“There are stories of elopements, unrequited love, family feuds and exhausting vendettas, which everyone was drawn into, had to be involved with.”
The narrative handles the dysfunction of family as Ondaatje goes back home facing his past and family history. Through his self-discovery, he understands his alcoholic father’s issues and how familial problems stick out more. The statement is an observation he makes regarding how the dysfunction in a family persists rather than the glorious stories. It highlights how family history is usually in the most part entangled with the dysfunctions and disputes that haunts it.
“It is not that he became too complicated but that he had reduced himself to a few things around him and he gave them immense meaning and significance.”
The novel focuses mostly on the father and husband, Mervyn, and the impact he had on the family as the patriarch. He struggles with alcoholism and his identity due to his anger issues and emotional unavailability to his family when he was younger. Now older the consequences of his neglect that would have been otherwise resolved earlier but now irreparable, troubles his family. The assertion, therefore, describes his tendency to wallow in his shortcomings and loneliness.
