Life of Pie

Divinity and tiger

Life of pi could be called as the blockbuster in 2012, thanks for the movie directed by lee an.

The book involves with various kinds of religions, like Hindu and Christianity. In the early time of pi, he always wanted to find a religion which his belief belonged to. This part of book came to the most tedious one to me, to be as a Chinese, I don’t really understand why religion and belief could be such important in one’s life.

In china, people rarely provoke their children to find a religion. I don’t really believe Buddhism or Christianity; I see this world and society in a rational way; I don’t believe the existence of god or heaven, and trust law and justice under most circumstance. Still, I live a happy and full life. To be frank, I can hardly tell the difference between religious people and me.

But when I finish the book, I realized that this book is not about religion, but human and the tiger inside one’s body. This book pushed us to face the tiger in us, the educated people.

I’d like to take pi as instance. All his families are vegetarians, so does pi. He even refused to have meal on the cruise because of the gravy toppled on the rice. But when he lost all the food in the sea, he did hunting and ate raw fish, which apparently broke his religious rules, but he had no other choice, because he had to stay alive. That’s the tiger of pi, the human nature. When the tiger comes out, no matter how strong the belief or religion are, they can no longer take control of the body or the mind.

Tiger, the original desire for living, push us do anything we could to save our life under certain circumstance. But, we fail to feel the existence of this tiger due to the comfortable life, education and socialization. Only if we are pushed into corner, are at sea, when we see how small and powerless life is, the powerful tiger will bluster. This part of us just can’t be tied down or be wiped off.

Also, the tiger stands for wants in our heart. People chase for better life and fortune, they don’t even get rid of the control of desire, but they acclaim that how great their belief is, that is kind of sham. People couldn’t reach the divinity at the