Would Love to Have a Life of Pi Discussion!

He was Richard Parker. So he ate the meerkats.

The stories are both true...but one is an allegory of the other.

I did not read the book, but I did some research on what my stepson mentioned that was left out. I do not feel that the movie lacked for removing some of the book (like the other blind guy). I felt it was a very good movie. Well acted, well directed, and well-written.

It was amazing, surprising, emotionally and visually stunning. My interpretation was that the 2nd story was the "reality" of the event, the first was the story of the reality. (ADD: to me, finding an island with the meekats could fit into the story as true and allegorical, because the island was real and also a representation of something else.)

This is my interpretation of things. Both stories were essentially the same - the truth was the truth in both cases. But the animal story was easier to deal with. And so it is with God, as he says. The reality is too big for us to really comprehend, so we have our story of God that enables us to comprehend the Truth - because the truth is the truth.

Well, it's a fantasy adventure novel, right? I think the author is SO creative. I never got to see the beginning of the movie (saw it in an airplane) but I loved what I saw. What I thought when I saw it (especially the end) was that the way he LIVED through it was to turn the humans into animals because of what happened to his mom. The orangutan's eyes looked HUMAN to me, and I thought that when I saw her in the boat when I first started watching the film. In fact, I figured that they manipulated the filming of the orangutan. (That's before I found out that she was his mother in the other version...) Just the thought that he saw his mother die made me think that... Only after years of getting past what happened to him was he able to remember or cope with the reality of it. However, his memory of the animals and especially the tiger was SO vivid that he clung to it because it's as real to him as the fact that his mother died.

That's my penny!

i read the book last summer, and was CAPTIVATED. wow totally sucked me in. I wanted so bad to have someone to talk to about it at the time. I tend not to pick up on small details though and i would have to finally get to see the movie or re read the book to be able to give specifics.

my cynical answer is maybe neither is completely true.

I do remember thinking i wish i new more about Pi's culture and how acceptible his experimentation with religion was. because i felt like that was a big clue to the rest of the story. and the THEME because i felt like the author wrote this incredible story just to deliver a religious thesis,
(not that that's bad, it was just a little misleading which is what made it intersteting if you follow me.)

I can't wait to see what other people have to say.

I read this book several years ago, so I don't remember a lot of the details. I do remember at the time thinking that I really really wanted to believe the first story and hoped that was the one that was true. The second story was just too horrifying. While it was an intriguing twist, it cast such a darker pall over the whole book that I didn't want to go back and reread it and look for clues or hints that would tell me which story was true. In fact, I sort of think that twist made it so that I didn't really want to watch the movie either, although I've heard it is beautiful. I don't need all the books I read to end happily, but I find really vivid descriptions of violence stay with me far too long.

Okay, if it is read in AP English then I need to get on it (in dvd form however). I am a former English teacher and like to be in the know.

I didn't read the book or see the movie, but my daughter did read it for AP English and she loved the book.

I think he experienced both. Whether one was imagined or not, he was in the boat alone for a long time - and had ample time to experience every emotion in both stories.

There is a throwaway line in the book - the men are interrogating him, and he says, "The cook ate the rats." This is after they are observing that, because there are no skulls with the bones (Pi used them as fish bait), the bones could belong to any mammal of similar size, and might very well have been vermin already on the lifeboat when the ship sank. So, the real question is - are they meerkat bones, or just rats?

I have to say the movie paled in comparison to the book. To the OP please read the book....there is so much more than in the movie. Actually...after seeing this movie right after the book....I will never see another movie based on a book I've read again. It is just so irritating. Things I think are so important in the book are not even mentioned in the movie.

Based on the book I feel #1 is the right story....or at least the one I hope for. Based on the movie I think it's #2. That is how different I feel the book and movie are.