What's your opinion on The Life of Pi?

Question

How did you feel about the ending? I've been dying to get some feedback on this, but my bookish friends haven't read it yet...

Answer 1

What it's all about is the problem between illusion and reality. The point is that there's so many different ways to look at things that you can never really know what happens in life. You just have to trust your own story.

Answer 2

I thought it was really great. I couldn't put the book down while reading it because the story really draws you in and then your warm happy feeling is suddenly shattered in the end with his brief account of the alternate story. It illustrates how even the harshest of realities can be overcome if we choose to accept a different and more positive outlook on a situation, you have a choice at the end just like he an the shipping co. men had to choose accept which reality you want to believe. I like the idea that sometimes a half truth is better than a harsh reality, I mean as Yann Martel states at the beginning -this is a happy story.

Answer 3

well, on a whole "The Life of Pi" is a good exploration of the human soul, trapped in a figurative box. However the ending did not play to my liking. The characters seemed to unravel near the end, showing their inner transparency; a truly unfitting ending to an otherwise wonderful book. Needless to say, the quality of a book cannot be determined by anyone but yourself. This is an innate skill that all people are given, thus I would be remiss to attempt to answer your question, for it is clearly unanswerable by any soul but yourself.

also... the book wasn't really that good, I read it twice, it lost a lot of its novelty the second time. For reals.

Answer 4

At first I so thought this story was real. I thought the ending was very good at revealing the analogy that Pi was the Tiger, the CHimp the mom, etc. as a way to wrap things up and explain it - but I prefer to think of hte story how he told it - that he was alone with R Parker on the little boat floating in the ocean for survival!

Answer 5

I thought the book was kind of long and drawn out, kind of boring, but still interesting. Does that make sense? There was no action at all, yet I still wanted to finish. I really liked the ending, the tiger, everything. The beginning had a bit of a slow start but once things got going, it was allright. I really liked it, an 8 out of 10.

Answer 6

I enjoyed the book. But still haven't figured out the ending. I couldn't tell if it was a true story. But I think the author just made it seem that way and offers the choice to choose the story version we prefer.

Answer 7

It was interesting how it took that sort of "unreliable narrator" twist at the end. The message is that if the truth is irrelevant, go with the better story. But accepting that the animal story is all symbolic, what's the deal with the weird island?

Answer 8

I loved it. I prefer to think of the story as happening the way he told it throughout the book, not as he told it to the investigators at the end. I think he told them the story with out the tiger because that was the only way they could understand what had happened - he did it to placate them.

Answer 9

I don't think the book's ending about the people in the lifeboat is true its just an anology he uses to explain his psycologial health so he would not be declared crazy by the psycologists.

Answer 10

I've not read it. If I had, I would not spoil it for you.