How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Only death consistently excites your emotions, whether contemplating it when life is safe and stale, or fleeing it when life is threatened and precious. (2.78.8)
Pi thinks this little thought right after he discusses the twin emotions of boredom and terror (see Themes: Fear 2.78.7). Death becomes an escape when the ocean is calm; when catastrophe occurs, it's something Pi can flee. Why does Pi have such a complicated relationship with death? Is death – almost – the third resident on the lifeboat?
Quote #8
One of my favorite methods of escape was what amounts to gentle asphyxiation. I used a piece of cloth that I cut from the remnants of a blanket. I called it my dream rag. I wet it with sea water so that it was soaked but not dripping. [...]. I would fall into a daze, not difficult for someone in such an advanced state of lethargy to begin with. But the dream rag gave a special quality to my daze. It must have been the way it restricted my air intake. I would be visited by the most extraordinary dreams, trances, visions, thoughts, sensations, remembrances. And time would be gobbled up. (2.87.1)
Oh, this is weird. By gently asphyxiating himself, does Pi experiences multiple small deaths? Or is the dream rag part of a peculiar religious ceremony? (As in: Pi the priest induces a hallucinogenic state so he can experience the divine.) Could it be a little bit of both? In either case, Pi really, really wants to escape from the tedium of the lifeboat.
Quote #9
We perished away. It happened slowly, so that I didn't notice it all the time. But I noticed it regularly. We were two emaciated mammals, parched and starving. Richard Parker's fur lost its luster, and some of it even fell away from his shoulders and haunches. He lost a lot of weight, became a skeleton in an oversized bag of faded fur. I, too, withered away, the moistness sucked out of me, my bones showing plainly through my thin flesh. (2.89.2)
Sometimes we think of death as instantaneous. One minute the dorado is alive and flapping around and the next it's not. But Pi and Richard Parker slowly morph into reminders of death. They become walking, breathing skeletons who remind each other of death's slow deterioration. When you and your best pal both have "bones showing plainly," it's hard not to think of death. OK. It's impossible not to think of death.