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Contemporary Literature
N00113645
20/11/2014

Ondaatje's novel 'In the Skin of a Lion' demonstrates the power of language
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Ondaatje’s fictionalized retelling of the historical events surrounding the construction of the Bloor Street viaduct reveals
themes of authority and power,rebellion, love, loss and self-discovery and a recurring
inherent failure of language
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According to Focoult,history was only memorizing the events and moments of the past in
transformational form into documents,which would led to the discipline of questioning
documents
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Language fails many people throughout the novel, but those whom it fails most are the poor
and the marginalized
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Ondaatje is attempting to narrate the forgotten histories of those migrants who contributed to
the building of the city of Toronto
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As Paul Connerton states in How Societies
Remember, ‘We generally think of memory as an individual facility’2
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M
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9

2 Paul Connerton ,How Societies Remember(Cambridge:Cambridge University Press,1989),p
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some such thing as a collective or social memory
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’It is memory that grounds time’
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He is also bringing attention to the hierarchical nature of written language
through his non-linear format
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'In the Skin
of a Lion' emphasizes that the story is an oral one
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He
perceives official national history as a failure of language
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Therefore
the exclusion of the migrants from the national narrative highlights how they are seen as not
as modern and non rational
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Language, discourse and knowledge are essential components in
humanity's perception of historical worldviews
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However, knowledge is a notion gained by human experiences, then developed to skills in
order to understand things and situations in proper and probably accurate ways, ‘facts,
information, and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical
understanding of a subject’5
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Power
as a definition is related to determination, control and authority
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Language is used as a tool
3 Ibid,p
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4Michael Ondaatje,In the Skin of a Lion (Vintage; 1st Vintage International ed edition,1997),p
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27
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in two ways; to highlight power structures; those who have language have knowledge and
therefore have power
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Language facilitates the solidifying of cultural identities, either as part of the
marginalized or part of those in a position of dominance
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The migrant workers are forced to communicate in English, ’if they speak in any
other language other than English,they will be jailed
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It is worth noting that
although Ondaatje is attempting to re-work a historical narrative which is elitist and
exclusionary, he also denies the migrant workers a voice with the use of the impersonal
pronoun ‘their’ and ‘them’ when discussing the migrants as a collective whole
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The question of control and ownership of
language is a crucial political issue
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Charlie Johnson
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This renaming enables the reader to understand the complex effect a person’s
identity has when establishing power
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Language in Onjaantjes novel
symbolizes power
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101
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1
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29
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29
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This is forcing the migrants to integrate into
society by not establishing a collective identity, however they are always on the outside
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We can see this from
early on in the novel and Ondaatje depiction of Patricks childhood
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We get a strong
sense of Patrick being an outsider, an observer
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He describes his father as a man of few words, ‘the only moments his father was verbal was
when calling square dances in the Yarker and Tamworth hotels during the log drives’
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’13 This can be seen to affect Patrick as he too grows up uncommunicative and
introvert
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After his father’s death he is
omitted from the story, this can be seen to signify how his own failure of language resulted in
being omitted from this fictional history
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'In the Skin of a Lion' can be seen as a journey of self discovery
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Patrick gains
10 Ibid,p
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11Ibid,p29
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29
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14 Ibid,p
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15 Ibid,p
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power as the novel progresses
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When Patrick meets Clara he is still in his childlike
state where he continuously observes things
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However,during their affair, he becomes blinded to things
going on around him
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Clara
explicitly tells him she plans to leave him, however he chooses to ignore this ‘but sometime
after that I’ll leave you
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This comes to a head when Patrick confronts Harris inside the water works
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Harris
knows the source of the original quote
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Patricks failure against the symbol of societal power at the level of
language and of knowledge
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’19 Through this relationship Patrick gains maturity and moves away from his
childlike state and into the political world of Alice and of language
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Through their relationship with Patrick other characters in the novel also find
their place within cultural identity
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66
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18 Ibid,75
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he is separated from those around him by language and space
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’20 He acquired his new language not through interactions with
others but by listening to the radio, ‘he talked on, slipping into phrases from the radio songs
which is how he learned his words and pronunciations’
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’22 However ,by the end of the novel, ‘Nicholas
Temecloffnever looks back (…) Patricks gift, the arrow into the past, shows him the wealth in
himself, how he has been sewn into history
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‘Each person had
their moment when they assumed the skins of wild animals, when they took responsibility for
the story
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Ondaatje uses language as a device to move between time and space
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The novel itself has a self aware cyclical structure
in which the beginning and end meet and emphasize the importance of language and an oral
history
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)driving four hours to Marmora under six stars and a moon
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43
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37
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37
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149
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157
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language in the book encourages the reader to engage with the text and also question the
validity of official history and the idea of overarching grand narratives
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Ondaatje attempts to highlight language as an
omnipresent power which has the ability to marginalize groups through its exclusionary
practice and failures
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Language is
ultimately political and therefore inseparable from power and those who would abuse their
power over the marginalized within society
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He does this through a series of micro
narratives which centre on relationships
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It
also calls attention to oral histories and their validity
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M
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Ondaatje,Michael,In the Skin of a Lion,(Vintage 1st Vintage International ed edition,1997)



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