“It may pay to remember this: there’s no such thing as a completely original work of literature”(Foster 26). How To Read Literature Like A Professor: For Kids is a great book by Thomas C. Foster that explains to young readers about how an instructor interprets literature differently than a student. He does this by showing examples from other books and famous literature. Some of the things he talks about are quests, weather and symbols, irony, and vampirism. These examples can be seen throughout The Most Dangerous Game; a book written by Richard Connell about a man who gets trapped on an island.
How to Read Literature like a Professor Connections Chapter 1: Every Trip Is a Quest (Except When It’s Not) The main idea of this chapter is literally the title. Every trip is a quest, mostly, whether or not it is stated. There are certain factors that you notice while reading that will give it away.
In the first chapter of How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster, the list the five aspects that a quest contains. The first thing you need for a quest is to have a quester. Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich seemed to be the perfect book to talk about and the quest she goes on. Ehrenreich writes about her journey through three different cities and how to live there while working minimum wage jobs. Through this book we learn that our quester is courageous and determined to succeed in the different cities.
Our Quester: a young man, very arrogant and shrewd, a very hungry glory-seeker which gets in his way sometimes, and not to old to learn from his mistakes. A Place To Go: He must return home to Ithaca after the Trojan War but he is delayed by the wrath of the Greek God Poseidon. Zeus reasons that he be able to return to his home and sends the goddess Athena to help the quester. A stated Reason To Go: The Greeks have won the Trojan War and are ready for their journey home Challenges and Trials: First, he is detained on the island of Ogygia by the nymph, Calypso, who has fallen in love with him but after persuasion from Zeus she reluctantly lets him go.
In the short story Shooting An Elephant By George Orwell a Police Officer who is not from Burma is forced to go out and kill a wild elephant. Orwell whom is the main character is not from Burma and when he goes about his quest to hunt down and kill the elephant he goes about the actual killing of the elephant. The local people begin to dislike him because of the way he went about putting the animal down. This story is often interpreted as an interpretation of how orwell viewed the Indian Imperial police. This story Follows the quest motif to the letter; every aspect of this story seems to fit in with the motif.
Thus lead Pi to gather up food and head back on his voyage home. The road back to Pi’s somewhat normal life begins after he leaves the uncanny, floating island. Pi has felt many levels of fear and wanting death to come his way but this was the climax of his tolerance for life.
In the book Life Of Pi by Yann Martel, I believe Pi's second retelling of his story: Pi, his Mother, a French Cook, and the sailor initially survive and die the same way as the animals from the original story. The sailor is the faithful representation of the zebra, having a broken leg and succumbing to his wounds after the suffering he endured by the hyena, the cook. Pi's Mother is the orangutang, dying at the hands of the hyena after a fight. Feeling little remorse after killing a man and a woman, he eats the meat of both humans and is later killed of hatred by Pi. In Pi's original story, after the animals die, he finds a French and blind castaway, later revealed to be a cannibal.
To lead a pleasant and long-lasting life a person must find their source of a higher power, the higher power is used for guidance and to form morals along life’s course. As one is growing and their ethics are forming, reason finds its place along one’s life. As reason comes to the surface a person must learn how to grasp and understand both concepts to be able to use them in important decisions. In Life of Pi the protagonist, Pi Patel, endures a series of tragic events, but it does not dawn on him that he must be cautious with every decision he makes. Instead of realizing the extremity of his situation, Pi uses his mind and creates a story to mask the madness of what is really happening.
Friedrich Nietzsche once stated, “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” In the novel, Life of Pi by Yann Martel a young man, Pi, is enforced to survive through suffering and endure the grievances of a shipwrecked human being. After embarking on a journey with his family from India to Canada aboard a ship, the Tsimtsum, which holds a variety of zoo animals sinks. Facing the bitter truth that he does not have a family anymore, Pi must withstand the urge to mourn his family and seek survival. He is stranded with a boat of ferocious animals and hope.
In the 2018 movie Adrift, directed by Baltasar Kormákur, a couple is stuck on a raft in the middle of the ocean, and similar to Pi, they have to kill while finding their sanity at the same time. Showing us that dire circumstances require both ferocity and compassion to survive. Pi has to be fierce to survive. For example, when a flying fish flew into the boat, Pi realized that it was his only hope for food. "I edged myself on until I heard a cracking sound, and I no longer felt any life fighting in my hands" (Martel 231).
The novel Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, is a story of survival of a Indian boy named Pi, who survives a shipwreck in a lifeboat with a tiger. In the novel, the theme of primacy of survival is shown when Pi shows his survival instincts when he survives with a tiger in a lifeboat for 277 days in the middle of the Pacific ocean, finding clean water and food are his daily concerns. Moreover, Starvation and dehydration cause Pi’s blindness, dizziness, and faintness. Also, the theme of definition of freedom is also significant when Pi explains freedom in animals is defined as the freedom of the animal’s use of time, space, and relations. Further, the theme of the relativity of truth is shown when Pi tells his story in different versions which could
Have you ever thought about the Demands of spending an extended amount of time with a tiger? Neither had Piscine Molitor Patel, the main character in The Life of Pi. However, Pi’s upbringing, his childhood religious curiosity combine with the fact that he was raised in his father’s zoo geared him toward the 227 days he spent alone in a lifeboat with an adult Bengal Tiger. As a child Pi’s parents were ever willing to teach him a valuable lesson.
“Every Trip Is a Quest (Except When It’s Not)”, chapter one of the novel How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster, discusses the presence of quests and their importance in literature. Foster uses both hypothetical examples as well as examples from literature to provide cases in which quests are present and significant. Kip, a hypothetical example of daily life, is a normal high school student that is out to buy some Wonder Bread for his mother. He is confronted by a rich kid driving a nice car accompanied by Kip’s crush. Although this may seem like an extremely ordinary scene in high school, Kip’s adventure out to the grocery store is a quest of a sorts; the stroll out to the store fulfills all of the requirements of a quest.
His main goal was to adventure in life and fulfil all of the things he was curious about
In the story, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, the main character, Pi, is changed as a person after he must kill a flying fish in order to survive. Through this, Pi’s religious morals changed as well as his personality overall. When Pi first tries to kill the fish he continues to hesitate, and has a hard time committing the action to take the life away. As stated in an excerpt, “Several times I started bringing the hatchet down, but I couldn’t complete the action… A lifetime of peaceful vegetarianism stood between me and the willful beheading of a fish” (Martel 87).
