Figurative Language: Sloths, Ice Cream, Secular Prayer

The style of Life of Pi is very descriptive. Martel uses lots of figurative language to paint a picture of the events in Pi's life. The following are some examples that stood out to me:


"Father saw himself as part of New India-- rich, modern and as secular as ice cream."

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I suppose one of the reasons I have returned to passively studying religion is because some of the things I thought to be superstitious nonsense are actually effective. Specifically meditation, which I have made a serious attempt at. I was astonished at the immediate change both physically and mentally (you don't actually float, but it feels like it.) Of course, I had my very own secular mantras (just numbers from one to ten.) It was like prayer for the non-believer. For someone who is very skeptical of the value of prayer, this was a shock. In situations where I used to be nervous, I could perform, speak, or contribute without nausea taking over. I reminded me of another phrase in Life of Pi, 


I feel like this little piece of figurative language enhanced my reading of Life of Pi because it gives insight to the background of Pi's parents, and I snorted with surprised laughter. I think it captures secularism perfectly; the definition being 'no religious or spiritual basis.' Thank God Pi doesn't think of secularism as devil-worship. I found it effective because it was unexpected, unlike countless descriptions that all sound commonplace and bland.

Martel's description is not successful from abundance, but rather the skill in which he wields it with. He does a lot of personification towards animals, especially Richard Parker. My favourite example of personifying animals is actually in the first chapter, when Pi describes the three-toed sloth.

"The sloth is at its busiest at sunset, using the word busy here in the most relaxed sense. It moves along the bough of a tree in its characteristic upside-down position at the speed of roughly 400 metres an hour. On the ground, it crawls to its next tree at the rate of 250 metres an hour, when motivated, which is 440 times slower than a motivated cheetah. Unmotivated, it covers four to five metres in an hour.

The three-toed sloth is not well informed about the outside world. ... If you come upon a sleeping three-toed sloth in the wild, two or three nudges should suffice to awaken it; it will then look sleepily in every direction but yours. Why it should look about is uncertain since the sloth sees everything in a Magoo-like blur. ... They are said to be able to sniff and avoid decayed branches, but Bullock (1968) reported that sloths fall to the ground clinging to decayed branches "often".

How does it survive, you might ask.

Precisely by being so slow. Sleepiness and slothfulness keep it out of harm's way, away from the notice of jaguars, ocelots, harpy eagles and anacondas. A sloth's hairs shelter an algae that is brown during the dry season and green during the wet season, so the animal blends in with the surrounding moss and foliage and looks like a nest of white ants or of squirrels, or like nothing at all but part of a tree.

The three-toed sloth lives a peaceful, vegetarian life in perfect harmony with its environment. ... I am not one given to projecting human traits and emotions onto animals, but many a time during that month in Brazil, looking up at sloths in repose, I felt I was in the presence of upside-down yogis deep in meditation or hermits deep in prayer, wise beings whose intense imaginative lives were beyond the reach of my scientific probing.

Sometimes I got my majors mixed up. ... the three-toed sloth, such a beautiful example of the miracle of life, reminded me of God."

This description enhanced my reading by giving me a sense of who 'future-Pi' is. He is enthralled by peace, which is something must appreciate greatly. It gives a brief introduction to how religion vs. science might be discussed in the rest of the novel, where they co-exist. The underlined metaphor also caught my attention. The reason is that you could apply this statement to Pi in Part Three, where he reluctantly gives a factual account after his exaggerated story. Despite the Japanese men probing for the 'truth,' it doesn't tell them the heart of the incident, which is the loss of human life, worth more than cargo. It is a nice sentiment to know that we are still more than experiments and test subjects, even if we were not formed by a deity. Although I do think that science is the legitimate way to examine our universe, I think there is more to our lives than being carbon-based life-forms consuming energy and reproducing for the sake of upping the population. Looking for that 'more' doesn't necessarily mean religion; it is philosophy, and I think a lot of atheists miss out on asking this question of why we exist, (even if the answer isn't God.) 

“Atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak, speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them – and then they leap.”

Understanding this made the book much more meaningful to me. Although I can never appreciate the Bible (too much genocide, at least in the Old Testament) spirituality and secularism aren't all that different. Truth can come from both, and Life of Pi expresses this thoroughly. Figurative language is good to keep Martel's philosophic lectures lighthearted and relatable. Under the influence of his carefully crafted words, I have uncovered my own perspective to religion. Life of Pi certainly has the capacity to make one 'believe in God.'