Wow. What a great story. I am breathless and dizzy. The last few chapters concluded with such force that I feel winded.
Yann Martel is an absolute genius (and he’s Canadian! woot, woot!). This book is layered with such symbolism and allegory that it would take me another two or three read-throughs to properly decipher it all. I understand now why it’s included in English Lit reading lists. I had planned on talking about it in more detail but I feel it would ruin the experience for someone who hasn’t yet read it. It would suffice to say that this story wrought is with imagination and magic and is the type of read that will make you believe in fairy tales. It reminds me a lot of Shantaram, in its ability to steal me from this reality for a while and transport me to a time and place that I’ve never seen with my own eyes. Good books are like that. They open your mind to a completely different life and make you believe that you can fly, that tigers do talk, that thousand year old vampires can really sweep you off your feet.
Some interesting points to consider:
- There are many religious undertones in this book but the story itself is also a symbol about Faith.
- I love how Martel incorporates the psychology of fear throughout.
- I was convinced this story was true. This is how gullible I am.
- The first 50 pages nearly bored me to death. I’d have to say that the pain was worth it.
- Did you know that sloths have no natural predators because they are so slow that no one cares to think they are even alive?
I’ve collected a few of my favorite new quotes – prose put together so beautifully that I can’t help but share:
To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.
I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know it. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread … The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don’t, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.
