The Life of Pi book review - Essay Example

The story is basically about a boy who is on a boat that is sinking, and escapes to a lifeboat with several zoo animals, who eventually all get eaten by a tiger. I think that one of the main reasons that I liked this book so much is that for a long time I identified with the main character, and felt that I was like him. I think the fact that I enjoyed this book so much, and read it several times in a few month span tells me several things about myself. First I think it tells me that I felt lonely, because I could identify with the main character, and that main character spends most of the book alone on a raft with only a vicious tiger for company, and possibly because the book is also a story about immigration, about leaving a home you know to go to a home that you do not, and that is something that I enjoy thinking about.

But I think that this book also indicates that I am thinking too much on the past, and am feeling sorry for myself, and should move on to something else. I do not think that I have fully put this book in the past, but I hope to soon. I hope to put the part of me that it represents in the past as well. One of the most important ideas to this book is probably the idea of loneliness, and of feeling alone when you are not in a place that you are used to. When I first came to this country, I felt very alone because I did not know very many people, and my move to this country had put a large amount of strain on my relationship with my family.

There are a few lines from The Life of Pi that I have underlined more than the rest as I read them. On page 163, the main character is starting to think about what he must do to survive, and says these words: “There was so much I had to do. I looked out at the empty Horizon. There was so much water. And I was all alone. All alone. I burst into hot tears. I buried my face in my crossed arms and sobbed. My situation was patently hopeless” (Martel, 163). I believe that these lines are probably the most important of the book in some ways, and are probably the reason that I enjoyed the book so much and why I have read it so many different times.

There are many ideas in this lines that I can understand and identify with, and that make me see now that I was probably not doing the things that were best for me when I first came to this country from my homeland, away from my friends and family. I think that, when I first was arriving at this country, there were many things that I felt that I had to do all at the same time. I had to start preparing for school, had to find place to live, had to find friends, had to meet new people, had to start learning where everything is, where to get groceries, where to have dinner, where to have fun.

But I also think that I could not do these things. I always had some excuse, and I was so tired, and everything was so hard, so much harder than it probably actually was. And now, reading these lines, I think everything was hard because I felt alone, stranded away from everything I knew. In The Life of Pi, the main character is not actually hopeless here, he can survive for a very long time afterwards, and does survive for such a long time, “227 days” at sea, and then decades and decades more once he gets back to land (205).

But he feels hopeless, because there is no one to share his burden, no one to distract him, no one to help