Thursday, April 4, 2013

A Piece of Pi

Shocked! This is how I felt when I read the last chapter of Life of Pi. Genuine shock! I can't remember a story that took me off-guard as this one did.... and it took me about three days to get over it. The only other story that took me three days to get over was Munich (but that is a movie so I'm not counting it). I read through most of the book enjoying the peek into India and the scenic description of boring unending days at sea (somehow not boring as described), and I assumed the author's hidden (or not so hidden) message was "all religions are the same." Although the story does propagate this message, Yann Martel has something much more poignant to say, and it illuminates so clearly what our increasingly pluralistic culture thinks about God. What fascinates me about this story is that a person will have a drastically different reaction to the end depending on his view of God. It cuts right through a nerve of your belief/non-belief, leaving you feeling vulnerable and adrift at sea...

3 comments:

  1. I was just as shocked as you! I finished the book Tuesday night and barely slept. I then went to work demanding to find someone else who had read the book, luckily one of my colleagues had.

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  2. Jordan read it first... and that is exactly why I read it, because he said he needed someone who had read it to talk to. Ha!

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