English Modern American Literature Part 4 Name

English Modern American Literature Part 4 Name:

The Life of Pi : Study Guide : CHAPTERS 1–5

Vocabulary: Use the contextual cues to predict the meaning of the highlighted vocabulary word.

1. “My majors were religious studies and zoology” (ch. 1, p. 3).

zoology:

2. “My fourth–year thesis for religious studies concerned certain aspects of the cosmogony theory of Isaac Luria, the great sixteenth–century Kabbalist from Safed” (ch. 1, p. 3).

cosmogony:

Kabbalah:

3. “I had the great luck one summer of studying the three–toed sloth in situ in the equatorial jungles of Brazil” (ch. 1, p. 3).

in situ:

4. “It’s only real habit is indolence” (ch. 1, p. 3).

indolence:

5. “When you’ve suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling” (ch. 1, p. 5).

trifling:

6. “The first time I turned a tap on, its noisy, wasteful, superabundant gush was such a shock that I became incoherent and my legs collapsed beneath me, and I fainted in the arms of a nurse” (ch. 1, p. 7).

incoherent:

7. “To speak frankly, many are sexual deviants, either terribly repressed and subject to explosions of frenzied lasciviousness or openly depraved, in either case regularly affronting management with gross outrages of free sex and incest” (ch. 4, pp. 13–14).

lasciviousness:

8. “But language founders in such seas” (ch. 4, p. 15).

founders:

9. “They show their raiments” (ch. 4, p. 15).

raiments:

Study Questions : Using the information from Chapters 1 & 2, answer the following:

1. How does the three–toed sloth survive?

2. Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human characteristics to nonhumans. Find examples of anthropomorphism on pp. 4–5.

3. Describe some examples of imagery, figurative language on pp. 6–7.

4. In chapter 2, in italics, who is the narrator and who is the subject?

Study Questions : Using the information from Chapters 3 through 5, answer the following:

1. Describe how Pi comes to be named after a French swimming pool.

2. Pondicherry Zoo, which once loomed so large in Pi’s life, is now only a place of memory. Describe a childhood experience or place which has “shrunk” in your memory.

3. Pi does not agree with people who “think animals in the wild are ‘happy’ because they are ‘free’” (ch. 4, p. 15). Why?

4. Describe how and why Piscine Molitor Patel becomes Pi. Describe a similar name change in your school experience.

5. Pi writes his name on the blackboard with every teacher during the day. He says that “repetition is important in the training not only of animals but also of humans” (ch. 5, p. 23). Explain.

Questions for Essay and Discussion: Pick ONE of the following discussion questions to answer.

1. Discuss Pi’s statement that “I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he’s not careful” (ch. 1, p. 6).

2. How does the word “bamboozle” represent the India Martel and Pi describe?

3. How do you feel about zoos? Have your ideas about zoos changed? What is your favorite zoo animal?

4. Compare school or society to a zoo using the features Pi describes in chapter 4.

5. Pi finds “refuge” in a Greek letter. Why are names so important to our sense of self?

Vocabulary: Give the dictionary definitions for each of the following vocabulary words.