In_the_Skin_of_a_Lion

Let me now re-emphasise the extreme looseness of the structure of all objects" How Ondaatje makes use of "loosness" in the novel. In "In The Skin Of A Lion" by Michael Ondaatje, "the extreme looseness of the structure of all objects" is carried into the themes, characters and into the nature of the novel itself. Ondaatje uses a "looseness" in the style of the novel - post modernism, and "looseness of structure" in the way that people are able to stretch and expand their boundaries: transform or mask themselves into someone not typical of their social group. This novel was written in the late 1980s and is classified as a post-modern work. Essentially, "In The Skin Of A Lion" has many traits of a post-modern novel, it deals with chaos and order, has multi-layered interpretations, provokes an ambiguous and mixed reaction from the reader, and has varied approaches to the conventional storyline; beginning, exposition, and closure. There are liberties taken with the time structure of the narrative. The story itself is like a "mural, [the] falling together of accomplices." Ondaatje tells of ordinary people who's stories interlock and intersect, with many "fragments of human order". Ondaatje does not tell the stories loosely and scattere 1. Eight Characters and why they are important: The Skin Of A Lion Nicholas Temelcoff Temelcoff is a means through which Patrick realises the nature of history. Temelcoff realises that he will have to pass down his own story, and that official history will not remember him. Alice Gull Alice is the one who gives Patrick a purpose. Patrick is a “searcher” after Clara leaves but he finds security with Alice. Hazen Lewis Hazen is the person who has shaped Patrick. Hazen acts as the context for Patrick in the novel. Patrick Lewis The central character in the novel who is symbolic of the struggles faced by the workers of the time. Ambrose Small Small is the man who is representational of the rich people of the society who care nothing for the struggles of the working class. Rowland Harris He provides the angle that even though it is hard, some of the working class can climb their way up the ranks. Clara Dickens She is the one who first encourages Patrick to open up to other people. Caravaggio He was a thief, but a character that seemed to have a positive influence on Patrick. He brings hope and leaves an impression on Patrick. 2. The Basis order of the main incidents The story begins with reflections of Patrick as a child. We then see Nicholas Temelcoff save the nun, Alice Gull, when she falls from the bridge. Patrick meets Clara, falls in love, but then she leaves him. Patrick then stays with Alice, but goes “searching” for Clara only to have Ambrose Small pour petrol over him and attempt to set him alight. He then gives up on Clara and befriends Alice. Alice dies in a misguided attack and Patrick goes to prison. When he is released, he plans a terrorist attack on the waterworks, only to pull out at the last minute. He takes on a carer role for Hana and goes searching for Clara. 3. An example of a metaphor in the book and its significance “You’re among the dwarfs of enterprise who never get accepted or acknowledged.” Describing the writing of history, and how the simple working folk will be forgotten by all bar their own families. They are the dwarfs that are overlooked when history is penned. 4. What you consider to be at least 3 main themes · The perception of history. Ondaatje raises issues surrounding the way in which history is recorded. He is of the view that history favours those with power and leaves out the simple folk who toiled day in, day out, to achieve the feats that others will be credited with. · The material nature of life. Ondaatje has a shot at the way in which many people feel they will be remembered due to their physical possessions. Harris is one, as he buys herringbone tiles for the waterworks, just so it will be remembered. Revision Questions – Craville Studies Page 2 of 4 · The value of life. Throughout the text, numerous lives are lost in construction and by other means. However, when quizzed by Patrick about the number of lives lost during construction, Harris replies “there was no record kept.” 5. What you think is the essence of the dominant reading. I believe the dominant reading is a Marxist one. Ondaatje’s novel has been valued as a Marxist text for a long time. The way in which he uses poetic language to describe the workers gives them a persona that is gentler than the way ‘official’ history remembers them. Nicholas Temelcoff, Patrick and Hazen Lewis are manual labourers who take no part in the grand schemes of construction, but they are the ones who put their life on the line every day during construction as they build the histories of others. Ondaatje empathises with the side of the workers and he feels that the soul of all the constructions is the men who toiled to make it possible. Nicholas Temelcoff is a worker on the bridge, a hard-working man who struggles with language. Yet, despite this, Ondaatje chooses to describe Temelcoff using some of the most poetic language in the entire novel. He is “the man in the air” who “floats” and “pushes in the air before him as if swimming in a river.” Ondaatje continually uses similes to describe Temelcoff as his movements in the air require a description more poetic than literal. He is described using another simile that “he knows his position in the air as if he is mercury slipping across a map.” Following Alice’s death, Temelcoff’s two solitary tears are described as “two little silver coaches” and this further adds to his poetic persona. But Ondaatje’s use of poetic language on workers is not just limited to Temelcoff, as he also incorporates Patrick into his Marxist view. Patrick is the son of an “abashed man,” and he is fascinated with moths, but his vendetta against Harris and the waterworks is what most makes Patrick’s actions satisfy Marxists. The very fact that a simple working man, a man who helped build the waterworks, is able to bring the entire construction to its knees is what is most encouraging for Marxists. Patrick manages to “swim through the tunnel” he “helped build” and set up a rig of explosives that could bring it all down. The fact that Patrick pulls out is testimony once again to his character that he is not the brutish worker portrayed in official history. However, what is relevant is that a simple worker, a man whom history will forget, came within inches of writing his name in history forever, for all the wrong reasons. 6. What you feel a feminist might feel reading this book Patrick is described as an avid reader in his childhood, but states that “in the books he read, women were rescued from runaway horses.” Despite this heroic stereotype, it is not a male who saves Patrick, but a female presence. After Clara leaves Patrick, he becomes lost and it is Clara’s fried, Alice Gull that gives Patrick a purpose. Patrick states that he “wants to grow old together” to Alice as she is the one who saves him when he needs it. Alice also seems to be a voice that Ondaatje speaks his own attitudes through, Alice states that “you reach people through metaphor,” before going on to describe her performance at the waterworks as “what I reached you with earlier tonight.” The very fact that Ondaatje would choose to express his own voice through a female character, in this case Alice, gives credence to the angle that Ondaatje’s novel can be viewed as a feminist one. Out of all the people Patrick deals with, it is only Clara and Alice who can really influence him. Alice says to Patrick using a simile that “like water, you can be easily harnessed.” But despite this, it is only Clara and Alice that manage to do this. Revision Questions – Craville Studies Page 3 of 4 Throughout the text, Patrick sees many people die around him, including his father, but the only one who really eats him inside is Alice. After Alice’s death when Patrick is in prison he stays silent, trying to hold onto Alice, “as if saying one word would release Alice from his body.” In traditional texts, the woman would fall for the man and follow him, but Ondaatje creates Patrick, a man who searches for Clara after she leaves. Despite Clara saying “I don’t want you lost Patrick,” she realises she can’t stay with him. She is a freethinking woman in charge of her own destiny and does not go back with Patrick. Following Alice’s death and Patrick’s scheme against the waterworks, it is another female that gives him a reason to carry on. Patrick takes on the role of the father to Alice’s daughter Hana. Hana gives Patrick a reason to carry on despite having lost the woman he wished to grow old with. Patrick’s journey is made up of a number of obstacles, but when he gets stuck, it is not the male characters that pull him over, but the female characters of Clara, Alice and Hana. The text certainly contains a feminist theme that makes it fitting to modern audiences as well. 7. What you feel a postcolonial theorist might feel Much of the answer to this has been covered in part 5. However, particular lines, including the one regarding Nicholas Temelcoff, does have a post colonial attitude. Temelcoff is described as “walking around syllables” and “picking one up he fancies” before “replacing it with another.” It is the language barrier and the fact that the majority of workers were migrants, which would have post colonial theorists feeling that Ondaatje hit the spot. 8. What a resistant reader might say about the book’s themes and style A resistant reader might feel that Ondaatje structured the book too loosely, and that by creating such a loose, difficult to follow plot, it has detracted from the themes. The themes have been lost in amongst the time shifting as Ondaatje got carried away with the poetic prose, rather than focusing on the plot. 9. Your ideas about Patrick’s Journey Patrick’s journey is one of self discover. He realises many things about himself and begins to value having company. Following an isolated childhood, Patrick learns to like the idea of “growing old together” with Alice. When she dies, he turns his attention to taking care of Alice’s orphaned daughter, Hana. 10.Your own main response to this book Ondaatje’s text is not just limited to Marxist or feminist, but has also been responded to by a personal reading that values the contributions made by every member of society, not just exclusively one group. This reading values the contribution made by each member of society towards an overall cause. The story itself revolves around the construction of a bridge and waterworks, a project overseen by the commissioner of the public works, Rowland Harris. Harris is the man whom ‘official’ history remembers as the brilliant individual who ensured the construction was a success. A Marxist will tell you that it was the workers who are responsible for the success of the project, but a responder assuming this reading believes that the entire operation, from planning to construction to completion and operation, was made possible by everyone in the society pitching in. The project would not have worked unless there had been a commissioner to oversee the project and workers to build it. For all Harris’ faults, he had an incredible devotion to the project and its success. When the nun, Alice Gull, seemingly falls off the unfinished bridge to her death, Harris’ reaction is not of fear for the nun, but sorrow for the bridge itself. Harris describes the Revision Questions – Craville Studies Page 4 of 4 bridge as “his first child” and his pity for it is shown as he realises that “it had already become a murder.” Ondaatje has used personification in this example to show how Harris views the bridge…as a living child. Harris himself even realises the contributions made by the workers, as he forgives Patrick for his attempted backlash against the waterworks. Patrick accuses Harris of excess when he states that Harris’ “goddamn herringbone tiles cost more than half our salaries put together.” Rather than deny this, Harris states that “yes, that’s true,” but argues that it is necessary for the waterworks to live on. This conversation between Harris and Patrick is a good summation of the efforts of both the workers and the commissioner during the project. Harris states cliché-like, that he fought “tooth and nail” to get the materials needed, but says that Patrick is “as much of the fabric as the aldermen and the millionaires.” This is where the two paths, that of the workers, and that of the commissioner, met, and Harris realises that Patrick and the other workers fought hard but are “among the dwarfs of enterprise who never get accepted or acknowledged.” This is why history is but perception, but Ondaatje’s novel can be read as an account of the successes of all levels of society. Extract 1 The novel In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje illustrates the central character's struggle to overcome his fear of love in an attempt to take control of his life. Blinded by fear, Patrick Lewis must uncover the details of his seemingly forgotten past in order to overcome his fear. He attempts to overcome this obstacle through experimentation and human experience, recollecting forgotten emotions. Although Patrick has experienced love before, he now finds it very difficult to allow love into his life. However, Patrick Lewis is able to overcome his fear through his encounter with Clara Dickens, his reunion with Hana, and his near death experience. Patrick Lewis' affair with Clara Dickens plays a role in overcoming his fear of love. After his night with Clara, Patrick realizes she is unlike any of the other women he has been with previously. Patrick's fear of love has always prevented him from becoming involved with anyone, creating a life of solitude for himself. However, while with Clara, Patrick is unable to deny his feelings and opens up his emotions to her, connecting with her mentally. Since Patrick has denied these feelings for many years, he quickly becomes engulfed with fears of falling in love. Historical Obliviousness in Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion Post-Modernism, the absence of any certainty, discredits the values of modernism, opposing the fixed principles of meaning and value. It is built on countless theories about society, the media and knowledge of the world, but it is also aware that there is no ultimate way of making sense of humanity. Ondaatje embraces aspects of post-modernism, by creating a novel that breaks away from the traditional narrative, thereby giving readers a greater perspective on the novel. One learns that any story is simply a storyteller’s construction, and is never unbiased. “Any critical reading of a text will be strengthened by a knowledge of how a text is valued by readers in differing contexts.” One of many themes in this novel is the search for identity and light. One must possess these elements to survive the world. Patrick is constantly searching and looking for his true identity. Throughout his journey, he meets many people who help play an important role in his life. They also help build up his identity and true self. He feels a separation between him and the community he lives in. He also feels isolation and the lack of love. This passage states his inner feelings and thoughts and provides the readers some of his characteristic qualities. It states that he is an abashed man who searches and collects things, and who is isolated from everyone who is close to him. This passage also provides emotional endearment for the readers, since it illustrates Patrick’s compassion and perception. It reveals Patrick’s true character. In the beginning of the story, it does not mention how he felt about the society he is living in. It talks about the people he meets and how they change his life. As the story progresses, his true character divulges and the readers learn more about him. This causes the passage to be one of the most important ones in the story, since it informs the readers of Patrick’s inner thoughts and feelings. Extract 2 In the novel, “In the Skin of a Lion,” by Michael Ondaatje, the main character, Patrick Lewis, searches for identity and light. Without these elements, he lacks love and cannot survive the world. A passage in chapter three describes him as a lonely man that is isolated from the world around him. “Clara and Ambrose and Alice and Temelcoff and Cato- this cluster made up a drama without him. And he himself was noting but a prism that refracted their lives. He searched out things, he collected things. He was an abashed man, an inheritance from his father. Born in Abashed, Ontario. What did the word mean' Something that suggested there was a terrible horizon in him beyond which he couldn’t leap. Something hollow, so when alone, when not aligned with another- whether it was Ambrose or Clara or Alice- he could hear the rattle within that suggested a space between him and community. A gap of love,” (Ondaatje, pg.157) suggests his feelings of separation from his close companions. It also reveals Patrick’s thoughts and characteristic qualities As Ondaatje indicated throughout the novel, one must take action and assume the skin of a lion as a way of standing up and being heard. Through Clara, Hana, and a near death experience, Patrick Lewis is able to take control and overcome his fear of love. Though he had spent most of his life in fear, avoiding love, Patrick is able to start a new life with Clara and his daughter. Often, barriers of language, culture and beliefs hold individuals back, imprisoning them in their own darkness. However, through assuming the skin of a wild animal, each individual can take responsibility for their story, freeing themselves from confinement and fear. flash before his eyes. Believing he is going to die, Patrick regrets having run away from love for so many years, but feels satisfied he has finally allowed his emotions to come through to them. As well, before falling unconscious, Patrick says "I can't die, I haven't lived in the skin of a lion," (Ondaatje 156) symbolizing that Patrick wants the opportunity to take control of his own life, being ready to allow himself to fully experience his emotions. Since Patrick thought only of love during his near death experience, this signifies that Patrick has completely let go of his fear of love, being able to begin a new life. Through this event, Patrick comes to the realization he is ready to take action for himself. Though Patrick has spent countless years avoiding love, in fear of being hurt again, he is able to overcome his fear through Clara's and Hana's great love for him. Had Patrick never experienced their love, he would continue Given the pervasiveness and intensity of violence in Michael Ondaatje’s novel, “In the Skin of a Lion”, it may seem to be a foregone conclusion that the writer is advocating aggressive action as a means of political change. Violence, after all, is at times overt and physical in the novel, and at times it is also subtle, complex and psychological. Still, no matter how the violence is presented in the text, it is nonetheless omnipresent, always pulsing beneath the surface of the story and serving as the crucible in which relationships are forged and destroyed. A more nuanced reading of Ondaatje’s novel, however, situated within a larger theoretical and historical framework, suggests that Ondaatje is simply using the same tools of the powerful to render a profound analysis of the processes of society building and the recording of history. In this reading, the various forms of violence that are witnessed by the reader serve as the best means of understanding the quality of relationships. Far from endorsing violence as a means of political change, In “In the Skin of a Lion” Ondaatje simply wants to understand violence and how its dynamics impact the processes of creating a community and writing its history. In other words, through the writing of the text, the author is not simply using violence as a simple plot device, but he is seeking to explore the function and meaning of violence in more general and overarching terms. The violence that is so palpable in “In the Skin of a Lion” by Michael Ondaatje begins early in the novel and it does not escape the reader that this early introduction is setting the tone for the rest of the book. The reader is introduced to young Patrick Lewis, who helps his father deploy dynamite in order to clear up log jams in a river. While this type of violence is not interpersonal, the use of a strong explosive does have symbolic importance. Despite the fact that Patrick and his father are doing work that presumably clears the way, literally, for the construction of an infrastructure that will usher Toronto into the modern age, the message conveyed to the reader through the use of this metaphor is that destruction is as much a part of society building as construction is. Certainly, while again it is not a directed sort of violence between feuding parties, it is nonetheless the application of brute force. This message if reinforced when the reader learns that Mr. Lewis, Patrick’s father, has been killed in a mine by a fallen piece of feldspar. While seemingly insignificant in the overall scheme of the story, the author uses this event to emphasize that people die unintentionally and unexpectedly in the process of building a community or a society. Indeed, the fact that Patrick’s father is all but forgotten after this incident is important in and of itself. Many anonymous individuals toil and even give their lives in the process of nation-building, and they will never be recalled by history. This forgetting is yet another kind of violence, for it obliterates the memory of those who made modern life possible. Mr. Lewis is the first, but he will not be the last, of Ondaatje’s characters to fall in the line of some form of service to society. The early exposure to explosives will continue to have a significant influence on Patrick and his future experiences. For example, in “Skin of a Lion” by Michael Ondaatje when Patrick falls in love with Clara Dickens and realizes that she is romantically attached to the millionaire Ambrose Small, Small responds by attempting to burn Patrick and then obliterate him completely by throwing a Molotov cocktail at him. Patrick survives, but is burned, and it is probably this experience that marks a turning point in Patrick’s understanding of and feelings about power and violence. Not only is this a direct act of violence in “In the Skin of a Lion” by Michael Ondaatje that is presented in this situation, it also revolves around the theme of explosives and explosive violence. The use of an explosive to play on the theme of violence in the novel is also important because not only is there the sense of something blowing up in a way that cannot be controlled or contained, there is also the sense of something that is hot or dangerous to even come near. After this event and second exposure to explosives and violence, Patrick is forever changed. Over the course of the remainder of the novel, Patrick will appropriate the only tools of the powerful that are available to him to assert himself. Since money is not one of the tools, Patrick uses what he knows: explosive devices. In the most concrete sense, explosives are more powerful than money, for they have the power to destruct what money has built. By the novel’s conclusion, Patrick has set a hotel for the wealthy on fire and he has laid plans for blowing up Toronto’s filtration plant using explosives. An empathic reader understands that Patrick is not an evil individual, but one who has been subjected to so much hardship that he has appropriated the same kinds of violence that have been employed against him and turned those tools against the oppressors. Nonetheless, no matter how much the reader may come to find Patrick a sympathetic character, the use and presence of violence in the novel is so overpowering that one comes away from it feeling disturbed and harbors a new understanding for the many subtle and complex reasons for violence in all its forms.   While the elements of violence discussed here are certainly present in this novel, it is worth mentioning that such a paradox is not uncommon for Ondaatje and the thematic interests he explores in his prose (Fallon 319). Ondaatje, a transcultural immigrant himself, struggles to understand and accept his own patchwork identity and find his place in a society through the characters in his novels. The very conditions and circumstances that shape the immigrant, then, are themselves paradoxical. As Fallon observes, “The domestic and violent, mythic and mundane, fictional and historical, inner and outer, natural and artificial often collide, producing a violent energy that drives the work forward” (319). These same dynamic tensions are what drive the life of the immigrant forward. Fallon further contends that these paradoxes are invented and deployed by Ondaatje in order to “challenge the boundaries between genres and states of being” (319). Ondaatje, Fallon writes, “portrays the arbitrary nature of those boundaries by blurring them, and [sets up] the violent clash of opposites (319). He is not advocating violence, then, but is simply acknowledging that it exists. Given the admission of this fact, Ondaatje seems to sense that it is his obligation as a writer and as an immigrant to explore what violence is, how it used and by whom, and how it affects the various stakeholders in a society and how it compromises their ability to forge a unified identity. Looking outside the text, the reader can locate secondary material that supports this argument. In interviews, for example, Ondaatje has positioned himself with relationship to his literary oeuvre, and has explained why so much of his work has been so violent. He has explained that his Sri Lankan birth has kept him aware of conflicts that characterize colonial societies, and he has used as books as a “personal tunneling” to try to understand the dynamics of colonialism, society building, and the role that violence plays in both (Nasta 251). Ondaatje has expressly avoided, though, didacticism—“‘Hey, now I’ve got you, I’m going to make you listen to a lecture’”--, which he says is “often incendiary and facile” (Nasta 253). Rather, he wants to give voice to alternate narratives that may not otherwise enter the social conversation, as the tools of narrative power are often limited to the elite. Given this, Ondaatje sees the office of the writer as a moral one. Regarding this responsibility, Onddatje stated: “The morality comes with what you decide to write about, as opposed to what your judgments are [about that subject] (Nasta 254). Writing about colonialism and immigration, then, necessarily involves exploring the multiple forms of violence—physical and psychological—that characterize these social phenomena. Yet in Ondaatje’s opinion, writing about colonialism and immigration does not involve advocating for or against violence; rather, it means exploring the different stories and dynamics as an effort to understand what violence is and how it is used. The colonialist enterprise and its legacy are characterized by their violence, both physical and psychological. Therefore, the appropriation of violence as a literary resource and a plot device may seem, at least on a first reading, to endorse violence as the means which the powerless can use to contest their condition. Yet a more nuanced reading suggests that such an appropriation actually challenges notions of violence by playing with the tools of the master. Just as Ondaatje feels a sense of responsibility as a writer to present multiple stories and diverse perspectives, so must the reader accept his or her obligation to consider multiple meanings, and especially those that go beyond facile conclusions.