Canadian Fiction – Ondaatje notes

7/28/2019 Canadian Fiction Ondaatje notes

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Canadian FictionOndaatje notes

Representations of labor as a way of addressing the omissions in historical narratives.

Another way of addressing this is through the Puppet Play.

Allegorical playpain/fear of the immigrant is dramatized. Puppet acts as anallegory for the immigrant experience. Political statement speaking to the

ways in which the immigrants are socially marginalized. Also an expression of

personal trauma protagonists made up of immigrant clichs/stereotypes.

Represents the universal immigrant experience a caricature of a culture.

(117). The hero puppet appears to be more than one ethnic group, not

representative of one culture (novel seems to focus on Macedonian

immigrants). Also embodies both genders although he is male, he is

animated by a woman.

Puppet embodies immigrant experience of silence/pain/hardship. Thearchetype of the immigrant embodies powerlessness through silence.

Language is power. Lack of speech indicative of powerlessness. Dehumanization of both partners in the exchange i.e. the disenfranchised +

those in positions of power.

Staging silence/silencing of the immigrant through a dumb show. Because theshow depends on silence, movement becomes an essential mode of

communication. Facial expressions/hand gestures serve as alternative forms of

communication and articulate a narrative of trauma

o When he is brought before the authorities, unable to speak theirlanguage, the puppet communicates shock/horror through his face. No

access to spoken language and so substitutes speech with the act of

banging on the floor (116).

o Echoes another immigrants banging hand Daniel Stoinov (?) p. 44bangs down his hand hard down on the table. Daniel revel s in the

story of losing his arm. Alices puppet play is not glib in this way.

Ondaatje revisits the banging hand of the immigrant so as not to

dismiss it. By articulating personal traumas that have historical

dimensions, the puppet play serves the same purpose as the

photographs by Lewis Hine (145-146)betraying official history.

Puppet play complicates official accounts of Toronto history. Incorporatingexperiences of immigrants.

Metafictional momentsself-reflexivity. Moments in which the text is aware of itself

as a text. Important in making the immigrant visible, takes into account the issue ofelisions.

(144) He saw the interactions... Alice is the nun who was blown off theviaduct. Structure of the novel being revealed Patricks experiences are

mirroring our own as readers, making us aware that we are reading.

Recognizes the textuality/narrativized quality of life itselfp. 144 Patrick

saw... Constantly referencing texts.

Drawing attention to the novels status as a story and the role of the reader inpiecing it into a narrative. Circuitous indirect narration; characterized by

deferrals. Undermining notion of linear teleological history. Textual order

created through narrative.


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Experience and the past are a series of threads that come together in a form ofunified disorder (ordered chaos).

Those who work on the monuments of public history are anonymous.Official histories, news stories surround us daily... (145). Artwork that

reaches us very slowlyreferring to the novel itself, talking aboutIn the Skin

of a Lion. Acknowledging his own project, recovering history. Novel is awareof itself as a work of art + commenting on its pace.

P. 146 Trust me, this will take time, but there is order here... Making usaware of our own reading practices.

In restoring Alices past, Patrick also restores memory to Nicholas Temelcoffp. 149 this is what history means... (152) He knew now that he was the

sum... representing history through the metaphor of the lions skin.

The Epic of Gilgamesh those who wear the lions skin take on theresponsibility of recording history. (157) Each person had their moment...

Becomes a metaphor for storytelling, wearing the skin = taking up the

responsibility of telling the story.

Most significant moment of historical recuperation comes toward the end ofthe novel when Patrick (235) places dynamite in the waterworks. Think about

those who built the intake tunnel... The section ends in an anticlimax Harris

has the diffusing box disabled. P. 242 hewas one of the only ones in power...

Its not just the historian who has paper, but also the novelist. Role of the

novelist in rewriting history. Ondaatje plays with textuality, makes us aware

that we are engaging with the text.

Challenging the authority of history as transparent, given. Ondaatje adheres to class/socialist politics in theory but not in practice;

insurrectionary violence not condoned.

Postmodernists suspicious of closure. Ondaatje tentatively re-ascribes closure Patrick rewarded with the trappings of the romance narrative. Seems to reestablish

humanism at the end of the novel.

VISUAL ART/AESTHETICS

Novel offers influence of visual arts/aesthetics. Paint and color form thenovels most prominent currents of imagery. Works of art act as intertexts e.g.

79 titles of paintings. (34) the moment of cubism... John Berger epigraph

he also wrote The Moment of Cubism, Ways of Seeing.

Caravaggio Ondaatjes use of light and darkness. Visual modeling in thenovel recalls 17th c. Baroque realism. Among his innovations was a use of

light which departed from the practices of the Renaissance + his

contemporaries. Light in his paintings generally emanates from a single

source, usually lying outside the canvas resulting in sharp contrast between

light and dark. The Dark Manner or tenebrism. Paintings of these artists can

stand as visual referents for many of the scenes in the novel.

Tenebrists gave a scene a single source of light, which resulted in visual sharpcontrast. E.g. 37 the wall light fell onto the side of his head... 93 its

glare falling onto the shoulders of his nightshirt... 107 he picks up the

lamp... there is no other light in the tunnel. 163 so it flickers dark and

alive 204 she steps into the half-lit kitchen...


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Not just the aesthetics that he borrows from Caravaggio but also his focus onhumanity. Shift in the subject matter of paintings to common people,

everyday life from religious subjects. His art was iconoclastic in the manner

in which he depicted religious figures he invested biblical figures with

human psychology/characteristics. He made the divine human.

For Ondaatje, history has to be interpreted in human terms in the same waythat Caravaggio interprets biblical figures. The people who built the bridge

are unhistorical.

Patrick makes a similar discovery to Ondaatjes when he is doing his research.145-6 Everything but information... Art is distinguished from official

history; it provides something that history doesnt by focusing on the human

element. Attempts to register the dead who have been elided in history

through this tenebristic modeling. In light of the emphasis on the human, the

darkness becomes the consuming power of history + light symbolizes art.

Also influenced by cubism e.g. 34 he floats at the three hinges...Reference in part to John Berger. The novels style and structure are akin to

the stylistics of a cubism painting. The novel can be seen as cubist cubist

writing difficult to define. It displays some distinctly cubist traits; stylistic

traits:

o (1) both encourage multiple perspectives never again will a singlestory be told as ifthere is only one. Novel tells a story from multiple

points of view; distinct shifts in viewpoint/perspective e.g. in the

scene of the nun falling off the bridge. Patrick no longer sees his life

as a single story but rather as part of a mural (145).

Cubist stylistics can be seen in the content of the novel as well;multiple points of view that we associate with cubism are

apparent in the novel even within a single character e.g. 48 when he walks into the fresh air... the atmosphere as

something altered. Multiple points of view sometimes

contained within a single characterTemelcoff accommodates

the nuns point of view. (212) gathering her perspective.

The novels deployment of a multifaceted narrative techniquecan be likened to the faceting in analytic cubist paintings. E.g.

157nothing but a prism...

o (2) fragmentation of formin cubist painting analogue to the breakupof narrative unity; indirectness of the narration shows us the novels

rejection of the straight story sequentially unfolding in time. We are

advised to meander (146) if we want to understand the plot. Apparentlack of order + discontinuity disrupts novels coherence; characterized

by deferrals and delays.

o (3) self-reflexivityvarious literary devices used to draw attention tothe status of the novel as a text. The frame narrative e.g. and the way

that it emphasizes the act of gathering a story. Another example,

Patrick using a reading metaphor to recall aspects of life with Alice

all these fragments of memory... (148). Story within a story separate

from the main narrativep. 160 he had come across a love story...

p. 82 all his life Patrick Lewis... self-reflexivity serves tohighlight further the constructedness of the narrative.

o (4) ambiguity in meaning there are gaps in the narrative whichcreate ambiguity. E.g. confrontation with Harris. Its status as reality is


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called into question i.e. it could be a dream. Some of Patricks actions

earlier in the book foreshadow his latter act of terrorism e.g. 171

somewhere in his past, he had dreamed of such a moment...

o (5) qualified cubism there are limitations on this analysis however.Cubism plays with representations of reality to the extreme. There is

very little mimesis. Representations of reality are completely distorted.Ondaatje doesnt push the envelope to the same extent. Not, for

example, as removed from realism as John Bergers G. There is still

some measure of realism/plot/character etc. which is often completely

absent in cubism proper.

o (6) cubist ideologyBerger defined this Cubist moment (1907-14) asa period full of promise for the future; an era of unparalleled social

revolution + technological development. Revolutionary potential of

modernism was distorted by WWI. Prince Edward Viaduct

symbolizes this moment of overwhelming potential (social

promise/scientific change). E.g. 26it will carry trains that have not

even been invented yet.

THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH

Title of the novel taken from the epic; important intertext. Literary work from

Babylonia dating long after the time of Gilgamesh; most complete version of the text

was preserved in 11 C.E. in 11 tablets. Considered to be the oldest story ever recorded

contents of the 11 clay tablets include: 1) introducing Gilgamesh of the city of Uruk

two-thirds god, one third human. His people complain that he is too harsh. The Sky

God creates a wild man called Enkidu to set Gilgamesh straight. Enkidu is tamed by

the seduction of the priestess (Shamhat). 2) Enkidu challenges Gilgamesh. After a

mighty battle, Gilgamesh breaks off from the fight, proposes an adventure to go kill ademon. 3) Preparation for the adventure. 4) Journey of Gilgamesh and Enkidu. 5)

With the help of one of the gods, they kill the demon (Humbuba). 6) A goddess tries

to sleep with Gilgamesh, who refuses. She asks her dad to intervene and he sends the

Bull of Heaven, who Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill. Male friendshiphow the bonds of

friendships can be forged through shared conflict. 7) The gods have to punish

someone for the death of the bull; they decide on Enkidu. 8) Ondaatjes epigraph

taken from this tablet. Gilgamesh laments his friend Enkidu. 9) Gilgamesh sets out to

avoid Enkidus fate. Two individuals have survived the flood. 10) Completion of the

journey. 11) He meets someone who tells him about the Great Flood and gives him a

chance at immortalityif he stays awake for 6 days and 7 nights. Gilgamesh realizes

the only way to gain immortality is to be memorialized in culture and civilization.

Motifs the lions skin. 157the powerful matriarch... Assuming theskins of wild animals. Recalls Gilgamesh. The key gesture of donning the

animal pelt precedes the act of storytelling. Has capacity to transform

characters role into storyteller. Direct quotation from the ep ic in the

epigraph + p. 242Harris was an amateur in their midst...

Characterization: Alice as manifestation of Enkidu, Patrick as Gilgamesh.Enkidu fights the ruler of the city to end his rule of oppression, a form of

resistance against the center of power. Similarly, Alices tales of the

workers tell of capitalist exploitation. Refusal of the outsider to serve and

accept existing structures of power. Alice is blown up by a bomb she isusing to resist the powers that be. Death as a result of resistence.


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o Patrick, like Gilgamesh, takes up the cause of his deceased friend.He takes on the job of mourning Alice. 122 I dont believe in

the language of politics... Patrick lacks conviction, motivated by

grief. Also linked to Enkidu e.g. when he enters the waterworks;

there is an intrusion by an outsider in order to bring about change. Inscription of the heroic quest Ondaatjes work can be read as a quest

narrative. Gilgamesh is searching for immortality; Patricks quest

involves the search for language and the power of storytelling. Patrick

grows up in a world of silence. Desire to communicate, to speak. By

naming the world, Patrick displays a desire to create his own narrative.

This textualizing of the world around him is presented as a concealed act,

which further isolates him.

Immigrant community as collective narrative.WOMEN IN ONDAATJE

More awareness of issues of gender as they relate to ownership. Rather than merely

being owned and objectified by artists, women become artists in their own right. The

patriarchs ownership of the female is called into question.

Canadian Fiction – Ondaatje notes

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