Life of Pi

by Yann Martel

All around me was the vomit of a dyspeptic ship. I felt sick to my stomach. I felt shock. I felt a great emptiness within me, which then filled with silence.

Sinking

hyena will take in the ear or nostril of a clan member, no

Hyenas

hard feelings intended. The hyena feels no disgust at this mistake. Its delights are too many to admit to disgust at anything.

Hyenas

Perhaps a few lucky ones came to their life’s term and died of old age.

On flies

The calm sea opened up around me like a great book. Still it felt like night.

Sea

Mother would look to the sky and take me in her arms. I went through a dozen versions of what it was going to be like on the rescue ship, variations on the theme of sweet reunion.

Homecomig

is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I’ve made none the champion.

Bad nights

lose a brother is to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old, who is supposed to bring you a sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, creatures to people the tree of your life and give it new branches. To

Family tree

To lose your mother, well, that is like losing the sun above you. It

Death n lose

You might think I lost all hope at that point. I did. And as a result I perked up and felt much better. We

Hope

tell you, to be drunk on alcohol is disgraceful, but to be drunk on water is noble and ecstatic.

Water

Life is a peephole, a single tiny entry onto a vastness—how can I not dwell on this brief, cramped view I have of things?

Life

Green is a lovely colour. It is the colour of Islam. It is my favourite colour.

Gren

A green to get drunk on.

Green

I ate till there was a regular moat around me.

Eating

My running became smooth and unselfconscious, a source of euphoria. My skin healed. My pains and aches left me. Put simply, I returned to life.

Healing

Then Richard Parker, companion of my torment, awful, fierce thing that kept me alive, moved forward and disappeared forever from my life.

Seperation

You have known the confined freedom of a zoo most of your life; now you will know the free confinement of a jungle.

No one is free

We believe what we see.”

Not faith

“Not plants that contradict the laws of nature.” “Which you know through and through?” “Well enough to know the possible from the impossible.”

Natural laws

“The arrogance of big-city folk! You grant your metropolises all the animals of Eden, but you deny my hamlet the merest Bengal tiger!”

Arrogance

Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What

On love life and belief

Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away. But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater.”

Faith

Isn’t just looking upon this world already something of an invention?” “Uhh . . .” “The world isn’t just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn’t that make life a story?”

Life. Anninvented story

You want a story that won’t surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won’t make you see higher or further or differently. You want a flat story. An

Faith

He was a brute, but a practical brute. He was good with his hands and he knew the sea. He

Brute

“Then normal sank.” “Why?” “I don’t know. You should be telling me. You’re the experts. Apply your science.” “We don’t understand.”

When normal sinks