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Essay Practise
Your assessment task for Life of Pi will be a text response essay. You should attempt to get as much practice as possible. Now that you have finished the first part of Life of Pi, you have enough information to complete a practice essay on the topic:
‘Those who lack faith miss the better story.’
Discuss in relation to part 1 of Life of Pi.
Consider the following:
- How can faith enrich an individual’s life, their relationships and their understanding of the universe? Consider what each of Pi’s three religions (Hinduism, Christianity and Islam) provide him with and what attracted him to each religion (Chapters 16-20)
- To what extent can faith (and fundamentalism) be limiting? Consider how Pi focuses on the similarities between faiths, while others focus on the differences (Chapter 23).
- How do different forms of belief and understanding, whether religious or scientific, enrich a person’s understanding of the world? Consider the examples of the two Kumars and their appreciation of the zebra (Chapter 22) and Pi’s views on atheism (Chapter 7).
- To what extent does religious belief offer a sense of ‘freedom’? Consider Pi’s analogy with animals kept in zoos (Chapter 4).
- How does a lack of belief or an unwillingness to commit to a way of understanding the world limit a person’s ability to appreciate wonder and beauty? Consider Pi’s views on agnosticism (Chapters 7 and 22).
Remember to PLAN your response, and follow the required STRUCTURE:
- An INTRODUCTION which provides the required CONTEXT for the topic contains a clear CONTENTION.
- A minimum of 3 BODY PARAGRAPHS, each of which:
- Includes an ARGUMENT that is identified in the TOPIC SENTENCE
- Contains MULTIPLE QUOTES, each of which are fluently EMBEDDED and are then EXPLAINED and linked back to your argument
- Concludes with a LINKING SENTENCE that links these ideas and evidence together with your paragraph’s ARGUMENT.
- A CONCLUSION that restates your ARGUMENT and brings together the ideas explored in your essay.
