"There were many skies.
The sky was invaded by great white clouds, flat on the bottom but
round and billowy on top. The sky was completely cloudless, of a
blue quite shattering to the senses. The sky was a heavy,
suffocating blanket of grey cloud, but without promise of rain. The
sky was thinly overcast. The sky was dappled with small, white,
fleecy clouds. The sky was streaked with high, thin clouds that
looked like a cotton ball stretched a part. The sky was a
featureless milky haze. The sky was a density of dark and blustery
rain clouds that passed by without delivering rain. The sky was
painted with a small number of flat clouds that looked like sandbars.
The sky was a mere block to allow a visual effect on the horizon:
sunlight flooding the ocean, the vertical edges of between light and
shadow perfectly distinct. The sky was a distant black curtain of
falling rain. The sky was many clouds at many levels, some thick and
opaque, others looking like smoke. The sky was black and spitting on
my smiling face. The sky was nothing but falling water, a ceaseless
deluge that wrinkled and bloated my skin and froze me stiff." - Yann Martel, THE LIFE OF PI
And of course Pi would notice every type of cloud there was from his ocean raft. So Yann probably spent some time on his back staring up at the heavens doing his research. And the repetition of the words "the sky" emphasized how important the weather conditions were to him and became tedious, just like floating in the ocean day after day became. Nice example of the thought behind this book. You should write another post analyzing the ending. :-)
ReplyDeleteHe did have so much time to look, didn't he? Lovely to remind us, Irene! I'm sending a cloud pic to you!
ReplyDelete