Perpetual Change

First written 6/12/2010; posted now for the upcoming movie debut:

Life of Pi was a strange book, but I was struck by many of its observations. I was never able to forget it was a novel though.  Being fully engrossed in a story is important to me when reading a novel; however, the second story that the author tells towards the end makes me wonder if he wished for the reader never to forget that the nature of this tale is a story. There were a few constructions and settings that remain beyond my comprehension as to why he used them at all; so perhaps a deeper meaning to the whole tale escapes me. It is supposed to be a novel about God, but for the life and love of me, I didn't see God in it.  Here are some exerpts I did find interesting:

On working life:

... a [neck] tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he's not careful.

On zoos:

Animals in the wild lead lives of compulsion and necessity with an unforgiving social hierarchy in an environment where the supply of fear is high and the supply of food low and where territory must constantly be defended and parasites forever endured. What is the meaning of freedom in such a context? Animals in the wild are, in practice, free neither in space nor in time, nor in their personal relations. In theory - that is, as a simple physical possibility - an animal could pick up and go, flaunting all the social conventions and boundaries proper to its species. But such an event is less likely to happen than for a member of our own species, say a shopkeeper with all the usual ties - to family, to friends, to society - to drop everything and walk away from his life with only the spare change in his pockets and the clothes on his frame. If a man, boldest and most intelligent of creatures, won't wander from place to place, a stranger to all, beholden to none, why woud an animal, which is by temperament far more conservative? For that is what animals are, conservative, one might even say reactionary. The smallest changes can upset them. They want things to be just so, day after day, month after month. Surprises are highly disagreeable to them. You see this in their spatial relations. An animal inhabits its space, whether in a zoo or in the wild, in the same way chess pieces move about a chessboard - significantly. There is no more happenstance, no more "freedom", involved in the whereabouts of a lizard or a bear or a deer than in the location of a knight on a chessboard. Both speak of pattern and purpose.

[I personally can definitely concur with how daunting it is to find food when I first come to a new region or country.  Even if I speak the language, and know where the market is, the relatively same system as I've found elsewhere can prove overwhelming at first!]

On agnosticism:

If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

On change:

All living things contain a measure of madnes that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive.

About Churches:

It was a building unremittingly unrevealing of what it held inside, with thick, featurelss walls pale blue in colour and high, narrow windows impossible to look in through. A fortress.