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Jesse rated a book 4 of 5 stars

Life of Pi
by Yann Martel

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Life of Pi was a fairly engaging story in terms of plot and character, but what made it such a memorable book, for me at least, was its thematic concerns. Is it a "story that will make you believe in God," as Pi claims? I'm not sure I'd go that far,...more Life of Pi was a fairly engaging story in terms of plot and character, but what made it such a memorable book, for me at least, was its thematic concerns. Is it a "story that will make you believe in God," as Pi claims? I'm not sure I'd go that far, but I would recommend it to people who enjoy thinking about the nature of reality and the role of faith in our lives.

To me, the entire thrust of the book is the idea that reality is a story, and therefore we can choose our own story (as the author himself puts it). So if life is a story, we have two basic choices: we can limit ourselves only to what we can know for sure - that is, to "dry, yeastless factuality" - or we can choose "the better story." I suppose in Pi's world the "better story" includes God, but he doesn't say this is the only meaningful possibility. In fact, Pi calls atheists his "brothers and sisters of a different faith," because, like Pi, atheists "go as far as the legs of reason will carry them - and then they leap."

Pi's point, in my opinion, is that human experience always involves interpretation, that our knowledge is necessarily limited, that both religious belief and atheism require a leap of faith of one kind or another - after all, there's so little we can know for sure. For Pi, then, we shouldn't limit ourselves only to beliefs that can be proven empirically. Instead, we should make choices that bring meaning and richness to our lives; we should exercise faith and strive for ideals (whatever the object of our faith and whatever those ideals might be). Or, as Pi says in taking a shot at agnosticism: "To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation."

In the end, however, I didn't necessarily read this book as an invitation to believe in God. Instead, I saw it as a mirror held up to the reader, a test to see what kind of worldview the reader holds. That is, as Pi himself says, since "it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with the animals or the story without the animals?" Or, as I took it: Is it my nature to reach for and believe the better but less likely story? Or do I tend to believe the more likely but less lovely story? What view of reality do I generally hold?

Another equally important question is this: How did I come by my view of reality? Do I view the world primarily through the lens of reason? Or do I view it through the lens of emotion? For Pi, I think it's safe to say his belief comes by way of emotion. He has, as one reviewer noted, a certain skepticism about reason (in fact, Pi calls it "fool's gold for the bright"). Pi also has what I would call a subtle but real basis for his belief in God, namely, "an intellect confounded yet a trusting sense of presence and ultimate purpose." But belief still isn't easy for him. Despite his trusting sense of purpose, Pi acknowledges that "Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer." So it's not that a life of faith is easier, in Pi's opinion, it's that for him belief is ultimately more worthwhile.

This is not to say, however, that Pi holds a thoroughly postmodern view of God or that he believes as a matter of art rather than in a sincere way. True, Pi suggests that whether you believe his story had a tiger in it is also a reflection of your ability to believe in something higher. And of course it's easy to read Pi's entire story as an attempt to put an acceptable gloss on a horrific experience. Still, there are a number of clues throughout the book that give the reader at least some reason to believe Pi's story did have a tiger in it (for instance, the floating banana and the meerkat bones).

As such, Pi's two stories could be seen as an acknowledgement that both atheism and belief in God require some faith, and therefore it's up to each of us to choose the way of life that makes us the happiest. He's not necessarily saying that the truth is what you make it, he's saying we don't have unadulterated access to the truth: our imagination, personalities, and experiences unavoidably influence the way we interact with the world. But that's not the same as saying whatever we imagine is true. I think Pi, for instance, knows which of his stories is true. It's not Pi but the reader who is left with uncertainty and who therefore has to throw her hands up and say "I don't know," or else choose one story or the other. And to me, this isn't too far off from the predicament we all find ourselves in.

And that's what makes Life of Pi such a challenge to the reader: Pi's first story is fantastic, wonderful, but hard to believe. Yet there's some evidence that it happened just the way he said it did. And Pi's second story is brutal, terrible, but much easier to accept as true. Yet it's not entirely plausible either, and it leaves no room for the meerkat bones or Pi's "trusting sense of presence and ultimate purpose." If the reader personally dismisses the tiger story out of hand, I suppose that's another way of saying the reader, by nature, tends to believe the more likely but less lovely story. In the same way, if the reader gets to the story's payoff and still believes there was a tiger in the boat, the reader is probably inclined to believe the more emotionally satisfying story. But it should be born in mind that Pi doesn't definitively state which story was true, something which only he can know for sure. All we can really be sure of, in Pi's universe, is that he was stuck on a lifeboat for a while before making it to shore. So which story do I believe? I struggled with that question for a long time. But after thinking about it for a couple of days, I'll end this review with the final lines from the book: "Very few castaways can claim to have survived so long at sea as Mr. Patel, and none in the company of an adult Bengal Tiger."(less)

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Jesse rated a book 5 of 5 stars

The Brothers Karamazov
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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Basically, the Brothers Karamazov is one of my all-time favorite books, in large part because I read it with one of my all-time favorite philosophy professors. Although the book has a fairly compelling plot, to me it's ultimately the characters and t...more Basically, the Brothers Karamazov is one of my all-time favorite books, in large part because I read it with one of my all-time favorite philosophy professors. Although the book has a fairly compelling plot, to me it's ultimately the characters and thematic concerns underpinning the story that keep it near the top of my list, and that's where I'd like to put the focus of this review (in hopes of sharing some of the stuff my teacher pointed out that I never would have come up with on my own). Of course, thematic interpretation is necessarily a subjective endeavor, and I don't claim to know what Dostoevsky was trying to say when he wrote this book. Even so, here's a list of what I believe to be some of the major themes running throughout the story:

1. The Contradiction of Human Nature – Human nature is broad, contradictory, and capable of containing opposite desires and ideals. In other words, Dostoevsky seems to believe that the same person, at the exact same time, can be equally drawn to the noble or lofty on the one hand, and the sensual or degrading on the other. This means that in every sinner there is a saint and in every saint there is a sinner.

2. Embracing Human Contradiction in the Right Way – Given the above, Dostoevsky seems to argue that we should accept both the lofty and the sensual in our human nature. That is, instead of trying to purge one side and exalt the other, we should seek to bring both sides of the contradiction together in the right sort of way: we should seek to sanctify and lift our sensual, passionate nature in a way that will allow us to love and connect with others; and we should seek to soften and humble our lofty, prideful nature in a way that will allow us to find peace and hope by looking outside of ourselves. We do this chiefly by building loving connections with others, by sincerely believing the best of ourselves and of others, by sensing our connection to everything, by forgiving and asking forgiveness, and by accepting our personal responsibility to make the world a better place.

3. Active Love Leads to Faith – The experience of active love toward our neighbors leads to meaningful faith, driving out doubt and despair. As Elder Zosima says, the more we succeed in actively and tirelessly loving others, the more we become convinced of God and the immortality of our souls. Dostoevsky, in my mind, is arguing that this is the best way to arrive at the existence of God.

4. The Reality of Moral Imperatives – Another argument Dostoevsky seems to make for the existence God can be summarized as follows: If there is no God, then everything is permitted. But not everything is permitted. Therefore, there is a God. Thus, much like Kant, Dostoevsky seems to believe you can infer the reality of God through the reality of moral imperatives - imperatives such as "Thou shalt not kill."

5. Building a Life Now Worth Living Forever – One of the subtle themes that I believe supports the entire book is the idea that our central task as human beings is to build a life right now that’s worth living forever. That is, the possibility of life after death is made meaningful and desirable only by building loving connections with others during our life on earth.

6. Connection Versus Disconnection – Throughout the book, Dostoevsky seems to link the idea of connection and disconnection in the characters’ lives with existentialized Christian concepts. For example, loving connection could represent heaven; confession brings personal guilt into the public sphere, thereby driving out secret shame and opening the door for reconnection; and characters like Alyosha, who help isolated people connect with others, represent angels. On the other hand, disconnection and an inability to love could represent represent hell; anything that causes people to become disconnected from others could represent sin; and characters like Rakitin, who tear people apart from each other, could represent the devil.

Okay . . . if you made it to the bottom of this review, thanks for sticking around. I'll end by saying that although the Brothers Karamazov is a long book that can be somewhat difficult at times, I thought it was surprisingly hard to put down: great story with great characters, and a ton of depth. Highly recommended.(less)

Jesse rated a book 5 of 5 stars

The Catcher in the Rye
by J.D. Salinger

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In discussing this book with a group that read it recently, I thought it was interesting to hear the different responses people had to the main character, Holden Caulfield. Roughly, the people I've encountered seem to put him into three categories: (...more

Jesse rated a book 4 of 5 stars

The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs by Alexander McCall Smith

The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs (Portuguese Irregular Verbs, #2)
by Alexander McCall Smith (Goodreads Author)

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Meet Professor Dr. von Igelfeld, a stuffy philologist who embarks on a number of absurd and hilarious adventures. This is the second of the series, and probably my favorite – a couple of scenes and many of the one-liners are among the funniest I've e...more

Jesse rated a book 4 of 5 stars

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade
by Kurt Vonnegut

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I thought Slaughterhouse-Five was remarkably creative, especially if you take into account when it was written. Basically, it's a dark but sometimes funny story told through the eyes of a misfit who's floating through war (and the rest of his life) w...more I thought Slaughterhouse-Five was remarkably creative, especially if you take into account when it was written. Basically, it's a dark but sometimes funny story told through the eyes of a misfit who's floating through war (and the rest of his life) without really caring if he lives or dies, hardly understanding anything that's going on around him, and making very few value judgments as to what it all means or whether it's good or bad. The thing is, I kept wondering what Vonnegut was saying by creating a protagonist like this. In other words, why was the main character so accepting of everything he saw and experienced? Why did he keep repeating the phrase "So it goes"? I found these questions especially interesting considering that the main character's fictional experiences clearly parallel some of Vonnegut's own experiences.

For instance, it's well known that Vonnegut was himself present at the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, that he was one of the few survivors of the attack which killed more people than the atomic bomb at Hiroshima, that he survived only because he was locked up in an underground slaughterhouse as a POW. And in the autobiographical first chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut writes that "there would always be wars," and, even if there were no more wars, "there would still be plain old death." Can we therefore assume that Vonnegut believes the attitude we should take toward death and war is the same detached resignation displayed by the main character in Slaughterhouse-Five? I thought about that for a little while and did a bit of research, and in the end I don't think that's what Vonnegut was trying to say.

As noted by William Rodney Allen, "despite its mask of Tralfamadorian indifference, Slaughterhouse-Five conveys at times an almost childlike sense of shock that the world is such a violent place." Looking at it from that perspective, Slaughterhouse-Five's main character is probably the opposite of indifferent: he's someone who cares so deeply about the indignity of the senseless death all around him that he's no longer able to care. It seems that he's suffering from something like post-traumatic-stress disorder, so much so that he's forced to create an elaborate metaphysical scheme to explain what he's seen. Or, as Vonnegut put it: "There's nothing intelligent to say about a massacre." Thus, although the main character survived, he is nevertheless haunted by "a great big secret somewhere inside," a secret that Allen described as "the awareness of the horrors of war and the certainty of death," an awareness that Allen says could not be covered up by the materialism of postwar America.

On a side note, I also found Allen's interpration of Paul Lorezzo very interesting. [SPOILER ALERT:] Allen argues that when the main character is hunted and killed by Lorezzo, a paranoid sadist the protagonist had met decades earlier during the war, the experience can be seen as "an emblem of the fact that a soldier can never really escape his war experiences, that they will always `track him down' even years later," even if on the surface it seems that the war left him unscathed. Ultimately, I think I agree with Allen: "Slaughterhouse-Five is built on the paradox that it appears to offer acceptance and even indifference as responses to the horrors of the twentieth century, when in fact it is a moving lament over those horrors, a piercing wail of grief over the millions of dead in World War II."(less)

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Jesse rated a book 4 of 5 stars Life of Pi by Yann Martel	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Mar 25, 2013 12:30pm · see review
Jesse is now friends with RAJ D
Feb 28, 2013 06:30am · like
Jesse rated a book 5 of 5 stars The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Basically, the Brothers Karamazov is one of my all-time favorite books, in large part because I read it with one of my all-time favorite philosophy professors. Although the book has a fairly compelling plot, to me it's ultimately the characters and t...more
Dec 27, 2012 12:21pm · see review
Jesse rated a book 5 of 5 stars The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
In discussing this book with a group that read it recently, I thought it was interesting to hear the different responses people had to the main character, Holden Caulfield. Roughly, the people I've encountered seem to put him into three categories: (...more
Jul 03, 2012 06:55am · see review
Jesse rated a book 4 of 5 stars The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs (Portuguese Irregular Verbs, #2) by Alexander McCall Smith (Goodreads Author)	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Meet Professor Dr. von Igelfeld, a stuffy philologist who embarks on a number of absurd and hilarious adventures. This is the second of the series, and probably my favorite – a couple of scenes and many of the one-liners are among the funniest I've e...more
Jul 27, 2009 12:50pm · see review
Jesse rated a book 4 of 5 stars Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade by Kurt Vonnegut	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I thought Slaughterhouse-Five was remarkably creative, especially if you take into account when it was written. Basically, it's a dark but sometimes funny story told through the eyes of a misfit who's floating through war (and the rest of his life) w...more
Jul 12, 2009 07:01am · see review

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