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Life of Pi, death and religion

Wednesday, June 8, 2005 ★ 21:44 ★ Category Books

Yesterday I started reading the novel Life of Pi, a best-seller by Yann Martel, which was recommended to me by a friend. The book tells the extraordinary story of a boy who survived a tragic accident on a cargo ship. His fellow survivors are all animals: a hyena, a zebra, an orang-utan and a tiger. Pi, as the boy is called, drifts at sea for more than two hundred days, fighting for his life and having magical thoughts. Sounds interesting to me.

Until now, I’ve only read a couple of chapters, but there are already two fragments I’d like to share. The first one is a note about the relation between life and death:

The reason death sticks so closely to life isn’t biological necessity—it’s envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs what it can.

The second one is about the three of the most wide-spread religions being basically the same:

... Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed (...) Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God, are hat-wearing Muslims.

Heh, while looking up the book on Amazon, the “related books” section mentions The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, telling the story of a boy who has Asperger Syndrome (some sort of autism). He’s obsessed by math, lists, patterns and structures, not unlike the average programmer… a must-read, according to my girlfriend. Luckily, she owns the book and I already have it here. If only I had time to read it…