaction on the
character of Hamlet.

Perception of his mother as a whore because of her failure to remains

faithful to old Hamlet. In consequence, Hamlet loses his faith in all women,
treating Ophelia as if she too were a whore and dishonest with Hamlet.
Ophelia, by some critics, can be seen as honest and fair; however it is
virtually impossible to link these two traits, since fairness is an outward
trait, while honestly is an inward trait.
From the early 17th century, the play was famous for its ghost and vivid
dramatization of Melancholy and insanity, leading to a procession of mad
courtiers and ladies in Jacobean and Caroline drama. Through it remained
popular with mass audiences, late 17th-century Restoration critics saw
Hamlet as primitive and disapproved of its lack of unity and decorum. This
view changed drastically in the 18th century, when critics regarded Hamlet as
a hero-a
Pure, brilliant young man thrust into unfortunate circumstances. By the mid18th century, however, the advent of Gothic literature brought psychological
and mystical readings, returning madness and the Ghost to the forefront. Not
until the late 18th century did critics and performers begin to view Hamlet as
confusing and inconsistent. Before then, he was either mad, or not; either a
hero, or not; with no in-betweens. These developments represented a
fundamental change in literary criticism, which came to focus more on
character and less on plot. By the 19th century, Romantic critics valued
Hamlet for its internal, individual conflict reflecting the strong contemporary
emphasis on internal struggles and inner character in general. Then too,
critics started to focus on Hamlets delay as a character trait, rather than a
plot device. This focus on character and internal struggle continued into the
20th century, when criticism branched in several directions, discussed in
context and interpretation below.