得獎感言

At first, I want to thank Bookman for giving me the chance to participate in this reading contest. I enjoy learning English not only in class but also in my everyday life. For instance, I love listening to English songs on the way to school, watching English movies, and the most important at all, reading English novels filled with creativity and imaginary. A great novel just like a light house points out the dream you try to achieve and inspires you to move forward; it can really change your attitude while facing the difficulties in life. Therefore, the more novels I read, the more happiness and passion I can find. In the end, I would like to thank my English teacher, Sonya, for persuade me to join in this great contest and support me along the way. Hope I can take part in the next Bookman reading contest.

What is it like to survive along with the company of a Bengal tiger on the Pacific Ocean for 227 days? A stream of questions crossed my mind as I stared at the bewildering cover. Curious, I opened the book and was so ultimately fascinated with the engrossing story filled with tension, bravery, survival, and faith that I couldn’t stop reading until the last page. Life of Pi is really a remarkable novel that touches me deeply.

The sixteen-year-old boy, by the name of Pi Patel, met a tragic wreck on his journey from India to Canada. Everything on the ship utterly sank. Drifting on a solitary lifeboat, the only survivor, Pi, teamed up with the most eccentric creatures of all, an exhausted Bengal tiger, named Richard Parker. On the vast South Pacific Ocean, dehydration, starvation, depressed spirits, and a tiger with open hostility were the crucial problems that Pi couldn’t avoid. Despite such terrible circumstances, Pi demonstrated an unshakable will to survive, and his firm faith in God, and finally he ended the disastrous wandering sea life on the 227th day after the ship sank. Much to his disappointment, Richard Parker, his companion and tormenter, left him immediately without looking back.

I’m really impressed by the novel’s vivid description of human nature. At the beginning of the shipwreck, besides Pi and Richard Parker, there were three other animals on the lifeboat: a zebra, a hyena, and an orangutan. The zebra broke its leg while jumping onto the lifeboat, and the hungry hyena ate the zebra before long, the orangutan also became food for the hyena. Then Richard Parker ended the hyena’s life. However, it was revealed at the end of the novel that, in fact, the poor zebra was the injured young sailor, while the starving hyena referred to the grasping cook who cold-bloodedly ate the young sailor to fill his empty stomach. The orangutan, which was killed by the hyena, was actually Pi’s mother, and Pi couldn’t stand it anymore so he killed the cook in a fit of anger. Richard Parker, the ferocious tiger, was a symbol of Pi’s brutal instinct. When he struggled to survive, the impulse promptly came up, but it disappeared without a trace when he returned to human society.

The attitude with which Pi confronted his life really strikes a chord with me. In his childhood, he was exposed to three different types of religions (Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity) and he attempted to believe in all of them at the same time. Although religions may look conflicting and distinct, if you perceive them with your true a humble heart, you can find out that they have so much in common: compassion, forgiveness, care, sympathy; it seems like they can get alone with each other peacefully. Unfortunately, people so far have kept arguing and attacking each other owing to different religions; they even forget that the original intention of praising God is to relieve people from suffering, not to fight against the poor. “Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defense, not Gods, that the self-righteous should rush.” That was how Pi thought about religions.

Life of Pi is a unique and original novel, which mixes imagination with human nature. By the author’s ingenious arrangement, the story took me on a journey through the misfortune of an amazing boy. It not only is a literary masterpiece but also reminds me to keep an unyielding determination in mind, whenever I am faced with any difficulties in life.