Storytelling at its finest
Life Of Pi is a book that I first heard about through a friend in middle school. I didn’t know what to think of it, the way it was described to me was “a book about a zebra, a tiger, a hyena and an orangutan stuck on a boat.” But when I did at long last get to read it, I found it to be much more than just that. I’ve read this book probably 5 or 6 times now. It’s one of those books that I like to go back every year or so and re-read. I think it’s one of the best displays of storytelling I’ve read. Yann Martel, the author, does an excellent job of writing in first-person, making it seem as if Pi is speaking to us, the readers, directly. One of my favorite descriptions comes form when he is on a lifeboat, dying of thirst, and he just found the emergency water rations. It goes like this:
“My feelings can perhaps be imagined, but they can hardly be described. To the gurgling beat of my greedy throat, pure, delicious, beautiful, crystalline water flowed into my system. Liquid life, it was. I drained that golden cup to the very last drop, sucking at the hole to catch any remaining moisture. I went, “Ahhhhhh!”, tossed the can overboard and got another one.” (179).
What I love most about this particular passage is the way that Yann Martel uses adjectives. He wisely plays off the context of the book, using the desperation of the situation that Pi is in to enhance the reader’s experience. It’s easy to say something along the lines of “I was parched, and this cup of water felt better than any that I had ever drank before.” However, a sentence like that doesn’t fully convey the exhaustion, exuberance, and excitement that Pi feels upon drinking his first cup of water in several days. You can hear the gratitude in his language, through phrases like “liquid life”, “golden cup”, and “pure, declicious, beautiful, crystalline water.” In a normal passage about a drink of water, excessive use of adjectives would be considered unnecessary and deracting from the main message of the piece. But here, Martel’s language so perfectly fits the context of the situation. It’s almost too outrageous to read with a straight face, he’s so over-the-top in his description. When, however, you stop thinking about the hyperbole in the passage, you come to appreciate how intelligently Martel recognized the context of his own writing, and used it to perfectly exaggerate this particular scene.
3 responses so far
I’ve heard so much about this book that now I want to read it! The point you make towards the end of the post about the excess of adjectives seeming okay in Martel’s book is one I’d like to agree and disagree with. Clear, concise writing is always nice to come across when reading. On a normal day, I prefer it over long, drawn out sentences drowning in adjectives. Sometimes, as you mentioned, it’s okay. I don’t know what it is about the novel or the author but there are some novels that can pull it off without making me want to throw the book out the window. However, there are other novels that try this and fail almost miserably. I couldn’t help but think of Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte and cringe. SOMETIMES, the adjectives and words that I needed a dictionary at hand for were okay. It gave the book an elegant twist and made me feel like I should be sipping on a cup of tea overlooking a couple mountains in the French countryside. But, most of the time I basically just wanted to jump out a window. I’m not sure if Life of Pi was anything like Wuthering Heights but I do agree that sometimes that excess in adjectives enhances certain author’s writing. The use of adjectives worked in the quote you showed us in this post but does it work everywhere in the book?
I’ve read this book before, and I liked it. The story was good, whether true or not. The passage does a good job in showing his desperation and how amazing water can be after not having any for a long time. It must have felt like a miracle, finding those rations, since he was going to die soon. Most of us may not know that feeling, but it might be better if we didn’t. The background information in the beginning of the book was also interesting, and not just anyone could have survived as long as he did.
I’ll admit that my first attempt at reading this book was disastrous, but your post has seriously made me reconsider my dislike for it. One of the things I feel established good writing is keeping things on context, and neither oversimplifying nor over-expressing unless the situation at hand explicitly calls for it. Yes, you can write his discovery of the water as the bland expression you suggested, but I agree that the situation calls for a little “heightening” of text. To Pi, at that point, finding the water is the line between life and death for him, so it only seems right that his relaying of events is excitable in context.