Descriptions, Images, and Metaphors of Lightness and Darkness within Michael Ondaatje's Novel In the Skin of a Lion
Motifs of lightness versus darkness, in physical and emotional as well as metaphorical respects, run throughout Canadian emigre author Michael Ondaatje's post-modernist novel set in Toronto, the 1920's, In the Skin of the Lion (1987). The frequent interplay of the motifs of lightness and darkness is intricately woven throughout the structurally fragmented text. Michael Ondaatje's central character within the story is a 21-year-old new arrival to Toronto from rural Ontario named Patrick Lewis, a young man who feels emotionally hollow and who is in search of himself. Simmons (1998) observes that Patrick describes himself, vis-a-vis other characters in the story, as 'nothing but a prism that refracted [the other characters'] lives' (157). Other descriptive uses of lightness and darkness, as motifs, images, or both, abound within the story as well. Later on, for example, when another key character, Caravaggio, watches a woman named Anne through the window of her boathouse, what he sees is described thus: 'In this light, with all the small panes of glass around her, she was inside a diamond, mothlike [sic] on the edge of burning kerosene, caught in the center of all the facets' (198). In this essay I will analyze descriptive
spaces of privilege -- the Muskoka Hotel, Harris's office; however, in general Another important aspect of the recurring motifs of lightness and darkness within Ondaajte's In the Skin of a Lion is that of the story's underlying racial metaphors and implications. As Lowery (September 2004) suggests: "Ondaatje's writing, from In the Skin of a Lion on, represents "race" as a complex problem of representation that not only puts into play the interpolated identities of so-called "racialized" subjects but of "white" subjects as well" ("The Representation of "Race" in Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion"). And, as Lowery further points out, of depictions of race, and interrelationships between racial and ethnic groups within this text: notions of Canadian identity as a racially neutral basis upon which a "just" with whom he shared his childhood landscape. In the city, as a worker, he roots; rather than the inculcation of a kind of parochial Englishness, it points colour of creek . . . chewing rhubarb . . . you bit the glossy skin of the raw In the Skin of a Lion is perhaps (arguably) a bildundsroman (a coming-of-age story) about the personal development of Patrick, an "immigrant" of sorts (within his own country) to Toronto. Patrick comes from a very different part of Canada, and after his arrival, embarks on a whole new way of life. As the story opens the starkness of Patrick's childhood and adolescence (often described, in flashback, by using descriptive images of either light or darkness) has left him emotionally bereft, and enveloped, now, in a sort of emotional darkness. That darkness dissipates gradually, however, throughout the novel, as Patrick learns and accepts more about his true self, and recognizes his capacities not only to love, but to grieve. Perhaps fittingly, the woman who most inspires Patrick is named Clara, which means "light". IN a similar vein, the character Caravaggio bears the name of an Italian Renaissance painter who was considered a master of chiaroscuro (light and darkness). Michael Ondaatje's descriptive uses of light, and darkness within his novel of early 20th century Toronto, In the Skin of a Lion (1987), contains motifs of physical light versus physical darkness; emotional light and darkness, and racially-determined "light" and "darkness". In childhood, neither light nor darkness, in any of the pure (or symbolic) forms in which he has experienced them (e.g.
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Approximate Word count = 1660
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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