THE LIFEBOAT, and Pi's routines surrounding it, seem to be another metaphor, this one for religious ritual. In short, his survival becomes the nexus of his new life-experience. In this way, the boat will become his world, or universe, and the rituals surrounding it his method for understanding this new reality. Given this connection, what can we make of Pi's observations while on the boat? What dual meanings do you see in his descriptions of the sea life, his trials, the encounters with Richard Parker? You need to annotate for dual meanings throughout the text.

MONDAY

We will finish the documentary on Shackleton's experience in the Antarctic. We will also watch a "prusten" video, and discuss Pi's routines on the raft as a metaphor for living a religious life.
HW: Reading up through and including chapter 68, or page 199.

TUESDAY

How is Pi's routines actually more ritual in nature? What similarities (and differences) do you notice between life on the boat, and the active practicing of Hinduism, Catholicism, or the Muslim faith? How is his disintegrating clothing a symbolic return to the prelapsarian state? How does drifting with the wind connect (or not) to these religious views? What importance might we place on the gaff, the cargo net, the hapless turtles? How is the sea-life under the lifeboat an allegory?
HW: Read up to and including chapter 73, or page 208.

WEDNESDAY

Pi describes the butchering the turtle as "grim and blind." Why are these words appropriate for Pi's experiences overall? Subsequently, Pi delineates how to train a tiger when trapped with one upon a lifeboat. What patterns do you notice in this description? What assumptions belie his endeavors? How are his endeavors a psychological shield, just as the turtle shells are literal shields? Finally, if everything he writes in the journal is "very practical stuff," what is this book that Pi has written? We will also begin examining a documentary on Jung.
HW: Read chapters 74 through 79. You should be up to page 221 by class on Thursday.

THURSDAY

Discussion
HW: Read up to chapter 85. You should be on page 232 by class on Friday.

FRIDAY

Discussion:
HW: Read through chapter 91 by Monday, at which time you should be on page 256.