In the Skin of a Lion is a novel by Canadian author Michael Ondaatje,
written in 1987. It is structured in
three books each of which is separated into sections focusing on different
aspects of the plot. Тhe title comes from The Epic of Gilgamesh part of which is used as
an epigraph along with a quotation from John Berger’s novel G. The selection
of epigraphs illustrates the main theme of the novel: plurality of view points
that have to be taken into account for building a better world. Equal
significance of each culture, race and ethnos is necessary if Canada is to be considered a dream
land of freedom.
The novel deals mostly with the issue of otherness in the first decades
of the twentieth century in Canada
where the concept of ethnicity and social class was still considered an
important factor for prosperity in society. Along with social issues the novel
presents the life of its main protagonist Patrick Lewis and his love stories
with two women – Clara Dickens and Alice Gull. However, since the purpose of my
study is examining the presence of Canadianness in the novel, I am going to
focus mostly on the social and territorial aspects and only briefly discuss the
love discourse.
One of the things that link the work to Canada and Canadian way of life is
the constant reference to landscape in all times and seasons. In the beginning
of the novel the protagonist, Patrick Lewis, recalls his childhood spent in
Canadian woods where his father used to work as a logger and dynamiter. Human
speech is not typical for the wilderness that is why people who try to live
there have to adapt to the environment. Hazen Lewis, Patrick’s father, has
realized that when it comes to working with dynamite in the woods animal instincts
for survival are more useful than language. He has developed “the unemotional
tongue” (19) as the narrator describes his means of communication through the
eyes of his scornful son. However, the boy Patrick is about to learn a lot of
things concerning severity of life that will help him understand his father
better. The harsh winter scenery with the workers Patrick often remembers can
be interpreted as an allusion to the pain and suffering he will come across
later in his life when childhood is over.
Similarly to him, another character of the novel, Clara Dickens,
cherishes her childhood memories from her father’s farm. She remembers the
place as a source of happiness and freedom where life for her was simple and
the connection to wilderness – natural. Many years after her father had passed
away she would go to another farmhouse with Patrick where they are going to
experience the most significant moments in their relationship. This is the time
when she reveals herself to him, sharing one of the most valuable memories she
has about her father and her life as a girl: “Those were favourite times. All
day we would talk about things I was not sure of. (74) For both characters
living in the wilderness of Canadian woods means forming as a person and developing
a specific attitude to life: much more natural and independent than most people.
For them, and for most of the characters, being strong means combining stamina
with mental strength in order to overcome all the obstacles life challenges you
with.
The fact that the millionaire Ambrose Small chooses Patrick’s wilderness
for a hiding place when he wants to be left alone and forgotten is indicative
to the whole perception of Canadian woods as a place where one can be left with
their thoughts to find peace and harmony. However, the calmness of the woods is
only on the surface: there are dangerous animals and natural disasters that can
be awaken any minute. The temper of the protagonist corresponds with this image
quite successfully; he looks well-balanced and quiet but once his peace has
been disturbed we see him turn into a man full of anger ready to punish
severely those who had harmed him.
The whole novel provides the reader with images of great places in two
parallel directions: on the one hand there is the great Canadian wilderness
whose presence can be felt in every section of the book; on the other hand
there is the image of a big Canadian city (Toronto) that is being built.
As far as city life is concerned, Ondaatje chooses to show its building-up
from a different, rather untypical perspective: the one of the workers whose
labour and death were put in the foundations of what is now known as the city
of Toronto and its landmarks such as Bloor Street Bridge, and the R. C. Harris’
Water Treatment Plant - the tunnel under Lake Ontario that now provides all of
the water filtration for the city. Solitary life and hard work are the features
that link the way immigrant workers live in the city to the life in the
wilderness. The “unemotional tongue” (19) Patrick’s father had developed after
years of working in the woods is compared to the lack of language that the
Macedonian immigrant Nicholas Temelcoff feels after his arrival to Canada.
The focus on his life in the novel is representative for the meager existence
immigrants had to endure in Canada
in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Being an immigrant himself,
Ondaatje has studied the history of Toronto
very carefully and has managed to weave some true events into the novel: the
fall of a nun from a bridge, the disappearance of Ambrose Small, the political
suppression of Police Chief Draper, etc.
The second part of Book One is entitled The Bridge and tells the story
of Nicholas Temelcoff. He lives in the Macedonian neighbourhood but tends to
stick to himself because of his difficulty with language. He does not speak
much but he is one of the best workers building the new bridge because he never
seems afraid to take the most difficult and dangerous tasks: “For Nicholas
language is much more difficult than what he does in space.” (37) The story of
Nicholas’ life contains too much misfortune, pain and suffering, so his
character is full of contradictions: on the one hand he is frightening with his
size, roughness and silence, but on the other hand he is admirable with his
stamina, hard work and willingness for self-sacrifice. We see him saving a nun
who had fallen from the construction of the bridge – one of the most vivid and
memorable scenes from the novel. Nicholas Temelcoff represents the immigrants
without whose help Toronto
would not have been the same place nowadays but who were scorned and rejected
by Canadian government (and its officials such as Mr. Harris) as second-rate
people treated worse than animals.
The first part of Book Two: The Palace of Purification
shows these unendurable work conditions in more detail: “Work continues. The
grunt into hard clay. The wet slap. Men burning rock and shattering it wherever
they come across it. Filling hundreds of barrels with liquid mud and hauling
them out of the tunnel. In the east end of the city a tunnel is being built out
under the lake in order to lay intake pipes for the new waterworks.” (105).
Most of the workers are immigrants, but the protagonist Patrick also works
there. Through his eyes and senses Ondaatje depicts the price of some of the
most famous Canadian landmarks paid in human lives. Except inhumane conditions,
the workers have to face the fear of being killed and the common underpayment
that contrast to the luxury the rich live in. Here the reader can sense the
accusatory tone of the narrator who compares the attitude towards social issues
in the US where such things
could not be left unnoticed and in Canada where even the press is
manipulated by officials: “The commissioner would slide these facts out, bounce
them off his arms like oranges to journalists.” (110)
Life of immigrants in Toronto
is mostly related to hard work and poverty. Moreover, they have to use a new
language, which means that they have to form new identities. Their being is
totally disturbed by the new exilic way of life within the limitations of the
immigrant neighbourhood. Ironically, Patrick feels an exile in the Macedonian
neighbourhood because he does not speak the common language there. But in spite
of that he manages to communicate with Kosta who takes him to the theatre where
Alice performs.
Being a native of Ontario Patrick is an immigrant in the city and his only
friends are immigrants and workers: “The people on the street, the Macedonians
and Bulgarians, were his only mirror. He worked in the tunnels with them.”(112).
Even the writer whose letters Alice
reads to him is an immigrant – Joseph Conrad.
Immigrants are the people whose effort to create a great Canadian city
remained forgotten in history. However, they do deserve the chance to have
their story told and this is what Ondaatje does. The metaphor of the skin of a
lion helps him give a voice to every single individual who deserves to be heard
and can “take responsibility for the story”: “Alice had once described a play to him in
which several actresses shared the role of the heroine. After half an hour the
powerful matriarch removed her large coat from which animal pelts dangled and
she passed it, along with her strength, to one of the minor characters. In this
way even a silent daughter could put on the cloak and be able to break through
her chrysalis into language. Each person had their moment when they assumed the
skins of wild animals, when they took responsibility for the story.” (157) Plurality of voices is the only way to tell a
story objectively. That is why the structure of the work is fragmented – all
stories combine to form one, each life is affected by the lives of the others.
Society is constructed by people and they are the ones who write history.
Another voice in the novel is the story of the “neighbourhood thief
Caravaggio”(85) as Patrick describes him in a letter to Clara. In the beginning
of the book his presence is silent: we see him working on the bridge with
Nicholas Temelcoff but there he is just an image. His turn to take “the skin of
a lion” comes later when after bombing a hotel of the rich in a fit of avenge
for Alice’s death Patrick meets him in prison. After managing to escape during
painting of the roof, Garavaggio remembers some significant moments from his
life in flashbacks. This merges the present with the past in his story the same
way the border between dream and reality is blurred for him because thieves
never sleep. But this lack of temporal dimensions is not the only thing that
makes the thief a remarkable character. His multiple skills, strong will and
cleverness combined with his survival instincts help him develop the plan of
Patrick’s revenge to Harris. Moreover, we see his story continued in another
Ondaatje’s book – “The English Patient”. Caravaggio’s story is told mostly
through description of images, sounds, even tastes – this style of writing is
very common for Ondaatje and gives the reader the ability to experience the
events almost physically instead of just intellectually.
Caravaggio (just like Patrick, Alice and Temelcoff) is a representative
of a lower social class of immigrants trying to survive in the big city. His
sense of justice is not as outlined as Patrick’s but he and his wife Gianetta
help the former prisoner Lewis to break into Mr. Harris’ office. The reader
sees this scene in another flashback after Patrick’s conversation with Clara
when he falls asleep, so that it looks like a dream. However, the protagonist
risks his life in search of justice for Alice’s
death and for the inhumane conditions that led to the death of many workers in
the tunnel. When he is released from prison in 1938 he finds a different city
where “… the great water-works at the east end of Toronto neared completion” and “over 10 000
foreign-born workers had been deported out of the country”. Immigrants are no
longer needed in Canada
since the hard work is done. This is another thing that infuriates Patrick who
has worked with those man and relied on them in case of danger in the tunnel.
His feeling of injustice makes him want to speak, to raise his voice. He does
not simply try to kill Harris but goes to him and asks him the accusatory
question : “Do you know how many of us died in there?” His action is provoked
by desperation and anger and most of all by the desire to be understood.
Surprisingly, Harris manages to understand him and does not press
charges against him. Their meeting marks the culmination of the novel when the
oppressor listens to the voice of the oppressed and it makes sense to him.
Harris realizes the hard condition of his workers and the need Patrick feels to
express it. He knows that it has come the worker’s turn to tell his story, so
Harris quotes an extract from “The Epic of Gilgamesh”: “He lay down to sleep
until he was woken from out of a dream. He saw the lions around him glorying in
life; then he took his axe in his hand, he drew his sward from his belt, and he
fell upon them like an arrow from the string.”(242) A hero is not afraid to
fight lions as Patrick is brave enough to confront Harris. Listening to the
other’s arguments is a better solution than fighting. Understanding otherness
is a very difficult thing but once people try doing it, they can realize that
everyone has the right to live and tell their story. According to Lyotard grand
narratives cannot exist on their own because smaller narratives are what builds
them. In the novel Ondaatje describes the situation with the new image of
Canada as almost the same – it would not have existed without the labour of the
immigrants who are its real creators doomed to remain hidden in the shadow of
historical oblivion.
Bibliography
Ondaatje, Michael. IN THE SKIN OF A LION, Vintage Canada, 1996
