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Readings Summary
In the Skin of a Lion Readings Summary
Marxist
Feminist
Personal
Reading
Marxist:
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. One
possible reason behind Ondaatje’s empathy is due to the fact that he
himself was an immigrant, just like many of the workers. Ondaatje
was born in what is now Sri Lanka and he would know only too well
the struggles faced by the workers.
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.
Feminist:
While Ondaatje’s text
can be viewed as a Marxist one, it also has elements that can
deliver a feminist reading to the responder.
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.
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.
Personal Reading:
But 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
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.
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