Life of Pi Analysis
With How to Read Literature Like a Professor

1. Chapter 12: Is That a Symbol?

A. Example one
In the early stages of Life of Pi, Martel mentions a place that Pi and Ravi had gone to visit while on vacation. While looking aimlessly through the window, they noticed three hills. On top of one hill was a catholic church, another a Hindu temple, and the other a Muslim mosque. Each hill portrays each of the religions in Pi’s complex faith. The hills represent Pi’s struggles to understand each religion. Later on, we find out that Pi is caught in between these three religions. He couldn’t completely disregard any of the religions, so each one kept warring for a place in his life. In How to Read Literature like a …show more content…

It is easily assumed that Piscine and Belle, and Richard Parker and Beast, are the same. “The point is this: stories grow out of other stories, poems out of other poems.” (Foster, Chapter 5)

3. Chapter 26: Is He Serious? And Other Ironies

A. Example 1 In How to Read Literature like a Professor, Foster says, “Irony trumps everything.” (Foster, Chapter 26) “I was named after a swimming pool. Quite peculiar considering my parents never took to water.” (Martel, Chapter 3) Water is the element of torture in Pi’s existence. The very basics of Piscine’s life are ironic. He is named after a swimming pool, but throughout the early parts of his life, he is tortured because of his name. His parents and the rest of his family are killed by drowning after a shipwreck. He spends the most grueling seven months of his life surrounded by water. During that time, he comes close to dying of dehydration because he has no water to drink. The whole time he has an abundance of water, but since it is salt water, it will only make his situation worse. He needs water to live, but it has been the main factor in most of the tragedies he has experienced. The irony of Pi’s relationship with water trumps everything else in the book, just as Foster said it would.

B. Example 2 “It seemed the presence of a tiger had saved me from a