In The Skin Of A Lion Analysis

The Concept of National Identity and Vision of a Global Village in The Novels of Michael Ondaatje

LAXMI NEGI1

HEMALATHA K2.

1Uttranchal University Dehradun Uttrakhand India

2Gurukul Kangri University, Haridwar Uttrakhand India

18th August, 2014

Abstract

Nationality, identity, ethnicity, migration and war are some of major issues which become the centre of all Ondaatje’s novels. However dealing with such issues is not the motif of his writing of literature. Since being a true philanthropist Ondaatje wants to highlight the disaster related to such issues and ultimately comes forward with an ultimate solution of all these problems in the form of his VISION OF A GLOBAL VILLAGE. The present paper is an effort to discuss in detail the practical

The sequel of In the Skin of a Lion is his The English Patient which made him famous in the global level as a literary legend. The English Patient which won him the Booker for his exceptionally good readership of the theme of sufferings of human beings due to migration, nationality, ethnicity and war. In The English Patient he talks about the European and Asian people and their difficulties and trauma. The novel which followed The English Patient is Anil’s Ghost. In this novel Ondaatje mainly focuses on the historical Sri Lankan civil war for insubstantial reasons. He also observes minutely the pain and utter state of grief of a common Sri Lankan and his/ her helplessness to free him from it. In his next novel he gives absolutely a different theme to show the connectivity among human beings living in different parts of the world through the characters of Anna and the French poet Lucien Segura on whom she does her

Hana drops a fork in Canada and Kip catches a bowl in one of the Indian villages.

Smyrl comments on the concept of urgency of universal brotherhood as the solution to all these problems, introduced and insisted by Ondaatje in the novel The English Patient and quotes, “Kip presages a new form of self-knowledge that will emerge from the decentralization of cultural and political influence, suggested by the sleeping English patient. He struggles through the narrative to control the interpretation of his own experiences and actions....”2

Almost all his novels deals with the issues related to identity crisis and its erasure. The English Patient, Anil’s Ghost and In the Skin of a Lion basically highlight the problems created by these notions. His Booker awarded novel revolves round four major characters that are displaced from their homeland because of one or the other reason. They all meet with each other in an abandoned Italian villa. The villa is absolutely damaged due to war. It is also full of dangers as the allies have hidden bomb in many places. The villa symbolises the abandonment of the characters physical and psychological self due to war. The way war and the concept of nationhood and identity has damaged the villa is also revealed, the characters are also presented as living with lost selves after losing not only