Running

MIRROR


Once my father had
an idea inside his
head, it was quite hard for anyone to really stop him
from going through with it. He at some point seemed to
have developed an identity crisis. It was unclear whether
he was confused, homesick, nostalgic, or something else;
but he seemed to be trying to reach and talk to people
who knew Grandpa, Grandma, and some other people
from our family that I hadn’t ever even heard about.
“We’re going to Sri-Lanka,” he told us one day. I had
never been there, so I was pretty excited. This seemed to
have to do with his need to get in touch with these
people who knew our old family. Eventually we left
Canada with my mother and stayed in Sri-Lanka for the
summer before my 3
rd
grade started back home.
This is where I started noticing how dad usually
had some peculiar habits. When it rained, there was
nothing you could do that would be able to take him out
of his room. He would be there, usually alone, and
would write all the while it was pouring outside. He
used to mention the smell of it, and how it was fresh.
Only at this moment, rain outside the window, do I
understand how fresh it smells like. The water seems to
make this just-dried ink’s smell even more vivid – I love
it.
“Your father was a real piece of work. I remember
when his friend’s room caught on fire and he tried to put
out the fire by throwing flaming sofas and armchairs out
of the window onto the street and then dragging and
hurling them into the river – where they sank three
boats.” My father stifled a laugh, and after taking some
notes, looked up to this extremely heavy lady, his Aunt
Stephy, who was suffocating an armchair that seemed to
be crying for help, and continued to talk to her. They
were talking about Grandpa Mervyn, my father’s father.

There were some great stories about him. I guess that
pretty much explains where great part of this passionate,
stubborn and at times crazy human being that lives
inside my father comes from. One time, during that
summer, we went grocery shopping, as we needed some
eggs and milk. But since the car we had with us was so
old, it would only turn on when it felt like it, we had to
walk for about 15 miles under the scorching summer sun
of Sri-Lanka. And when we arrived, my father was
feeling so hot that he went directly to the freezer section
where they kept the fish on ice, took all of his clothes off,
threw some of the fish on the floor, and just lied down
inside the container. Needless to say, we were
immediately “asked to leave,” with no eggs and no milk,
and my father got a huge burn on his back because of the
extremely cold ice. We can’t blame him, though. Fathers
are slightly fogged up mirrors to us that are cleared over
time.
So I guess I can’t say anything, either, since I
started noticing this when, in 10
th
grade, my teacher gave
me an extremely unfair math test, and I flipped my desk
over and said that if she didn’t take back my test, I would
light my hair on fire. It worked, though. Thankfully these
curls now lying on top of these words weren’t burnt out.
At other times though, unfortunately, my father
would sometimes have crises of depression, and would
drink until he passed out. I was scared when I saw his
body lying on the floor of the living room, because, as I
was young, I didn’t know what was happening. Once,
things really got out of hand when we were in Canada
and my mother just told my father that he had to find “a
real job” to start supporting our family. He was
devastated. That night, he drank four full bottles of red
wine and was going to drive off with the car. My mother
tried to hold him back, but when she did, he slapped her.
She started crying, and so did I, and in that moment, it
seemed that my father realized what he had done. I
remember this very vividly. He wasn’t that person. And
he knew that, which was why he broke into tears and
apologized for his life to my mother, and said that he
would never, ever do something like that again.
I couldn’t let my mirror defog too much, either.
My father gave me my roots, but I had to grow my
branches and leaves in my own directions. I’ll never
forget, though, the day my foundation was shaken. 12
years ago from today, as I look over and check the
calendar hanging on my wall beside my fan blowing on
these curls, I remember my father decided to save a
drowning man in the ocean while he was at the beach.
My father was so caught up in the heat of the moment
that he forgot about the simple fact that he didn’t know
how to swim either. Taken over by his good intentions
and lack of rationality, his mirror defogged, he was on
the same tracks set previously by his giant. That day, he
drowned.
My eyes pass over these lines and a tear mixes in
with the black ink as 56 years of defogging have gone by,
leaving a stain that can only be removed by rewriting this
story on a new page. As I reach the end of this one, I
realize how far I’ve gotten to. And now, with much
pride, I already feel my shoulders being pressed down
with pairs of younger feet, as I start curling down back to
where my own feet stand.





WC: 971

Paulo Flecha
May 24, 2013
Lang & Lit SL
Mears Block 3

Rationale
(Yes, you are going to kill me, yes, this is longer than my
task. Pinky-promise I’ll cut it down; I just listed
[practically] everything here so you could tell me what’s
less relevant. Believe it or not, I could have written a bit
more…)
The autobiographical, multi-genre, post-
modern novel Running In The Family, by Michael
Ondaatje, is a book very rich with details and uses of
literary elements in its narrative, which address a major
theme of “what is the author’s (Michael’s) identity?” and
“where does he come from?” I chose to write this task
with the intent of creating an Autobiographical piece that
contained many of the innumerous elements that
Ondaatje also presented in his own work, in order to
address, in essence, the same themes the book
discusses.
Here, the narrator is actually Michael Ondaatje’s
daughter, and she is telling these stories about her life
and her family more or less in the same way as Ondaatje
told his story. The context is that she is writing this 12
years after her father, Michael, has passed away, and
almost 50 years after the summer they spent in Sri-Lanka
so that her father could write the Running In The Family
book. The main focus of this piece is to show the
relationship between father and son (Mervyn/Michael),
and father and daughter (Michael/daughter), and to
demonstrate that every father here has a very big impact
in his child’s personality. I used a symbol of a mirror,
which is also the object Ondaatje uses to symbolize his
resemblance with his father in “Thanikama,” to also
represent the comparison between father and
son/daughter, and the conscience of how much the
son/daughter is alike with his/her father is represented as
how fogged up the mirror is. So as their life goes by, the
more they see how they are alike their fathers, and the
more defogged their mirror gets.
Some of the literary elements I used in the text,
that Ondaatje also uses a lot, were motifs, (the mirror,
rain), allusions (there is a direct allusion to page 33 of
Running In The Family in the quotation when Aunt
Stephy is talking about Mervyn, the fan), personification
(“[she] was suffocating an armchair that seemed to be
crying for help”), alliteration (“scorching summer sun of
Sri-Lanka”), anecdotes (the story about the grocery store,
or the daughter threatening lighting her own hair on fire),
and of course, a lot of metalinguistic techniques.
Some of the metalinguistical examples are a bit
subtle, as when the narrator references the rain and
writing, and how Michael loved the smell of it, and then
says she understands “only now, rain outside the
window, (…) how fresh it smells like,” which is exactly the
smell of the “just-dried ink” with the rainy atmosphere,
since she is writing about this right now as it is raining.
Another example of use of metalanguage is when the
narrator mentions her “curls now lying on top of these
words,” which is her hair lying on top of the paper she is
writing at the moment. There is also metalanguage when
she talks about how “[her] eyes pass over these lines and
a tear mixes in with the black ink (…), leaving a stain that
can only be removed by rewriting this story on a new
page. As [she] reach[es] the end of this one, [she]
realize[s] how far [she’s] gotten to,” talking about the
pages and lines she has just written now, and as she is
reaching the end of the physical page, it is also
symbolical because she means this as a representation
of her life, too, now that she is old.
Another allusion and recurring element here is the
idea that the newer and younger generation is standing
on the shoulders of these giants, also alluding to the
family pyramid on page 27 in Running In The Family,
whereas there is the word choice of “giant” when talking
about Michael’s father in comparison to himself, and how
these “tracks set by” this “giant” are these actions that
Michael’s father had committed before him. There
reaches a point where Michael could not deny his
resemblance to his father, and ends up pretty much just
like him, following into his “tracks.” But, it is also evident
that he struggled with this in this text, because he knew
he couldn’t be just like his father, as when Michael beats
his wife when he was drunk here, the narrator then says
that “[Michael] wasn’t that person.” And the choice of the
word “that” is meant to represent Michael’s father,
Mervyn, who was actually this person that was inside
Michael at that moment – the dipsomaniac.
The structure of this text is purposefully non-linear,
as for the book Running In The Family is also non-linear,
in terms of its events and the order of how the information
is told. Here there are many flashbacks, of course, and
there is constant jumping from one story to another (as
between the grocery store anecdote to her 10
th
grade
math test anecdote to her fathers depression crises).
There was a very strong tone shift during this
piece, too. It starts off in a kind of comedic, funny and
light tone, but once the narrator starts talking about how
her father, Michael, would have crises of depression, that
already changes the tone to a more dark, sad and
gloomy tone. This leads up to her father’s death and to
her realization that her family’s pyramid is growing
upwards as she feels the “feet on her shoulders” and that
she is starting to “curl down back to where [her] own feet
stand,” which is the ground – meaning that she is getting
closer to dying now that she has become old.
So by the end of this piece, by use of innumerous
literary elements similar to the ones Michael Ondaatje
also does in Running In The Family, I addressed the
relationship between father and son/daughter, the theme
of questioning the identity of the narrator, and how this
narrator could potentially lose his or her identity or
personality traits due to the fact that they were too alike
their fathers.

WC: 981