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October 24, 2005
pi pieces
I finally finished Yann Martel's Life of Pi. I struggled through the painful details of life at the Pondicherry Zoo and Pi's somewhat interesting fascination with religion to get to an adventurous story with a wonderfully illustrated ending that leaves the reader wondering, "Did that really happen?!"
One of my favorite passages came from Pi's description of fear:
[Fear] has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One momemt you are feeling calm, self-posessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disblief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weaking, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread. . .
Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you've defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.
The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear beacuse you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you."
art | By charity | 08:50 PM
Comments
Wow. I like the passage.
Posted by: Andy at October 25, 2005 08:06 AM
What a vivid picture! Thanks for taking the time to share that.
Posted by: Steve at October 25, 2005 08:21 PM
Isn't this an amazing book? I borrowed it from a friend, but I'm thinking I should own a copy. Great passage.
Posted by: RT at October 26, 2005 11:32 AM