IB Running in the Family

Hey guys!
I thought we should have a new thread for RITF. I figured if you don't get the chance to comment on someone's passage during class, you can post your thoughts here.

From today's passage, the presenter discussed the idea of learning more about the individuals. This is difficult because Ondaatje's family is so large, the individuals in each story can become mixed up. As we discussed in class, as rumors/stories spread the content is modified. The stories the author hears have been told for many years over and over. They were bound to be altered at some point. Now that the names have been forgotten, it is easier to be vague in the telling. The passage from today deals with this vagueness.

The thought I had about today's passage connected to the idea of narrative point of view. As we discussed we are not sure who provided this story to the narrator, but he tells it with such great detail, as if he lived it. We have no way of knowing what actually happened and what parts of the story have been altered. Someone closer to the mother (or father) could have passed it on to the narrator, adding certain ideas and specifics based on bias. Also this passage is one of the few that includes quotations. The author made this greatly known to the reader by separating it from the other paragraphs. It is a big step to go as far as putting quotation marks around something, he must have really believed in it. The content is quite important, but how does he know it is true? What do you guys think?

I agree. The passage, the one in which Mervyn and Doris meet in the dark is a very important passage. I am surprised that he included the quotes and other depth to that particular scene of the novel. He says that only his mother walked into the dark so where exactly did he get this story? No one besides his parents could honestly know what was said or what happened in the darkness of that tunnel. Sure, others could certainly get an idea as Mervyn obviously didn't kill himself, and he came out wearing clothes, but how can Ondaatjie write that his mother changed. How can he write this dialogue between them when he can't really know what happened?

This then leads back to our previous class discussion. How has gossip shaped the stories of the lives we are told in the novel? I think the scene in the tunnel classifies for gossip, because he isn't hearing it from either one of his parents. The question that features prominently in my mind is who told him? And how much did he also add bias to the scene?

:thumbs_up

Hmmm... what to post today...

Thanks flgirl for starting this thread.

Really enjoyed the discussions and comments over the past few days. Today in class (which a few of you missed) we looked at selected quotations from the Ondaatje/Tavis Smiley interview in context of RITF, and discussed our new revelations and continued frustrations with this book. Yes, it is a bit like chasing rabbits/jackalopes/unicorns, and even when you catch one not sure if it's real. At some point in class we decided maybe Ondaatje's purpose in this book is not to record his own expereinces, but to pull the reader closer to what he himself experienced (doubt, multiple points of view, conflicting stories) in his journey back to Ceylon.

Challenge: Pick your favorite sentence (or long fragment, plenty of those too) from the book and explain why you like it in 2 sentences or less. You're it.

"You must get this book right," my brother tells me, "You can only write it once. But the book again is incomplete."

I think this is a true statement and explains something about our perceptions. You only have one chance to get something right. By saying the book is incomplete shows that we can never know something or someone completely, kind of like in Big Fish. There's always something new or something that can be shown in a different light. It keeps our curiosity alive and to quote someone famous, "Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect."

OK, so I went over on Coltrane's line. Oh well.

I would like to add on the discussion of the interview that I missed on Friday. The quotation that I selected from the interview was "Whatever country I was living in...there's always another point of view. There's another kind of version of things that goes on...'Never again will a single story be told as if it were the only one.'" I felt this passage described RITF excellently. A thread throughout the whole novel deals with this idea of storytelling. Every individual sees important aspects of a certain story that he or she focuses on. Also each person has bias that can effect the telling of his or her story. No two people can narrate a story exactly the same, especially if it is passed down through generations. Even though Ondaatje was not specifically discussing RITF, it greatly applies. It can also relate to other novels we have read such as Big Fish and The Poisonwood Bible. Each character sees an event in a different manner.

For Coltrane's challenge:
"During the monsoon, on my last morning, all this Beethoven and rain" (Ondaatje 203).

I felt this line does a great job wrapping up the novel. After much time spent exploring his past in Ceylon, Michael must leave. Throughout the story I believed his goal was to intertwine his two worlds, one calm and one chaotic. Beethoven represents his calm life in Canada, and the rain represents the craziness of his family. He has succeeded in his task.

I heard the class went over p. 92-94 “Women Like You” in class when I was absent, so I thought I should probably add some comments about what I discovered when I was rereading the poem. For me, as I am sure for many others as well, it is difficult to analyze poetry. Mainly because every line seems to have a hidden meaning behind, hidden meanings that I often miss . I was, however, able to catch some interesting meanings in this poem that hopefully make sense.

The first thing I noticed about this poem was its organization. I know when reading Szymborska we often looked at how some of her poems were organized and how that added to the message she wanted to portray through the poems. When looking at this poem, I noticed how unorganized and all over the place it looked, kind of like the different versus were taken by different people and glued on the page with some lines on the left hand side of the page and others on the right. The way this poem is set up it relates to the novel as a whole in the way that Ondaatje, when trying to find truth of his past, receives bunches of stories from different points of view. All these stories, b/c they are from different people, have different sides to them and Ondaatje has to sift through these stories (as we have mentioned in class) to try to find out knowledge about his past and where he comes from. When reading this poem it is the same thing. It looks kind of jumbled but when you read through it, though it seems confusing, you can figure out what the author is trying to tell you.

Another part of the poem I noticed was when, the author writes: “who came here / out of the bleached land / climbed this fortress / to adore the rock / and with the solitude of the air / behind them / carved an alphabet / whose motive was desire” (Ondaatje 93). → Right when I saw “bleached land” I thought of the white man and that diction that the author used helped me to understand that verse a lot better. It talks about how the white men came to what seemed like just enjoy the sights and people of the land but instead they had their own corrupt goals. In result they molded the place to feed their own greed which we've seen in many books we have read in the syllabus: HoD, the government in The Poisonwood Bible, etc.

Another verse I saw that I thought related very closely to the novel as a whole was: “Hundreds of small verses / by different hands / became one / habit of unrequited” (Ondaatje 93) → Like I talked about with the organization of this poem, this whole novel is based on many story from different points of view that has to be sifted through in order to get the knowledge and truths behind it. The part of this verse I don’t understand though is when he writes “became one / habit of unrequited”

When reading over p. 110-111 that was discussed in class, I noticed a couple important parts in the passage:

One important aspect of this passage is the allusion to Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Ondaatje writes “In the large house whose wings are now disintegrating into garden and bush she moves frail as Miss Havisham” (Ondaatje 111). → As we read in Great Expectations in 9th grade, I believe, Miss Havisham was described as an old, decrepit woman living constantly in her past as a result of her loss of love in the past. This is seen especially by her constantly wearing her old wedding dress as well as by her trying to destroy any chance of Estella finding love. When Ondaatje uses this allusion, he shows how the Aunt, like Miss Havisham, is also stuck in the past, which can be seen by the house as well as by her constant stories of past times. This proves to be useful for Ondaatje b/c the whole goal of his journey is to travel back to the past to learn the truths of his family history.

Even though, Ondaatje hopes to find truth from his Aunts stories, as we have mentioned before, just like he will have to do with all the other stories from different perspective, he will have to sift through them and analyze what is truth and what is fantasy. When Ondaatje writes “The frailty does not stop her though she pauses now and then to say, “God if you quote me I’m dead. I’ll be caught for libel and killed” (Ondaatje 111) it backs up this idea that not everything he will hear is true b/c the stories have been passed down through the ages and told over and over again.

The main aspect that I noticed about the passage was the symbolism of the dogs and the rope. For Mervyn, dogs always represented something good, something he had a real connection and charm with. When the narrator describes how on a drunken rampage, Mervyn binds dogs in ropes and carries them as though he wishes to strangle them, it shows the impact the alcohol has on him. His actions represent how the alcohol holds him back from all that would make him happy and all that he could possibly achieve. This is also seen through the use of rope in the scene which represents a limiting or binding of some sort. I think it is also really significant how the author mentions how “[t]he dogs were too powerful to be in danger of being strangled” (Ondaatje 182). To me this describes how he is not truly destroying his chances of happiness and his chances to move foreword in his life, but that he is just limiting himself and that if he got control of his life he could find happiness again.

Also this whole drunken thing with the father reminds me a lot of God of Small Things, just had to add that in there :)

Go Pip! If I only could analyze half as well as you do when I'm sick.