A. Type your group number and your explanation of the island.
1. Real algae and meerkats
2. Hell
3. Heaven
4. Purgatory/Limbo
5. Corpse (& garbage heap)
6. Eden/Utopia/Fantasy
7. Divine intervention gift (body of a god)
3. Heaven
4. Purgatory/Limbo
5. Corpse (& garbage heap)
6. Eden/Utopia/Fantasy
7. Divine intervention gift (body of a god)
B. Copy & paste sentences from the novel that prove your explanation is the correct one. Include page numbers that the sentences are on.
C. Explain why you chose these sentences to prove your explanation.
Include your last name(s).
9 comments:
6. Fantasy
Who had ever heard of land with no soil? With trees growing out of pure vegetation? I felt satisfaction because such a geology confirmed that I was right, that this island was a chimera, a play of the mind. By the
same token I felt disappointment because an island, any island, however strange, would have been very good
to come upon (140).
Christensen
group 6
How is the island a fantasy,utopia, eden? A fantasy is something that is truly desired by the mind. In this case since pi is a vegetarian he fantasizes about having actual things he can eat. Also he needed clean water so that was also a fantasy to him. This true desire or fantasy for him created delusion and loss of mind control because of his loss of family. The reason his loss affects this is because he has nothing other than religion. An eden is a paradise of plants or a garden. Pi saw the island as a paradise because of all the positive things upon it desired relief created this paradise. A utopia is a place of perfection which pis favorite color was green, his favorite food was there and drinkable on the island. Normally this would not be perfection but when death is close because the loss of food,water, and things that were not ocean or just sky this would make sense to be perfection for him. He brings up him gaining strength to get on to the island this causes a sense of motivation and happiness creating the paradise part also his mouth filled with saliva for the first time in a while created this effect(143). Side note a tiger only gets food every 20 hunts and eats only about every 4 or 5 days, just like pi most likely was. RP was not in the same fantasy or eden that is shown as it says numerous times in the chapter that he resists the islands temptation. It is also only a fantasy based on it not having soil,unless they were all bare root plants.
lawson,jaxon,andrew
4: Purgatory/limbo.
"Harder to understand was the island's complete desolation. I never saw such a stripped-down ecology. The air of the place carried no flies, no butterflies, no bees, no insects of any kind. The trees sheltered no birds. The
plains hid no rodents, no grubs, no worms, no snakes, no scorpions; they gave rise to no other trees, no shrubs,
no grasses, no flowers. The ponds harbored no freshwater fish. The seashore teemed with no weeds, no crabs,
no crayfish, no coral, no pebbles, no rocks. With the single, notable exception of the meerkats, there was not
the least foreign matter on the island, organic or inorganic. It was nothing but shining green algae and shining
green trees." from page 147-148 on the online text
We see that he mentions that there was almost little to no diversity upon this island, as if it's something else completely, like some sort of entryway towards a possible limbo or purgatory-like plane of existence. He sees no other life besides the Algae, Richard Parker, and the Meerkats. Almost as if they are souls who a trapped upon the island at one point or another. We are unsure as to what happened to the previous survivor on the island but we can assume the body is long gone, taken, and now forever apart of this limbo-like island.
4: purgatory/limbo
Mouser
By the next morning, I had lost all fear of death, and I resolved to die (chapter 90, page 127)
I saw such a vision that I nearly wished I had remained blind (chapter 91, page 140)
from my understanding with sleep deprivation and I'm not going off of what's written in 92, I'm going off of a bit of 90 and a bit of 91. For the first sentence Pi could have woken up and it resulted in him asking for death, it could have also resulted in him entering the afterlife for a moment of his time, and for all we know, he might still be in the real world with Richard Parker but their consciousness might've transcended to the afterlife and left them wanting for death. in the second sentence provided here, he might've had the vision that left him and Richard parker looking at each other after, and then they made it to the island that looks like a person and then later discovered the dark meaning behind it resulting in him bringing meerkat corpses for parker and greens for him and after they set off after nightfall in the afterlife, Pi wakes up after what he believes to be 8 hours, he might've died temporarily, along with parker for what I believe to be a second of time, they also woke up with a gift from the gods as well with the reposition of the bodies after some sort of revival ritual when the 2 of them stayed on the boat for a long time
He could be hallucinating because not long before that he was seeing stuff in the water to then later maybe what he thought looked like an island was then a body dead one really with the teeth not to mention the meerkat being maggots. The water that eats the fish at night could also be maggots or other things consuming thus corpse Pi is seeing as an island kinda weird that he’d be walking on it though which doesn’t quite make sense to me. Richard Parker could’ve eaten a maggot or just part of the body for all we know it was all a hallucination. We know how bright the island looks; it could be his mind altering the stench to distract it with his eyes. Not to forget in the film of Life of Pi once he crawls onto the island with a last bit of energy he eats something who knows if that affected him even more because he was already seeing things we have no idea what it was. I’m just saying it could totally be a possibility and no evidence supports or not supporting such. The reason behind using this evidence is to completely be honest is it’s the only evidence that is there so of course we are going to use all we can. Also in the movie the meerkats are calm and accepting of him, not scared at all by him or even Richard Parker which doesn’t really make sense. I know for a fact that if i was a meerkat I’d be way away from Richard Parker. When Pi tries sleeping in the tree and there are some that try to lay on him or sleep around him like nothing but I guess there are so many of them they have nowhere else to go.
Hannah, Jacob, Shyanne; Corpse
We think that this is hell because he's trapped and has no control. It also would make sense because it doesn't sound believable that out of all the thousands of people that he was the only one to survive. We think that the tiger is a “grim reaper” or guide to the other side because it protects him and doesn't really make an attempt to kill Pi. The tiger even saved him “his soul” from the Hyena was symbolized to be a demon, even in the second century A.D. The sea was meant to symbolize the space between his travel from living to death. “paralyze anyone by circling them three times.” in the film the hyena circled him. The island itself however is the representation of his own hell. Although it seems nice its a monster and his worst fear is not 100%being lonely but actually having false hope and being deceived. The island's water also turns into acid and kills fish or “other souls”
https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/the-corpse-devouring-hyena-of-the-medieval-bestiary/
group 2
cat,ben,lindsey
As we are reading Life of Pi full text. We have to make a bunch of connections for the island to be real. This so-called “island” might actually be a volcano with algae on top of the volcano because of the water going over the rock and the algae is just sitting on top of it. The algae itself is actually called dinoflagellates and it’s called predatory algae for short. This algae does produce a poison that will kill the fish and leave them floating belly-up. “Whatever the case, they found themselves trapped in fresh water and died (153).” It will attract fish through the tunnel and the algae produced fresh water so that they would kill the fish. “At night, by some chemical process unknown to me but obviously inhibited by sunlight, the predatory algae turned highly acidic and the ponds became vats of acid that digested the fish (153).” This is why the island is so harmful to anyone or anything that comes on it. It also produces poison through the sunlight and at night it will kill whatever it needs. “This was why Richard Parker returned to the boat every night. This was why the meerkats slept in the trees. This was why I had never seen anything but algae on the island (153).” Now he understands why things happen on this island. “In the morning the island was gone, as was the mass of algae we had been towing. As soon as night had fallen, the algae had dissolved the rope with its acid (154).” He was shocked by this because he thinks the island went away like the algae killed itself. It tells you in the text that “algae had dissolved the rope with its acid.” Now we are thinking that someone a human was on this island because there were teeth left and nothing else. He thinks that they have been there for weeks, maybe months, and maybe years. Now he is gathering food and water for the boat ride out. “I filled my stores with fresh water and I drank like a camel. I ate algae throughout the day until my stomach could take no more. I killed and skinned as many meerkats as would fit in the locker and on the floor of the lifeboat. I reaped dead fish from the ponds (154).” He did this because he wanted Richer Parker to stay alive and for him to stay alive. This is why we think the island is real.
Levi, Logan, Wesley
Real
group 4
The island acts as a religious symbol for Pi’s spiritual journey. it represents his kind of faith he believes in, it seems stable at first and promises food and comfort, but it has a terrible truth behind it. In another sense, the island is a kind of the Garden of Eden, a place where Pi loses his innocence. The island seems like a paradise at first, where the meerkats are tame and peaceful, but upon discovering the “Forbidden Fruit” of the teeth-tree, Pi gains knowledge of the evil the island is capable of. He leaves the place on his own accord, rejecting an easy, treacherous faith and refusing to live in a spoiled paradise like the garden of Eden. I also found out that there is an island called devil's island and it was a maximum-security prison and this shows me that if Pi hadn't left he would have been in “prison” on this random island for eternity. If he would have found the “forbidden fruit” I think that he would have been in a spiritual trance from the island forever till the day he died. And I also think that the reason he found this island was from a spirit. I think the reason he saw the island was from when he started to see things in the ocean and then he looked up and saw an island that he could “start over” on with Richard parker.
“By the time morning came, my grim decision was taken. I preferred to set off and perish in search of my own kind than to live a lonely half-life of physical comfort and spiritual death on this murderous island.” (Chapter 92-Page 156-Line 5-6)
Group 7.
The island- I think it is a gift because he has been on the lifeboat for a while and all of a sudden he finds an island in the middle of nowhere. It’s a gift from one of the Gods because of what he’s been through and how it appears to him in an extreme time of need. There are also just way too many inconsistencies that make us believe this is the work of a divine being. Firstly, the island is floating and robust with trees that are fueled by an algae-like substance - “The island had no soil...Rather they stood in what appeared to be a dense mass of vegetation…” 141. This is a very important thing to point out just how interesting and rare it is for something like this to occur. You have a boy, his life slowly waning away, and now he suddenly finds an oasis in front of him. Another tidbit is the mentioning of the color green. The island is saturated with the color green, so much so that Pi refers to it as a “...chlorophyll heaven” 141. The color green in Hinduism is said to represent nature, fertility, life, and rebirth with even the Hindu goddesses of the forests, Aranyani, usually being depicted wearing green. It’s also interesting to note how green symbolizes life and fertility as it’s teeming with life and nutrients and is capable of producing and supporting trees but also capable of causing death which showcases the duality of its nature, of how it's both consumer and producer. The trees on this island also cannot be identified by PI, but somehow share similar qualities to other fruit trees he’s come across in the past “The head of the tree had the lovely full roundness of a mango tree, but it was not a mango. It smelled somewhat like a lote tree, but it wasn't a lot either. Nor a mangrove.Nor any other tree I’ve ever seen” 142. It could be said that perhaps this is one of the god's gifts for PI, a quintessential tree of the fruit-bearers he grew up enjoying.
Zimmerman, Vawah, Huebner
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