Life of Pi #3- The Power of Choice

The ending for this book is so unique and interesting. It was the very last part of the book that made me decide I liked the book. Religion is a very important theme in this book that appears throughout the whole novel, there are a few important quotes in Life of Pi about believing and not believing in god. For example, “I can well imagine an atheist’s last words: “White, white! L-L-Love! My God!”—and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeast less factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying, “Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain,” and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story.” (p.70) This quote is crucial to the story. It explains way Pi does not like agnostics, because they do not make the ultimate choice.

After telling the story with the animals, the author Yann Martel, puts a twist in the book when Pi is explaining his story to the two officials from the Japanese Ministry of Transport, they do not believe him so than Pi tells another story replacing the animals with people, a cook instead of a hyena, a sailor instead of a zebra, his mother instead of the orangutan, and of course Pi as Richard Parker.

"'So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?'” (p.352) The ending is so unique because YOU have to decide what story you believe in. Its very similar to Inception, is he living in reality or is he dreaming?

Life of Pi #2

I really enjoyed the beginning of the book, but after reading a little bit of Part II I’m starting to change my mind. After the ship sinks, Pi ends up being stranded on a life boat with a orangutan, a zebra with a broken leg, and a hyena (at this point he does not realize that Richard Parker my favourite character is onboard the ship). After a couple days on ship the hyena finally decides to attack the zebra, so for many pages its just rambles on about a poor zebra suffering for many days, I found this to be very disturbing and I really wanted to skip pages. This also happens with the orangutan. And than finally Richard Parker shows up and puts an end to the evil Hyena.

Life of Pi #1

At the beginning of Life of Pi, Pi’s father takes him and his brother Ravi to watch Richard Parker devour a goat. He does this to teach Pi, and Ravi a lesson of how dangerous animals can be. This is ironic because the whole story is about Pi living alone with Richard Parker on a small lifeboat. In act II, Pi makes a reference to what is father taught him: “Truly I was to be the next goat. I had a wet, trembling, half-drowned, heaving and coughing three-year-old adult Bengal tiger in my lifeboat.” (p.110) From the way Pi describes Richard Parker we can see he his terrified for the adventure he is about to experience and how the lesson his father taught him has had an impact on him.

A Visual Understanding

The play Hamlet is well portrayed in Branagh’s film Hamlet. Branagh uses the text from the play throughout the whole movie. This gives the reader a better understanding of the play because the actors are using the same text as the play, which creates a better visual for the reader, and makes the film easier to follow, it also allows the reader to see a different interpretation of Shakespeare's play. As you are reading Hamlet, I think it is important to consider all the emotions a character could have, and to see other peoples perspectives of the character, for example if the queens character married her husbands brother to stay queen or because she loves her son Hamlet, and wanted him to have a chance at becoming king. I thought the film portrayed Gertrude, as loving Hamlet, and wanting to protect him, while the book made her seem more selfish, and not caring about the death of Hamlets father. I think knowing different peoples opinion’s about the play, lets us discover the less obvious themes in the play, and helps us reach a better conclusion about what truly is happening.

Blink #3

“At 175, we begin to see an absolute breakdown of cognitive processing… The forebrain shuts down, and the mid-brain – the part of your brain that is the same as your dog’s (all mammals have that part of the brain)—reaches up and hijacks the forebrain. Have you ever tried to have a discussion with an angry or frightened human being ? You can’t do it…”(p. 225)

In this chapter, Gladwell talks about “mind reading” and how your facial expressions are a huge part of this process. This is how our first impressions are created. He also talks about how our snap judgments can fail. In the quote above Gladwell is talking about how when we are anxious, and when our hearts are beating at a rate of 175 beats per minute our brain, our snap judgments are not working properly.

He does a case study on three officers who’s snap judgments failed. They were patrolling the Bronx one night, and shot an innocent man. The man was standing outside late at night getting some air, but the three officers decided that he looked suspicious, and than when he made the movement to his pocket they decided he was dangerous in a split second, but he was not dangerous he was scared. They thought the man was pulling out a gun, when he was really pulling out his wallet. These errors resulted in a man being shot, the officers were anxious, their brains shutdown and they ended up relying on stereotypes. Gladwell goes on to talk about how if the officers were trained better for this situation they would have reacted more calmly, and made better choices. This is because the more similar experiences you have to one another, your brain becomes better at mind reading, so you are able to predict what’s going to happen and have a better reaction to the situation. I think this is where the saying “practice makes perfect” comes from because the more we do something the better we get at that thing, and that is because our brain is able to predict the situation.

Blink #2

The other day in English class we talked about if the things we do affect our behaviour. We talked about how the military uses the video games we play to train soldiers to go to war, to get use to killing people. And yet many video game makers, and movie directors claim their violent video games and movies do not affect how we think. There was an incident of a little boy who played a shooting game and shot his dad thinking he would come back to life.

In the book Blink, I just finished reading the Warren Harding Error, the chapter talks about the first impressions our subconscious makes, and how our first impressions are generated by our experiences. In the chapter there is a test that Gladwell talks about called the Implicit Association Test (IAT). The IAT is a test designed to measure the strength of automatic association between mental representations of objects in the memory. The IAT requires the rapid categorization of various objects, such that easier pairings and faster responses are interpreted as being more strongly associated in memory than more difficult pairings with slower responses. Here is a site where you can try an IAT https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/.

"Our first impressions are generated by our experiences and our environment, which means that we can change our first impressions- we can alter the way we thinslice- by changing the experiences that comprise those impressions.” (p. 97)

In this chapter Gladwell concludes that what we do affects our thoughts composed by our subconscious. He also says to change our first impressions we need to change our environments.

Blink post #1- The Subconscious

"We live in a world that assumes that the quality of a decision is directly related to the time and effort that went into making it." (Blink p.13)

I find this quote to be interesting because many times we have been told to “think before you leap”. We are never really told to act on our subconscious; occasionally we are told to go with our first intuition for multiple choice questions on a test, even if your not a hundred percent positive of the answer. But other than that we always feel the need to develop a theory to explain our decision. Malcolm Gladwell, the author of the novel Blink, also mentions how society does not trust their subconscious because we don't know how to put our subconscious thoughts and feelings into words. Gladwell has been talking about the importance of snap decisions, and how they are directly related to our subconscious. One of his main points so far in his book is how the decisions made in a blink of an eye, can be just as good as thinking the decision through. A lot of decisions may still need to be thought through, but I think what Gladwell is trying to say is that if a thought feels right, act on it, don't try to explain why your subconscious is making that decision.

Great Writers

"The writer of literature can only write out what takes shape in his mind." p.24

I agree with what Frye is saying here, I think what makes a good writer, a great writer are all the life experiences he or she may have had, the mistakes he or she have learned from and all the stories they have read. This quote ties into Frye's main point about this chapter, which is new literature is old literature. For a writer to become a great writer they have to read many other stories, and be able to tell the difference between a bad, good, and great story. They also need to use those stories as a base for their stories that they are currently writing.

I think you can apply this quote to many other things, for example math. The more variety of math problems a student as solved, the greater chance they will have at solving a difficult problem.

Technology vs. Literature

”Is it possible that literature, especially poetry, is something that a scientific civilization like ours will eventually outgrow?”

This quote is important because Frye is talking about the importance of literature in today's civilization, and how many people may not see a need for literature, especially poetry. I think literature plays a very important role in our society, it helps us expand our knowledge, and helps us become better readers. Even though our society is technology based, this does not mean we are in a scientific civilization, technology may involve science but not everybody enjoys learning about science, and many people do not always talk about science, or even talk about it at all. There are still many people today who are still very passionate about writing, and reading poetry, and if there is at least one person out there who is passionate about poetry they will make a need for it in today's society. There will always be a need for both science, and literature.

Poetry can relate to "The Love of Learning" because McCullough talks about taking the time to do the little things in life that are very important, such as tipping the maid. Many people are so busy that they forget to appreciate some of the simpler things in life. Poetry can describe the simplest object, and give it many characteristics to make people appreciate it more.