An essay. Not really intended for HSC consumption/usage. Mostly just me think­ing about how cer­tain things could be argued and pay­ing out post-modernism’s erro­neous nature… you can call that state­ment what you will, so long as you take the time to read the fol­low­ing. 2260 words, or thereabouts.

Michael Ondaatje’s novel, In the Skin of a Lion, can be said to have tex­tual integrity as a result of the way in which the com­poser has shaped this novel, through a vari­ety of tech­niques employed. Tex­tual integrity itself can be said to embody a time­less­ness in lit­er­a­ture: that is, ‘good’ lit­er­a­ture is shaped by its tex­tual integrity, reflected in the ways in which val­ues within a text are pre­sented, as well as the uni­ver­sal­ity of themes discussed.

‘Set­ting’ exists in three spheres that are often seen to inter­sect, these spheres being Loca­tion, Time, and Crit­i­cal Influ­ence. And, fur­ther to this, any text that recre­ates the past – espe­cially when post­mod­ernism is an accepted influ­ence – involves two inter­sect­ing fields of time: The author’s own, and that in which they delin­eate the events of their work.

Con­struc­tion of a work that can be said to have ‘tex­tual integrity’ and hence be con­sid­ered a model of ‘good’ lit­er­a­ture, or lit­er­a­ture of time­less value, is there­fore com­pli­cated when a post-modern style is employed that attempts to con­struct a text ade­quately flex­i­ble to accom­mo­date the cre­ation of new mean­ing in a way that accu­rately reflects the val­ues of a period now elapsed.

Ondaatje’s novel, In the Skin of a Lion, is one such text: it cre­ates lay­ered mean­ing, employ­ing a form true to the post-modern ideal – that is, rejec­tion of a man­date that mean­ing must be cre­ated through tex­tual delin­eation, as mean­ing in a post-modernist form can be con­structed in any num­ber of ways, though the nature of this mean­ing is mal­leable – whilst depict­ing events that pre­ceded the advent of such an ideology.

Inher­ently, this poses chal­lenges: How­ever, used effec­tively, jux­ta­po­si­tion of his­tor­i­cal con­tent and crit­i­cal per­spec­tive of this period against con­tem­po­rary influ­ences in the sphere of crit­i­cal the­ory can yield in lit­er­a­ture a qual­ity that is best described as time­less – it cre­ates an integrity that spans ide­olo­gies and events, and trans­forms the nar­ra­tive into an over­ar­ch­ing ves­sel that may func­tion as a con­tainer for any num­ber of (even oppos­ing) ide­olo­gies and social par­a­digms, simultaneously.

This, of course, is the defeat of intent in a work. Ondaatje can­not be said to have achieved any­thing, as he set out to achieve noth­ing and every­thing when his work first assumed a post-modern form. Indeed, post-modernism is inher­ently an abstrac­tion, inca­pable of embody­ing any par­tic­u­lar mes­sage. In embrac­ing its doc­trines, authors sur­ren­der wholly their work’s value to the whims of the respon­der: but Ondaatje can­not be said to have wholly embraced this ideal.

Cer­tainly, the struc­ture of his work is post-modern. Irrefutably, the syn­tax utilised for denot­ing struc­tural ele­ments in this work could be described thus, for no other rea­son than it is a rejec­tion of con­ven­tional form and syn­tax utilised in nar­ra­tive works: it is eclec­tic, “loose” in nature. Ondaatje writes of the “extreme loose­ness of the struc­ture of all objects”, and, on the sur­face at least, his nar­ra­tive reflects this ide­ol­ogy. Yet, his trib­ute to post-modernism is con­fined to the super­fi­cial. Post-modernism is Ondaatje’s link to the con­tem­po­rary world, impor­tant in pre­sent­ing an image of time­less­ness. There is, per­haps, a truth in his asser­tion that all objects have a loose­ness of struc­ture – but, in accor­dance with the post-modern par­a­digm, this truth is open to chal­lenge. And, in beau­ti­ful irony, Ondaatje’s own work is the ves­sel from which an attack on this truth may be instigated.

Ondaatje’s novel begins with a chap­ter enti­tled “Lit­tle seeds”, sup­pos­edly an allu­sion to the seeds of explo­sives that his father must painstak­ingly remove from his clothes… and the coin­ing of a metaphor, a per­sist­ing motif, for the grad­ual devel­op­ment of the char­ac­ter of Patrick through­out the text until he dons “the Skin of a Lion” and – in a fit­ting con­clu­sion to such a metaphor – ‘explodes’, or attempts to explode, the water­works. These lit­tle seeds are the first of many aspects of the text to defy post-modernism and this ide­ol­ogy of “extreme loose­ness of struc­ture”. The lan­guage used is rich in metaphor, cer­tainly: and, inher­ent in metaphor is the pos­si­bil­ity of deriv­ing mul­ti­ple inter­pre­ta­tions. How­ever, before the begin­ning of Book One even, Ondaatje speaks of “bring[ing] together var­i­ous cor­ners of the story” – and this stands not alone, but ties itself to a ques­tion with an invis­i­ble imper­a­tive: “Do you see?” This could, per­haps, be read as Patrick’s enquiry: “Do you see my story?” “Do you see”, it seems, con­notes some­thing that is to be seen, pro­poses that there is a struc­ture to things, and sug­gests that this struc­ture is resolved at some point. All of this, of course, defies the post-modern ideal of loose­ness. Cer­tainly there is an ele­ment of ‘loose­ness’ to this nar­ra­tive – but it is still a nar­ra­tive. There is a story behind it, and, whilst there can be more than one inter­pre­ta­tion, there remains a dom­i­nant mes­sage that Ondaatje has con­structed and resolved with the bring­ing together of “lit­tle seeds” to form a cohe­sive nar­ra­tive, and this cohe­sion, it seems, is against the post-modern ideal of “looseness”.

The post-modern aspects of this work, then, are utilised only fleet­ingly in order to develop an over­ar­ch­ing struc­ture – more accu­rately a super­struc­ture – in which var­i­ous other struc­tures of crit­i­cal the­ory are con­tained. This in itself cre­ates in the work a time­less­ness or tran­sient nature, though this time­less­ness does not come at the expense of a for­mu­lated nar­ra­tive: Ondaatje’s work has struc­ture, and def­i­nite plot, with an unde­ni­able pro­gres­sion and res­o­lu­tion. Yet, this plot with all its pro­gres­sion and res­o­lu­tion is open to a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent read­ings and inter­pre­ta­tions based upon the ide­ol­ogy of the respon­der, in accor­dance with post-modern doctrine.

How­ever, the scope of such vari­a­tion is restricted to the con­fines con­structed by Ondaatje. His text is crafted with par­tic­u­lar influ­ences in mind, namely, the crit­i­cal influ­ences that influ­enced much aca­d­e­mic thought of the early twen­ti­eth cen­tury. Con­se­quently, it is pos­si­ble to extract with ease Marx­ist and Fem­i­nist read­ings of this text, due to the focus of his nar­ra­tive. Ondaatje depicts char­ac­ters holis­ti­cally, char­ac­ters that defy stereo­typ­ing both within the text’s set­ting (chiefly 1920’s Toronto), and Ondaatje’s own (1988, Toronto); he also focuses on minor­ity groups, such as migrant com­mu­ni­ties. These groups appear to be dis­il­lu­sioned, dis­en­fran­chised with the bar­ri­ers that exist between them and main­stream soci­ety, but much of this is in the presentation.

The con­tent of In the Skin of a Lion lends itself to fem­i­nist or post-colonial read­ings – though post-colonial lit­er­ary the­ory was not to emerge as a recog­nised force until the mid– to late-1970’s (Said’s 1978 work Ori­en­tal­ism pro­vides some basis for these dates) – whilst the style and empha­sis of this con­tent (in an aes­thetic sense) enables a Marx­ist read­ing with themes of oppres­sion, class con­flict and “offi­cial” ver­sus “unof­fi­cial” his­to­ries preva­lent through­out the work. Com­plet­ing the ‘set­ting’ is the struc­ture of the work: namely, a struc­ture that is post-modern in nature, and encom­passes all other aspects of the work.

Tex­tual integrity is con­structed care­fully through embrac­ing a range of intel­lec­tual and crit­i­cal analy­ses, and thus allow­ing the work to be viewed from a vari­ety of per­spec­tives (Marx­ism, Fem­i­nism) in a vari­ety of cul­tures (Post-colonialism). These ‘per­spec­tives’ (a sim­pli­fied aspect of crit­i­cal the­ory as a whole) are accepted or legit­imised by the aspects of this text that sup­port such the­o­ries or read­ings. In this way, the text can be said to have tex­tual integrity, as it becomes uni­ver­sally applic­a­ble in the sense that it is no longer bound to a spe­cific time, or place. For exam­ple, a Marx­ist critic can draw a ‘truth’ con­sid­ered in the Marx­ist frame­work of thought to be unde­ni­able and absolute in the human expe­ri­ence – namely, that there exists a sys­tem of oppres­sion in soci­eties that advo­cate (or, do not opposed) “bare-knuckled cap­i­tal­ism” such as that exhib­ited by Ambrose Small in In the Skin of a Lion.

Post-modernism, there­fore, can be seen to encom­pass all aspects of the text, and pro­vide for their exis­tence – much as Ondaatje him­self pro­vides for their exis­tence through craft­ing the work. Other aspects of the text are tran­sient and non-requisite: the enabling force in all of this is the post-modern struc­ture encom­pass­ing all other the­o­ries and ide­olo­gies in a neu­tral or even ambiva­lent form. Post-modernism is purely con­tem­po­rary, an ide­ol­ogy that has emerged only in the late twen­ti­eth cen­tury – unlike those con­tained within it in this text. Whilst there is a con­flict of inter­est between the ideal of truth being [absolutely] rel­a­tive in post-modern thought and notions of ‘truth’ as pre­sented in other crit­i­cal the­o­ries, such incon­gruities are largely dis­re­garded in Ondaatje’s con­struc­tion of In the Skin of a Lion.

It is, how­ever, impor­tant to con­sider the rea­sons for which Ondaatje has con­structed his text thus. Cer­tainly, the pre­sen­ta­tion of ide­olo­gies inex­orably bound to the­o­ries dom­i­nant in pop­u­lar and aca­d­e­mic thought of another time is inevitable in a piece of good lit­er­a­ture when such a work is set as In the Skin of a Lion is. This may be accepted to be self-evident, and is of lit­tle con­se­quence aside from its mar­ginal con­tri­bu­tion to the preser­va­tion (or cre­ation) of tex­tual integrity. Of greater impor­tance is the effect of such pre­sen­ta­tion [of alter­nate ide­olo­gies] on the time­less­ness of a work, its flex­i­bil­ity, and, con­se­quently, its poten­tial value in any other ‘set­ting’ or con­text (encom­pass­ing time, place, and crit­i­cal thinking).

The rift between the ‘set­ting’ of In the Skin of a Lion and that of its com­poser is the bet­ter part of a cen­tury char­ac­terised by rapid change in ide­ol­ogy in response to glob­al­i­sa­tion, the wide­spread adop­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies, and pop­u­lar dis­il­lu­sion­ment in response to con­flicts that have resulted in more peo­ple being killed in that cen­tury than in any other period in his­tory – pop­u­lar dis­il­lu­sion­ment that man­i­fested itself in widely in the decade pre­ced­ing the ‘set­ting’ in which Ondaatje writes through the anti-war move­ment of the time.

This dis­il­lu­sion­ment man­i­fests itself in post-modern thought and in a sub­se­quent pop­u­lar revival of rel­a­tivism. This is, there­fore, reflected in the form of Ondaatje’s work – a form based on post-modernism’s rejec­tion of con­ven­tional struc­ture. There is even an anar­chis­tic ele­ment to the struc­ture in its alter­na­tion between con­ven­tional and post-modern styles, with this demar­ca­tion clearly apparent.

Such anar­chy is sim­i­larly reflected in the con­tent of the work, depicted through the influ­ence of Alice on Patrick, cul­mi­nat­ing in both her death and his own anar­chist aspi­ra­tions (that are ulti­mately realised not through action but through assum­ing “the skin of a lion”): and, before them, the death of Cato. It appears to be the result of cat­a­lysts in suc­ces­sion — Cato on Alice, Alice on Patrick, Patrick who is reached through Clara. This, once again, denies the “extreme loose­ness of the struc­ture of things” in that there is a clear rela­tion­ship that exists, that can be expressed, and even under­stood. Post-modernism is indif­fer­ent to anar­chy, whilst anar­chy [iron­i­cally] sets about destroy­ing the struc­ture of things, and yet the evo­lu­tion of such an ide­ol­ogy in In the Skin of a Lion rejects the super­struc­ture in which it is ‘contained’.

Anar­chy, of course, stems from alter­nate ide­olo­gies that pro­vide a rea­son for the ter­ror­ist actions. Behind anar­chism is an ulti­mate goal other than sim­ply the destruc­tion of struc­ture and the cre­ation of an “extreme looseness” – there is always a dri­ving ide­ol­ogy that exists behind it. Anar­chism func­tions with an intent to reform, to later recon­struct a new struc­ture that will empower the dis­en­fran­chised and those who are dis­il­lu­sioned with the present order of things. This is so in the text, with Marx­ism being the dri­ving force behind such anar­chism: there is always an intent to over­throw the impe­ri­al­ist rul­ing classes and give a voice to those who are with­out one. Marx­ism is recog­nised as being a preva­lent influ­ence not of the author’s set­ting, but rather of the period in which the text is set – and this ide­ol­ogy is recog­nised with a close link to that of voice and the ‘immi­grant experience’ – notably, linked closely to post-colonialism and the break­ing away from pre­con­cep­tions of for­eign states.

This idea of ‘voice’ in a place with an estab­lished lan­guage and cul­ture (pri­mar­ily west­ern) is a sub­ject with far-reaching links not sim­ply to the Marx­ist con­struct of oppres­sion by an impe­ri­al­is­tic soci­ety and an ever-expanding bour­geoisie class, but also to the far more con­tem­po­rary emer­gence of post-colonial lit­er­ary the­ory. Thus, the idea of a mis­rep­re­sented and voice­less class for­mu­lated from immi­grants in a post-colonial frame­work is chal­lenged, just as Marx­ism was seen to chal­lenge the sta­tus quo of the 1920’s as pre­sented in the text. Ondaatje uses this con­ver­gence of chrono­log­i­cally dis­tant ide­olo­gies to exhibit a tex­tual integrity through demon­strat­ing the time­less nature of lit­er­a­ture in terms of the themes explored.

The respon­der wit­nesses a par­a­digm that tran­scends the bet­ter part of a cen­tury (or more, if the time between the advent of Marx­ist thought and the emer­gence of post-colonial lit­er­ary the­ory is con­sid­ered) to present an ide­ol­ogy that remains con­gru­ent irre­spec­tive of set­ting – iron­i­cally, demon­strated through the jux­ta­po­si­tion of set­ting to exhibit its irrelevance.

In this way, Ondaatje binds chrono­log­i­cally dis­tant ele­ments together, encap­su­lat­ing a period of time and estab­lish­ing ‘truth’ that pre­vails across a series of ide­olo­gies – tex­tual integrity is estab­lished through the devel­op­ment of such time­less­ness in terms of the con­cepts pre­sented, and this is bound together by aspects of crit­i­cal the­ory com­bined under the aus­pices of post-modernism.