A Pool. And Math.
Pi's full name, Piscine Molitor Patel, was inspired by a Parisian swimming pool that "the gods would have delighted to swim in." The shortened form refers to the ratio of a circle's circumference divided by its diameter. Explore the significance of Pi's unusual name.
Labels: Life of Pi, question
posted by MamaChristy at
6:13 PM
3 Comments:
I think the significance of Pi's name is that it was cooly coincidental in the mind of the author. Truly, I think he just thought it would be a tongue-in-cheek gimmick.
I find it hard to believe parents would name their child after a swimming pool (But then I find it hard to believe in an island that eats ... wait, I don't want to give it away), but I do believe that if I was a great swimmer and friends of mine named their child after a pool, I would take that child under my wing and teach him to swim. (:
I think the author thought the name suggested enough coincidences to be fun. And playing the "What if" game with his name is interesting...If he hadn't been named for a pool, would he have been taught to swim? If he hadn't been taught to swim, would he have survived the boat going down? If he hadn't survived, he never would have embarked on a quest to go around the circle of the world, as it were.
From a philosophical perspective, reading the text as a metaphor for religion and for life, I suppose the author could be making several comments here. One, the ocean, whose vastness makes it unconquerable to man, really is just a "pool the god would have delighted to swim in." And that man, in this case one named Pi, is really only one aspect of the world's geometry. Like man, the number Pi is always constant. It always measures the vastness of it's circle (the world?). Since Pi, the character, is interested in assessing the world's religions, and in conquering the circle of the globe in which he floats, his name takes on multiple meanings.
Or maybe it's all just a giant cosmic joke. Is a name destiny?
By
JenniNapa, at 11:58 AM
Wow. Yeah, what Jenni said.
I also like the context of the mathematical pi in that the number goes on forever and doesn't repeat. But that doesn't sound very meaningful coming after her insightful comments. :)
By
mamashine, at 1:07 PM
Holy crap, I think jenni covered it all! All I could think of was that the mathematical Pi is an infinite and complex number and that Piscine, "Pi", is very complex as well, with his many belief systems and such. Honestly, this question was just way over my head!
By
PCOSMama, at 9:21 PM
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