"let me tell you a secret: the name of the greatest living writer of the generation born in the...
TRANSCRIPT
"Let me tell you a secret: the name of the greatest living writer of the generation born in the sixties is Yann Martel." —L'Humanité
"A story to make you believe in the soul-sustaining power of fiction and its human creators, and in the original power of storytellers like
Martel." —Los Angeles Times Book Review
Yann Martel
• b. 1963 - Spain• First published The Facts
Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, a collection of short stories
• Writing career took off with Life of Pi– Mann Booker– Best seller; 41 languages– Movie– 4 Academy Awards
• Setting: The Emergency. – Indira Gandhi was India’s Prime Minister - 1966– Election scandal– State of Emergency– New Elections
• Pi’s father - nervous. • Moving to Canada• Stop in Tomatlán, Mexico
• Impact of Setting
• Religion
• “A story that will make you believe in God.”
• Link between stories and religious beliefs.
The French Quarter: Pondicherry, India
Munnar, one of the Hill Stations in India
Pondicherry Botanical Gardens
The Pondicherry Promenade
Life of Pi can be classified as:• a postcolonial novel
• a work of magical realism • a coming-of-age tale• an adventure story• flirts with nonfiction
The Importance of StorytellingA story… within a story… within a story
3 Frames• First, author’s note• Then, life on sea• Then, true(?) story
Motifs(situations, incidents, ideas, or images repeated significantly in a literary work)
• Territorial dominance– Though Martel's text deals
with the seemingly boundless nature of the sea, it also studies the strictness of boundaries, borders, and demarcations.
• The Will to Live– This is a story about what
humans will do to stay alive
• The Nature of Truth– By the end of the story,
readers question factual truth versus metaphoric truth.
• The Nature of Faith– characters achieve comfort
through the practice of rituals
– For Pi, faith is a form of certainty; he dislikes agnostics because they refuse to commit
Symbols
• Pi’s name– Not just a shortened
version of Piscine– Allegorical figure with
multiple levels of meaning
– 3.14 (22/7) (infinity)
• The color orange– symbolizes hope and
survival