Paige

=
 READING LOG===== Book Title: Life of Pi Author: Yann Martel
 * 

Entry 1

Date: September 1, 2009

Summary:Throughout the last 20 pages of my book, Pi continues to practice Hundu, Christianity, and Muslim even though his father and churches disagree. However, his mother repects his desicion and allows him to get his first prayer rug, which he loves and cherishes. After getting his prayer rock, Pi approached his mother about being baptized as a Christian, and she permitted him to do so, even with the awkward stares of his friends and father. By the end of the last pages that I read, Pi is stil his "normal" self to those who look at him, but he is a happier, better person inside.

Reaction: I think that it's cool that Pi decided to live all three religions, but I also know that those three religions contridict themselves so i don't see how that could make sense to him while believing all of them and saying that he loves all three becasue he loves God, when there are more than one god in the Hindu religion. But, I thinks it's also good that he stood up to his father, his priest, his imam, and his pandit, because he truly does believe and love all of the religions.

Q-words

Entry 2

Date: September 14, 2009

Summary: Throughout the last couple of chapters that I've finished, Pi's ship, which was traveling to Canada, sunk while in the middle of the ocean. At first he didn't realize that anything was wrong when the alarming sound woke him up during the night, but after coming back inside from the dock, and being blocked by the water in the stairwell, he knew something must've been wrong. With help from a couple ship-mates, he was flown into the lifeboat along with a zebra and a tiger. Then the lifeboat is some how disattached (I'm not quite sure how because Yann Martel hasn't told yet), and Pi finds himself saving the tiger, who was beginnning to drown after being lonched from the boat.

Reaction: I really, really like this part of the book, it is definately more of the rising action, but not the climax. It has gotten really intense and I want to read even more than I did before. I also really like how Yann Martel tells about what happens; it's not all at once so you have to continue reading to find out the why's of everything.

Q-words: unperturbed- (adj.) calm and serene; berserk- (adj.) violently or destructively frenzied

Entry 3

Date: September 22, 2009

Summary: Throughout the last couple of chapters, the author has shown that there was also a zebra, hyena, and orang-utan thrown onto the lifeboat as well as the tiger and Pi. Knowing that hyenas are carnivores, I wasn't surprised when the zebra was eaten alive right in front of Pi, but I was surprised that the zebra lived throughout the night and into part of the next day even though most of its organs were in the hyena's stomach. After there was no more useful meat on the zebra, the hyena charged the orang-utan, who faught a hard fight, and of course, ended up losing. Although Pi was scared half to death, literally, he was only a little comforted to know that the tiger killed the hyena before it got to him.

Reaction: It makes so much more sense! I wonder how the tiger will stay tame so that both him and Pi will stay alive, since I know that from one of the pages I read about this book. It would be interesting to know that the tiger just did it on its own because he knew that without the help of Pi he would die (yes, Pi's meat might last him a while, but not forever).

Q-words: virulent(adj.) - violently or spitefully hostile, gru-I didn't get an actual definition for this, but from the text, I'm guessing it is some sort of animal.

Entry 4

Date: October 8, 2009

Summary: While reading these last few pages, I found out that Pi is starting to starve and is going crazy because of the loss of food. Now that he doesn't have to worry so much about survival from the hyena, his mind starts to think about his stomach. He looks for what seems like hours and he can't seem to get any closer to his destination, but as he gets up enough courage to be in the same general direction of Richard Parker(the tiger), he finds a closed door that leads to a huge tunnel of food and survival needs.

Reaction: Wow, I know exactly how it feels to be hungry and not even notice until you aren't occupied with anything. It's as if your body only focuses on what you want it to focus on, even if you don't think you're in control.

Q-words: zenith(n.) - the point on the celestial sphere vertically above a given position or observer, callous(adj.) - insensitive; indifferent; unsympathetic

Entry 5

Date: October 8, 2009

Summary: Pi makes a list of all the supplies he has so he can see what how long he might last. He uses some of the floating rope, which is a lot, to create a buoy boat that is connected to the boat so he can escape Richard Parkers claws when necessary. But, decides it foolish when he realizes that, if he wanted to, Richard Parker could easily jump from boat to boat and attack him anyways. Although it might not work as he thought it would, he continues to use it sometimes during the night hours.

Reaction: I don't know how it feels to be in the same living courters of a tiger, but I don't know if I would ever go to the extent that Pi did to get himself as far away from Richard Parker as he could. Pi says so himself that Richard Parker looked calm and didn't have a "wanting to kill" look upon his face, and I would take that as something to stay calm about, something to be thankful for, not something more that I could freak out about. But then again, that's what he was taught to do when it came to tigers, so maybe it was what I would've done.

Q-words: amok(n) - (among members of certain Southeast Asian cultures) a psychic disturbance characterized by depression followed by a manic urge to murder

Entry 6

Date: October 8, 2009

Summary: With the supplies that Pi found it the previous sections of the book, he uses some of the finish strings and hooks to attempt to catch some aquatic beast in this section. Although he is unseccessful in his first try, before he knows it, there is a huge traffic jam of fish coming right, literally flying through the sky into his boat. Richard Parker is fully aware of the situation and takes advantage of it, eating everything that comes his way. Pi catches a fish, and kills it, and ends up crying about it because of all the shame he felt for doing so.

Reaction: If it was life or death, I would kill the fish and get it over with. If Pi loved the fish so much, why did he hurt it more by braking its back instead of just cutting off his head? I wonder if he will ever eat fish after this experience is over.

Q-words: dorados(n.) - dolphin, mayhem(n.) - random or deliberate violence or damage, yogis(n.) - plural for one who practices yoga, sentient(n.) - the conscious mind

Entry 7

Date: October 12, 2009

Summary: Throughout the last couple of chapters, Pi looks around at the beautiful view he has, and realizes how blessed he is. He has a daily schedule from dawn to dusk, which is fine with him. And the last thing he makes a point of, is that he survived because he wasn't concentrating on the time, and there was no such thing as time to him, which means he remembers only certain, odd experiences, and he can't tell you in what order they occur.

Response: Wow! Yann Martel really made this character admirable. I think that the time thing that Pi learned, could be a lesson to all. We shouldn't spend our lives worried about today, or tomorrow, or yesterday, or next hour, or the next couple of minutes. We should enjoy life, and only remember those great, unusual experiences that make life, life!

Q-words: elusive(adj.) - cleverly or skillfully evasive, writhing(v.) - to twist the body about, or squirm, as in pain, violent effort, sanguinary(adj.) - full of or characterized by bloodshed

Entry 8

Date: October 15, 2009

Summary: In the last couple of chapters, Pi describes how, because of the saltwater and the sun, his clothes disintegrated and now he gets boils because of them. He also wonders why the people who wrote the survival guide only showed ways to survive with certain tools; the ones he either doesn't have or doesn't know how to use(the stars). In the end, he decided just to let the waves carry him instead of using up energy to get to a place he didn't know how to get to.

Response: Ouch!!! Those boils must've hurt sooooo bad!!!! And having Pi almost give up hope for survival by someones else just makes my heart hurt for him, and then I wonder if I would've even had hope as long as he had. He is just amazing to me.

Q-words: ambit (n.) - boundry;limit, unpalatably (adj.) - unpleasant to the taste

Entry 9

Date: October 15, 2009

Summary: In this past section, Pi learns the best way to get turtle blood and to kill it after doing so. He saves the turtle shells and uses them to defent himself from Richard Parker, who he's trying to train so he can stay on the boat without feeilng like he's intruding the beast's space. He tries to train him with a certain method about four times using a whistle, his feet, and a turtle shell. He is successful by the fifth time (well, at least Richard Parker stoped attacking him).

Response: At least he figured out something good to do with his time. It's just a shame that he doesn't HAVE anything else to do except morn over the things he can't control. It also was funny to me that he said he got used to the moving of the sea just like someone would get used to a lumpy bed, but it's so hard for me to imagine that!

Q-words: opaquely (adj.) - not transparent or translucent

Entry 10

Date: October 15, 2009

Summary: In these last couple of chapters, Pi morns over the fact that there are no books to read, not even any sciptures. He talks of how he keeps a journal on this piece of paper, but a lot of it doesn't make sense because he wanted to write as small and as little as possible. He also expresses how much he loves the fact that although he may not be saying the right prayers, or with the right people, he can still praise God and Allah. This is VERY important to him.

Response: I'm glad that Yann Martel went back to the fact that religion was important to Pi because I knew it was important to him, it just wasn't mentioned for a while. I also admire Pi's optimism, and I do also believe that one could worship God, or thier God, any time and any place!

Q-words: malaise (n.) - a vague feeling of bodily discomfort; a general sense of depression or unease