The Nature of Our World Today

The nature of our world today demands global unity and cooperation. With growing technology and an increase in communication, nations of the world should be in harmony with each other; but are not. These issues only seem to tear us apart. The developing world allows for the possibility of global unity and interconnectedness. To combat issues like global warming, hunger, and AIDS, understanding and cooperation are needed. Reality is we are all linked; what one of us does affects the other and once we understand that, we can move forward. Michael Ondaatje, through the unique style of pluralism, sends that message to his readers in both The English Patient and In the Skin of a Lion. In his novels, there are scarce if no religious references. However, there is not a lack of religion or spirituality because the form and messages of the two novels are almost like gospels themselves, preaching a sense of connectedness and universality. The epigraph that precedes both In the Skin of a Lion and The English Patient reads “Never again will a single story be told as thought it were the only one.” Ondaatje makes that promise to his readers. His stories are not about one person; they are about multiple people and how their lives are woven together, a lot like the blockbuster movies Crash and Rendition.
These are award winning movies because they reflect our culture today. In Crash, the lives of nine complete strangers, living in Los Angeles, all converge in one day, in some tragic event. The movie begins with snap shots into each person’s separate and independent life. Through the metaphor of cars and accidents, these character’s worlds collide. The powerful message reverberates through your entire being: we are all linked no matter how far apart we may seem. Rendition holds the same message but is portrayed through different circumstances. The lives of seven people of different ethnicities and homelands are severely affected by one suicide bombing explosion in Egypt. As the story is played out, every character is dragged in by this event which acts as vortex. The innocent Egyptian American engineer is tortured. The American rookie C.I.A. agent has to witness the atrocity. The Egyptian high ranking official investigates the bombing and institutes the torture while his daughter has gone missing. She has been hiding with her lover, a member of a secret religious terrorist sect, who, as the story unfolds, is responsible for the explosion. Once again, even though these characters are from different countries and have no relation to the other characters, they are drawn together. This global coincidence is like a magnet. However instead of an Egyptian market place being the junction point, an Italian villa is convergence point in Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient.
Tracing the experiences of four random people, who coincidentally all end up in an abandoned and shell shocked Italian villa, The English Patient portrays World War II and the effects of war on these people in an incoherent manner. The story line bounces from present to future to past all within a few pages, never making a clear distinction between the time changes. Michael Ondaatje, a Canadian author, centers his novel around a severe burn victim, unable to survive on his own and suffers extensive memory loss except for dream-like sequences where he recounts his dangerous and lustful past. Always by his side, Hana, a nurse who chose to stay with the English Patient despite advice not to, fosters to his every need either by peeling plums for him or by reading to him. Two characters arrive upon this serene Italian villa unexpected: Caravaggio, Hana’s Canadian thief for an uncle, whom she grew up with, and Kip, an Indian bomb disabler, whom she has a physical love affair with. Through these characters, the novel addresses the issues of universality, war, and identity. Ondaatje leaves his readers with a sense of interconnectedness. Even though they are miles apart, “[Hana’s] shoulder touches the edge of a cupboard and a glass dislodges. Kirpals’s left hand swoops down and gently catches the dropped fork an inch from the floor and gently passes it into the fingers of his daughter, a wrinkle at the edge of his eyes behind the spectacles” (302). Ondaatje has somehow found a way to weave beautiful descriptions by just using actions. His descriptions are not flowery and verbose. They are simple and yet intricately beautiful. The love scenes are blunt. By putting forth these un-stereotypical intimate moments, like when Katherine, the English patient’s former lover “sits on the bed hugging nakedness. He slides his open palm along the sweat of her shoulder…As lovers they have offered parts of their body to each other, like this” Ondaatje almost makes sex and the sensual a little less awkward and more real (156). Because the language is so simple, the coherence of the story is very complex. Instead of a panorama, snap shots are given. Ondaatje does not just tell one story, but multiple stories through different lenses. It is never one person’s life, it is never one persons story because lives and stories are made up of relationships between people and their experiences. The life of one person is dependent upon another. Ondaajte first addresses this issue in his novel, In the Skin of a Lion.
This story revolves around the life and relationships of Patrick Lewis, a Canadian farm boy who keeps manual labor as his livelihood for years to come. Most importantly it traces the relationships he has with two women lovers, three unrelated men, and a young girl. It is hard not to fall in love with or at least pity Patrick Lewis, this hardworking, unsure, and compassionate figure. While there are subplots interspersed, the storyline is not quite as complex or as hard to follow as the English Patient storyline. The bulk of the novel deals with the passionate love affairs between first Patrick and Clara and then Patrick and Alice, Clara’s actress friend. Small details make up these relationships, like
“the eroticism of [Clara’s] history, the knowledge of where she sat in classrooms, her favorite brand of pencil at the age of nine” (69). Infatuation relied on details. One night, while lying in bed, Alice, his second lover, whispered to him her favorite lines “I have taught you that the sky in all its zones is mortal…let me now re-emphasize the extreme looseness of the structure of all objects” (135). All parts of the world are living and each of those parts flows and coexists with the other. This statement deems true because the end of the novel brought Caravaggio, a thief Patrick met in prison, Mr. Harris, a big wig who was the funding behind the waterworks project that Patrick worked on, and Patrick himself all together in one grand scheme bombing attempt. All their lives were mentioned separately and described apart from each other in the beginning; yet they all come together in the climax. Never would one have guessed that the lives of these characters would cross paths. That is the beauty in Ondaatje’s writing. He finds ways to bring the lives of his seeming separate and unrelated characters together. On a larger scale, Patrick resides in the middle of a giant ethnic melting pot. Immigrants of all kinds: Macedonian, Greek, Finnish, Serbian, call this place home. They have migrated from thousands of miles away to all fatefully end up in this one Canadian city of “many languages” (115). The world and its people are not disconnected, but are bound eternally. Sometimes it’s just a little hard to see. Ondaatje in both his novels shines light on the interconnectedness of the human family.
English Patient is too translucent; there are far too many tangents to fully grasp in one read. In the Skin of the Lion also has these interspersed tangents but they are not as complex or intangible. If the English Patient is a giant web of dreams then In the Skin of a Lion is a sweet day dream. A single beam of light hits a mirror, but yet is reflected in millions of beams of rainbow color. Michael Ondaajte’s writing style parallels the qualities of a prism. There may be a single story, but that single story has an infinite number of sub-stories that branch off of it. Ondaajte is right a single story cannot be told as if it were the only one because in our world today that would bear false witness against reality.
This theme will become more apparent in all forms of expression, books, movies, plays, music because it has become a fact of life. As we become more aware of the world around us, it is impossible not to notice the qualities that connect us all. Michael Ondaatje proves that no matter how separated two lives seem; there is a way in which they are connected.