Essay Questions

Why do the stories follow non chronological order?

It is an unusual book and hard to slot into any sort. It was hard to read and plunge into at first, since Michael Ondaatje has written this novel in post modern narrative style which is disconnected and the course of events of the story scrambles and hops around. It is a convincing and unstructured outfit of certainty, fiction, poetry, oral history, photos and blurring memories. It is a reproduced history of his parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, kin, stepsisters; and, obviously, about himself. It has a strong mix of stories, occurrences, mishaps, terrible drunkenness, honorable forfeits, dejection and togetherness, falling in love and falling out of love, cold-bloodedness, fate, destiny and faith. The novel comprises of the stories of each family that is never told and that is because that most families had not had an Ondaatje to record it. This novel is packed with arousing poetry.

How does Ondaatje expose his Diasporic consciousness through his narration?

As a diasporic author, Michael Ondaatje merits exceptional consideration due to the many sided dualities related with him – his blood, birth, sojourn and adoption. The Dutch Burgher family, Ceylonese (Sri Lankan) nativity, western education and adoption of Canadian citizenship combined with his profound feeling of attachment to the nation of birth make Ondaatje's social position to some extent complex. Ondaatje's own perspective of himself as a Sri Lankan and additionally a Canadian is a pointer to the swaying and double consciousness of the diasporic writer. This memoir conveys to the fore this aspect of diasporic sensibility. In this novel Ondaatje's diasporic awareness is portrayed in the very remaking of family history. As a diaspora Ondaatje attempts to remake the disjointed stories about his family and give an intelligible structure to his lineage. He is painfully aware of the fact that he is a leftover of prior generations that has been influenced by different changes in course of time.

What is the role of fragmentation as a narrative technique in this novel?

Michael Ondaatje uses the technique of fragmentation and explores images as the basis of the narrative. Fragmentation is one of the key factors of postmodern narrative style. Fragmentation convenes different genres in the same work and sews them together to create a new whole. Ondaatje has used this style by encompassing different genres in this postmodern work. It is composed of the juxtaposition of texts belonging to different genres such as epigraphs, anecdotes, poems, journal entries, and quotations from several authors. It incorporates visual texts such as photographs and maps. The different texts interact with each other, thus conferring on the fragmented texts an overall unity.

Ondaatje also uses syntax to feature his fragmented and hybrid identity; his authorial devices also fragment time and space in the memoir. By using the fragment sentence ‘The island seduced all Europe. The Portuguese. The Dutch. The English. And so its name changed…’ Ondaatje incarnates Ceylon as a starkly seductive woman, highlighting the fact that his memoir is a postcolonial commentary. The repetition of the fragmented syntax also develops the framework of identity. The fragmentary syntax here is used to describe Ceylon. However when Ondaatje explains the name - ‘ Ondaatje. A parody of the ruling language’, he uses the fragmentary syntax to delineate himself and his family. The fragment sentences reflect Ondaatje and his family’s fractured, hybrid identities.