And the question to go along with it:
What, besides religion, did you feel that Yann Martel was emphasizing in the section and how is this expressed in our class illustration?
If you notice the answers getting repetitious and have nothing new to add, you may try one of these questions instead:
1) Either: what new insight does our picture reveal to you?
2) Or: what specific portion of our picture do you find problematic?
Notes from the questions:
In your personal life, what do you get out of your religion and does it relate to the car metaphor? If so, how?
- God is your GPS
- Who is Martel talking about?
- destructive--larger=worse?
- reason:car; religion:gps
- answers questions
- fuel=will power/motivation
In your opinion and ignoring Pi’s religious affiliation, what religion suits Pi the best?
- Buddhism- ignores labels, about self, Pi=Buddha, live in the now
- Bahai- accepts all religions with own philosophy
- no religion- do whatever he wants
Using the text, what connection do you find between religion and human nature?
- 2 steps towards God, he runs towards you (p. 61)
- people need religion to create boundaries
- Pi's house with all 3 religions--want to believe in something
- human nature to want answers
- book comes out on 9/11-->people turn to religion in times of need
Martel asserts that animals only attack when threatened. We find that his description of animals can be closely related to people. Do you think that in the same way there are no truly evil people, just people who are threatened?
- tragedy and anger-take it out on those who don't understand
- vicious circle
- are we too nice to evil people?
- no "Voldemort" evil--nobody capable
- always a motive
- everyone has some good--people who act without threat
- greed in humans, not in animals
- man most dangerous animal in zoo
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I feel that Martel was trying to emphasize faith and belief through the section. At the end of chapter eight it said living by doubt is immobility, and from that I takeaway you should live be something, whether it be your religion, beliefs and opinions, or just what you have faith in. It's expressed in the picture since the tiger jumps over the pit of doubt, but you have to have faith in order to overcome that. Also, there's the stork(?) carrying the bag of faith, which shows no matter where you are, you should have faith in what you do.
oh, also with the car analogy, the fuel which runs the car is your motivation and faith in what you do
In my opinion, Yann Martel was trying to emphasize survival. He interwove all sorts of ideas, both animal and human, that are used as survival mechanism. One could argue that religion is something that humans created to help them better survive tragedy. There was also a section describing how animals will defend their territory, a method of survival. it also talks about the intate "fight or flight" reaction; another survival mechanism.
In the picture this is expressed by the man in the ring. His territory is about to be invaded and he is having "fight or flight" thoughts. This is a direct example of the overall theme of survival.
I think that Yann Martel was trying to emphasize the importance of strength in a person. I feel that the tiger and goat is, in a way, Martel telling his readers the importance of standing up for yourself and holding your own. I mean, where would the world today be if people completely submitted to others wishes? I think this is expressed by the ringmaster in the picture, who will now have to fight for his rights to the territory against the leaping tiger.
I would say this section is about the vulnerability of humans. When Pi's father shows him the death of the goat, he is extremely frightened and scarred.
This is demonstrating the naivete of Pi as a child, and many other themes suggest that Martel is trying to show how vulnerable we really are. On pages 36 and 37, Martel lists ways that pretty much every animal could kill a human. This is all to show us where we are on the grand scheme of things - very small.
This is represented in our picture by the man in the middle of the ring. A tiger is jumping at him, but he's stuck and has nowhere to run.
I feel that Martel was also trying to point out the differences and similarities between humans and animals. Humans are free, but we put ourselves in cages. Animals are literally caged in, but because they have their own territory they feel free. In my opinion humans are the most greedy species, always wanting what we cannot have. Animals strive to survive; they take what they need. Although humans and animals are two completely different groups, they share commonalities. Martel emphasizes the flow and circular motion of life. He mentions water, rivers, etc. multiple times. We are all on this earth and part of life. Somehow we are all related, despite our differences.
I agree with Taylor. I feel that Yann Martel was trying to emphasize survival. He goes into geat detail fight or flight giving different animals flight distances, and he also had Pi's father tell Pi all the different ways that the appeared innocent animals like deer and birds, could hurt or injury you if you made them fight to survive. Also, in the later chapters, he gives examples of animals that have escape from zoos and returned because they needed to live. This is depicted, as Taylor also said with the man in the spotlight deciding if he should run from or fight the tiger.
Martel definitely tried to emphasize that Man is the most dangerous animal in the zoo. "In a general way we mean how our species' excessive predatoriness has made the entire planet our prey," (p.29). In Martel saying this, I think he tries to stress how human we are- our traits, instinct, everything human about us and how that impacts the things around us. Ishmael connection? I think this is in the picture by the ringmaster. Instead of him being in control of the tiger, the tiger will soon be in control of him. So, it's in a way contradicting...?
Martel foreshadows a conflict with the greatest of orange felines, demonstrates the fundamental rationality of animals, and in 15 and 16 introduces us to Pi's religious odyssey.
Do I need to expound? For my grade I must as you are judicious with those 5's apparently. The tiger jumping in the drawing and the mauling of the goat in the book serve to reveal the animal's ferocity and power.
The calculating nature of fauna - though physically in a far superior league, they share motivations with us - is explained in the book through explanations of territorial instincts and shy leopards. This is curiously absent from the drawing though I suppose the tiger does look a bit pensive.
Pi's faith-based curriculum is retrospectively examined in 15 and begun, with a short study of Hinduism, in 16. This is crudely rendered in Expo as a fat child carrying what appear to be enormous neon ice cream cones. Will the bag of faith fall on his head, crushing his overlarge malar bones? Perhaps the fundamental tension within the novel.
kind of going along with what patrick was saying but I think that Martel tried to weave in innocence and the naive-ness(?) of children. While although a smart 8 year old, I could see Pi maybe wanting to pet or feed an animal without knowing how dangerous it actually is. And that's completely normal of young children. We think animals are loving and furry, and we don't imagine them as much more. However, Pi's image of animals changed in a flash when he saw the tiger eat the goat. The innocence of youth can be gone in a flash.
I think this is represented by the man sitting in the cage because as children we are kinda of in our own world where we think everything is harmless.
I think Martel was also trying to emphasize social rank in this section. On page 44 it says, "Rank determines whom it can associate with and how...". This is evident in our class illustration with the clear dominance of the ringmaster over the tiger. Because the ringmaster has established a higher rank with their first encounter, the tiger naturally has to abide to his orders. Therefore, again social standings determines one's lifestyle. (This can also be applied to human lives)
Just because the question refering to the 'problematic portion' of the image appealed to me, I'll do that one first.
I feel like the association of cotton-candy tasting might belittle Pi's passion and fervor for being as emerged in religion as possible. Pi isn't just enjoying a sampling of religons and making 'tasting' decisions, he's throwing himself wholeheartedly into experiencing as much of God as he can. I don't know how else we could have pictured his multi-faceted beliefs, but that particular image just doesn't do it for me.
I feel like our picture represents a tension of opposites. The 'fight or flight' response, the cage with the door open, etc. Maybe that's unintentional on the part of the author and ourselves, but maybe thats what life is- a tension of opposites.
I don't think that the answers are getting repetitious, but there was something about the picture that was problematic in my mind. When you look at our bus/traveling circus, you see smoke coming out of the back. Although most(all) cars have smoke of some sort coming out of the exhaust, this is supposed to be a figuritive picture. What exactly does the smoke represent? Does it represent all the bad and only thinking of the good, even though in the car it doesn't look all good. Does the smoke represent all misconceptions about anything presented in the world? I just found it troubling that we had it on the picture, but didn't actually have a meaning to it. I might just be being picky, sorry.
I feel as though the cotton candy tasting of religions is not the best way to represent Pi's religious beliefs. The drawing sort of over simplified it. Maybe we could have done something with pathways and a wanderer choosing which one to follow. This would represent a more important decision with more consequences. Also, at the end of the paths they could all join together to show that Pi was able to be happy with all three of the religions important to him. Also, the cotton candy made it seem as though Pi was choosing between three and only deciding on one religion to follow when in the text he chooses all three religions, or in our case all three of the cotton candy flavors.
I feel that Martel was trying to emphasize the overall (perhaps not absolute) absence of true evil and presence of benevolence in both human beings and animals, relating to the discussion held in class today. He does this by talking about how dangerous predators like lions don't attack you because of bloodlust, it's simply a matter of defending invaded territory. The lion isn't trying to bully you, it sees you as a true threat. Also, Pi's home is described as basically a house of worship for many different religions. This signifies that what Pi is looking for in a religion is not a true prophet or a holy scripture, it's love and truth, something that many religions seem to stress. Love of God is simply a way that Pi uses to describe living a good life, which is his takeaway from his many faiths. This is depicted in the drawing by the boy, who is obtaining the sugar and fat that he craves from a wide variety of ice cream cones, just as Pi does with his religions.
So, I'm going to go for the aspects of the picture that is problematic. To me, the problematic part is that we had to put it all in a bus to make it work together. In other words, it doesn't all go together. He's beginning to introduce a bunch of new ideas that we don't quite understand and, therefore, they are not such concise "puzzle-peice-like" ideas. I'm not saying that we don't comprehend them, but, at this point, they all don't seem to have such a perfect, unifying idea. I suppose you could say that it's all about faith and life, but then again everything in the world is pretty much about faith and life if you look at it hard enough.
It seems to me that Martel was emphasizing place, not just physical place, but social standing as well. He mentions that animals claim territory, and defend it. Humans also have territory, but we tend to limit ourselves to a confined space.
For social place, animals may use physical place, intimidation/impression or other tactics to claim the top spot in the group or herd or whatever. Humans also do this, but like Pi said, humans are different from animals; we are much more cunning and greedy. Claiming a social place is not always a successful process either. People have been "dethroned" in the past.
In the picture, the tiger is approaching the ringmaster, who clearly is occuping a space that the tiger wants to reach. Perhaps, if we had made the "space" more defined, and if we were to intertwine the cage to it, it might be clearer to understand/see this connection.
Personally, I thought he was trying to emphasise the habituality of man.
If a person walks into a tiger's territory, the tiger would attack.
If a person broke into my house, i would call 911. It's the same thing, really.
We may have internet, a complex society, and guns, but we're still the same as every(one/thing) else.
I feel that Martel emphasized a major theme of man vs. animal. I thought it was kind of ironic how the man who made a zoo proves to be the most dangerous species in it.
I also interpreted that man's problem is that it's too intelligent, atleast it thinks to be. For Example, the a guy tried to feed fish to a sloth bear and the lady waved her sari at a cobra, both of them thinking that nothing bad would have happened. Another problem is that when humans are informed about their ignorance, they don't like the truth, hence the so many replacements of the mirrors with the question: DO YOU KNOW WHICH IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL IN THE ZOO? I beleive that this is an important theme that outlines that even though theoretically, humans are more intelligent, they are really stupid and although animals= are stupid, they are innocent, simpley b/c they are brainless and cannot distinguish b/w right and wrong. Even when humans can, they still act like they're stupid !
When looking at this picture, I see a flaw in the way we tied it all together. The truck just contains all of the ideas into a specific area, but there is no way for me to connect these ideas together and to see how they relate to each other. When I see this picture, I see multiple themes going on, but we did not represent these themes in a way that they all fit together and make sense. I'm not sure if I have any specific ideas of how we could have better connected these topics together, but a truck just doesn't do it for me. Maybe if we had found away to connect the specific pictures together as we went along, it would have allowed for a better understanding.
I agree with everything everyone has said. I wouldn't consider my idea a main topic of the section, but it ties together some of the ideas presented thus far.
One recurring topic I've noticed was faith, or "brain over brawn" as it's put on page 44. As Martel writes about the ringmaster and the hierarchy of animals in the ring, he says, "these [the snapping of the whip and the blowing of the whistle, etc.] are so many factors that fill the animal's head with doubt and fear," (Martel, 44), yet the animal remains calm even despite the ambiguity of the situation. Animals in zoos eventually grow to live a ritualistic lifestyle, but there is no proof that they will get their next meal or that they will be cared for. Therefore, the animals survive on their faith in the zookeepers that they will be cared for.
In the same way, Martel talks about human religious faith toward the end of the section, contributing to the man/animal topic.
In the picture, I don't see how it all comes together. The truck-like object isn't really working. Sure, it seems to suggest that they're all together and such, but I don't see how the individual ideas relate to one another. They don't really seem to be interacting. It appears that there are just a bunch of ideas thrown together in a box with shady metaphors made up to connect the pictures to the text.
If we could edit it further, I would try to add things that connect the separate pictures. The truck thing is a weak attempt that doesn't accomplish much. Perhaps it could be a path, or a story, or maybe a town, but anything other than the unconnected mess it appears as now.
Sorry for being so pessimistic, but yeah...
One idea Martel emphasized was how people insist on trying to apply human characteristics to animals. He mocks those who consider animals to be vicious, ferocious beasts, but also those who think they are cute and harmless. To him, these people are seeing in the animals qualities that are not really there. In reality, animals are just trying to survive and to deal with what is going on around them. This is true for humans as well: pure good or evil motivates people much less often than other, more complex reasons for doing something.
He seemed to be trying to convey the complexity and spectrum found in life. He always remind us that all living things are similar, and that the nature of things are usually comparable.
so sorry, my internet totally crashed and then you never answered my text. anyways, if it's not too late, I feel that Martel was also trying to emphasize knowledge through experience. This is also demonstrated in the next section. But Pi's father makes a huge impression on him and Ravi by showing them the tiger and the goat and impressing the danger upon both of them. I also think that Martel is pointing out that humans are not as high and mighty as we think. We might be the most intelligent in the animal kingdom, but certainly aren't the strongest or most dangerous. (This is also sort of foreshadowing.)
Obviously, this is shown in the picture by the tiger jumping through the hoop and the ringmaster having a panic attack.
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