As an author, your main job is to create a story that attracts your audience’s attention, but also retains it through out. Authors shy away from the mundane, and focus in on the details that make the story worth telling. Authors ponder on how to make these key details more appealing, so they use strategies like, metaphors and distortion. They have the creative ability to bend and shift the story to better deliver their message. Author Flannery O’Connor has written “I am interested in making a good case for distortion because I am coming to believe that it is the only way to make people see”. She believes changing details for the sake of the story, is more effective than telling a perfectly recounted tale. Yann Martel takes this approach in Life of Pi as he uses his character Pi to distort details to improve a story. …show more content…
When reading Life of Pi, your task as a reader is not to pin point details which may seem illogical. The two Japanese investigators play this role. They bombard Pi on whether the animal bones on the boat were meerkat or mongoose bones. Mr. Okamoto insists “They could be bones from another small animal” (300). The investigators act like readers who refuse to accept Pi’s story. They are off put by some details and ultimately miss the bigger picture. They don’t understand that the real way to open the audience’s eyes is to change the picture in front of them. If the novel is read like an investigator who meticulously searches for a minute detail that may disprove Pi’s story, they are basically reading a completely different novel. The purpose of Life of Pi is to give its audience an understanding of a traumatic event. A young boy gets trapped in the ocean and is struggles for survival. This may sound ludicrous, but that aspect is not what the author wants focus on. He wants focus on the unexpected details, as they act as a doorway that leads to the deeper meaning of the