pi's on a boat

The Life of Pi chronicles a young boy named Pi's adventures aboard a lifeboat on the Pacific Ocean after the cargo ship that is to carry him and his family over to Canada sinks. Pi's companions on this boat are a Grant's zebra, a spotted hyena, a Borneo orangutan and a 450 pound Bengal tiger. The theme of survival, which was introduced in the introductory section of the book, will certainly be a major theme throughout the book as will the relationship between man and beast. The premise of the book is quite interesting as it is a twist on the classic shipwreck survival story. The fact that most of the action of the book will take place on a small lifeboat will provide some entertainment as Pi will be forced to interact with the animals that he is living with. Pi will have to overcome both mental borders and territorial borders in order to survive with a boat full of animals and the dynamics between the different animals will be riveting because none of the animals live in the same habitat in the wild. As a Survivor fan, I am excited to read about how Pi sustains himself while on the ocean. Even though he is surrounded by water, obtaining drinkable water will be one of his most daunting, yet important challenges.

on an island in the sun

" I preferred to set off and perish in search of my own kind than to live a lonely half-life of physical comfort and spiritual death on this murderous island." p.410

I cannot imagine the desperation and loneliness that someone would have to feel in order to leave behind the luxuries of food and water in order to proceed with a feeble quest to reach land. It seems amazing to me that after suffering through severe dehydration and hunger, Pi would leave behind an island that offers him all the basic requirements for survival in order to find other human beings traveling on the vast ocean.

Living on a lifeboat 24 hours a day surrounded by water that you cannot drink even though you are thirsty is extremely difficult, but, according to Pi, it is not nearly as difficult as dealing with the mix of emotions constantly running through your mind. The gut-wrenching feeling of pain or fright so extensive you cannot move mixed with sudden moments of ecstasy over something as simple as a sip of water would certainly take a toll on your mental health. As Pi figures out, being in the company of other people who you can interact with is another luxury that we take for granted. It is because Pi is so alone that his mind frequently wanders towards the thought of death and the hopelessness of his situation. The fact that Pi leaves the comfort of the island in order to improve his mental state speaks to the extent that human interaction influences our lives. Sometimes it is nice to get away from people and just be by yourself, but being in the company of people who love us is something we should never take for granted.

how to train your tiger

Pi's initial reaction when he realizes that Richard Parker, the 450 pound Bengal tiger, is in the lifeboat with him is dread. Not surprisingly, Pi is scared half to death and immediately begins to devise a way to get rid of Richard Parker before eventually figuring out that he would rather face death by a tiger than suffer with his despair and loneliness by himself.

"I had to tame him. It was at this moment that I realized this necessity. It was not a question of him or me, but of him and me. We were, literally and figuratively, in the same boat. We would live- or die- together." p. 236

By training Richard Parker, Pi creates and alpha-omega relationship with him in which Richard Parker believes that Pi is the dominant individual. Like in Le Petit Prince when the little prince must perform rituals in order to tame the fox, Pi must follow rituals in order to tame Richard Parker as well. The ritual that Pi goes through to tame Richard Parker is similar to the method used by ringmasters at the zoo and involves making loud noises to provoke the animal and triggering some sort of switch that will make the animal feel sick when it attempts to counterattack. Pi chooses to exploit Richard Parker's seasickness and associates his feeling of uneasiness with the blowing of Pi's whistle.

I thought that this aspect of the relationship between Pi and Richard Parker was fascinating because even though Richard Parker could easily kill Pi if he wanted to, he is tricked into believing that Pi is more powerful than he is. This is a classic example of brains over brawn, which, unfortunately ruins some of the mystery of the lion timers at the circus.

the omnivore's dilemma

"The curse of the omnivore is that when it comes to figuring out which of those things are safe to eat, he's pretty much on his own."

As Pollan discovers, being an omnivore does have it's curses and blessings. The fact that we have so much choice in what we are able to eat means that for humans, eating can be more than just a necessary practice, it can be an experience. Instead of getting all our nutrients from one source, we obtain nutrients from a variety of sources depending on our preferences. This freedom of choice unfortunately comes with a downside as well. Pollan says how we have to decide what is safe to eat and what isn't; we also have to figure what nutrients we need to eat in order to sustain ourselves. As Pollan explains, for humans, eating is not as straight forward a task as it is for a monarch butterfly who only eats milkweed. Humans are unique in a sense that we have to learn for ourselves what is safe for us to eat. We are unlike other animals who instinctively know what to eat in order to survive. Try as food producers might there is no such item on the market that provides us with all the nutrients that we need. There are protein bars and meal supplements that try to mimic the simplify of nature without the burden of choice but in my opinion these things take away from the adventure of eating. I am a huge food lover and I would rather go through the effort of having to think about what to eat rather than to just have a bar or powder handed to me. What we eat reflects the culture and location in which we were raised but also varies from person to person since things like allergies make some foods deadly to certain people. Although having to choose what is safe or appropriate to eat is sometimes a difficult decision to make it is one that I think is worth mulling over so that we are not restricted to the mundane routine of eating the same thing day after day. Sometimes we might try things that make us feel sick or disgusted but it is only through the sampling of a variety of food that we can figure out what we enjoy eating. If it wasn't for the bravery and curiosity of our omnivore ancestors, we would never have been exposed to crops like potatoes or cherries, which are delicious as long as you do not eat the poisonous leaves. We also would have never have been introduced to the puffer fish whose internal organs contain so much poison that the consumption of them results in death!

the hidden costs of monoculture

"There are good reasons to think a genuinely local agriculture will tend to be a more sustainable agriculture. For one thing, it is much less likely to rely on monoculture, the original sin from which almost every other problem of our food system flows." p 258

If you think about it, the way most farms are set up, as a monoculture with one crop per field, makes absolutely no sense at all. Where in nature will you find fields and fields full of one single crop? Farmers grow whatever is in demand and different environmental conditions cater to different types of crops. A couple examples Pollan uses to explain this situation are the fields of Iowa where rainfall, soil type etc. suit the needs of corn, and the Salinas Valley where the majority of the lettuce is grown in the U.S. Crops grown in areas with the ideal conditions have high yields and are therefore sold for less. Consumers are more likely to purchase the cheapest corn, or lettuce they can find so from an economic standpoint, it makes sense to grow all the corn in Iowa and all the lettuce in the Salinas Valley since that is where it can be grown the easiest and cheapest. But what about from an environmental point of view, how well does monoculture stack up then? As Pollan points out, not that well. Our current system of agriculture, as it turns out, is not that efficient after all. Pollan suggests that there are hidden costs that go along with monoculture that consumers don't typically consider. One thing that I never considered is the costs of fuel. The fact that most of our corn is grown in Iowa means that it needs to be shipped from there to our supermarkets here in Ontario. This cost of fuel is very expensive and the toll it takes on the environment is quite substantial. In addition to fuel, a lot more pesticide and fertilizer also needs to be purchased because the crops are more susceptible to pests and insect infestations. Since there are no other species in the fields, there is a lot of competition for certain nutrients and excess of others. The nutrient recycling process becomes dependent on human involvement and the crops cannot sustain themselves.

In my opinion, the harm that monoculture does to the environment is not worth the small savings that it yields. I would much rather pay a bit more for the food I eat and know exactly where it comes from. In an ideal world I would go directly to the farms to pick out the crops I buy that way I could ensure that they are from a farm where monoculture does not exist and not as much pesticides would be used. Reading this chapter on monoculture opened my eyes to how our agriculture system works and outlined some of it's key flaws. From now on I am going to make an effort to buy fruits and vegetables from local farmers. The crops might be more expensive, but I will know that the crops are better for me and for the environment.

corn, corn, corn

"When I started trying to follow the industrial food chain- the one that now feeds most of us most of the time and typically culminates either in a supermarket or fast-food meal- I expected that my investigation would lead me to a wide variety of places. And though my journeys did take me to a great many states, and covered a great many miles, at the very end of these food chains, I invariably found myself in almost exactly the same place: a farm field in the American Corn Belt. The great edifice of variety and choice that is an American supermarket turns out to rest on a remarkably narrow biological foundation comprised of a tiny group of plants that is dominated by a single species: Zea mays, the giant tropical grass most Americans know as corn"

I hadn't ever given much thought to what goes into the processed foods that line the shelves at the grocery stores. I have made attempts to read the list of ingredients, sure, but food labels are written in their own language one in which you have to have a working knowledge of food chemistry to understand. I was under the impression that most of the ingredients were chemically manufactured in a lab, but in reality, most of the ingredients actually come from one source: processed corn. As Pollan points out, "there are some forty-five thousand items in the average American supermarket and more than a quarter of them now contain corn, this goes for the nonfood items as well." That is a staggering number of products made from corn. People say that we are in the age of technology; without even knowing it, we have found ourselves in the age of corn as well. Never-mind the fact that society couldn't function without technology, we would literally die without corn. Considering the fact that, as Pollan discovers, most of the items that come from the industrial food chain start with corn, imagine all the food shortages should corn not exist! One of the things that surprised me about Pollan's revelation about the industrial food chain was that corn makes up the majority of the diets of the beef on the market. I wasn't aware that cattle ate corn, and apparently they don't! Or at least they aren't supposed to. So much corn is grown that, as the law of supply and demand dictates, the price of corn went down so much that buying corn became cheaper than buying grass. Farmers started feeding the cheap corn to their cattle and found that it was an easy way to fatten them up. Slowly and quietly, corn has started to take over our society. What a world we live in when a large part of our lives depends on something as insignificant as a vegetable.

long live dance! assignment 2

One of things that captivated me about Frye's second lecture was the idea that things like religion and cultural beliefs can survive for thousands of years, even though the ideas are outdated, because they have been transformed into literature. His example on page 19 of dances and rituals taking on a dramatic form and developing into a independent drama got me wondering whether or not any of the dances that I perform will be transformed into a play 100 years from now.

The idea that "no human society is too primitive to have some kind of literature" p.19 emphasizes the fact that literature has always been a part of the human society and although we are in a technological age classic literature isn't going anywhere... at least for a while!

I was confused by what Frye meant when he wrote about "primitive literature" p.19. In my mind different types of literature are all complex in their own way and the fact that something can be considered literature means that it is not primitive.

literature, is nothing new?: assignment 1

In Frye's first lecture, he claims that "literature doesn't evolve, or improve, or progress". What he means by this is that although the writing styles, words and ideas may differ over time, literature is essentially the same thing today as it was when it was first written. If you break it down into the basics, literature is words that the authors use to try and put ideas they have in their mind onto paper. The conventions of writing have remained the same; authors must use words and sentences to convey what it is they want to say. If they try to change the conventions by using, say, symbols instead of words to express meaning then the work can no longer be considered literature, it becomes art as it is much more objective. Words as a form of communication are effective only because people have come to accept the general definition of what each word means and the feelings, colour, smells, and connotations that are associated with each word. The reason why literature cannot improve is because there is no way to make literature better. How can we improve something for which all ratings and opinions are objective and dependent on the reader? Writers have always been influenced by the writers before them and they can only express their ideas using language that has been used before as that is the only language they know. David McCullough suggests in 'The Love of Learning' that we "[read] books that have stood the test of time" and the fact that we can do this, that things written in the past can still be read today is a testament to the fact that literature has not changed that much over time. In short, literature cannot evolve, improve or progress, all it can be is different from what has been written in the past.