TEXTUAL INTEGRITY

Questions centrality of the dominant culture and voices of Toronto in the early 20thC.
Challenges unity and coherence of society and history.
YET written as an integrated whole.
Message is consistent throughout, as are the voices of individual characters, despite the shifting focus
of narrative voices.
Australian literary critic Katharine Brisbane: the fragmented form is frustrating as each character
is, in turn, imprisoned behind a wall of what is essentially the other characters narration.
Motifs e.g. moths and light/darkness and symbols give the text unity as recurring ideas.
Intertextuality: subtle = thief Caravaggio with his art of theft named after the painter.
overt = John Berger and Epic of Gilgamesh epigraphs.
Textual level = Hana. Extra-textual level = reader.
Consciously shaped meaning.
Caryl Phillips of Toronto University: readers are left to piece together various parts of the story to
understand its ideas. The novel is not a cohesive whole it is not a case of accepting or rejecting
his judgements, but an issue of understanding them.
LANGUAGE & STRUCTURE
Non-linear
Poetic narrative
Fragmented with framework story of Patrick Lewis.
Cyclical begins/ends in car with Patrick and Hana this is the story a girl gathers in a car in the
early hours
Self-conscious references to its own metafictional construction: realigned chaos to suggest both the
chaos and order it will become.
Canadian Professor Winfried Semerling: criticises constant interruptions of five years earlier she
might have or ten years into the future he would think Although he is never wrong and
readers recognise each event he has foretold, the value of those shocks of recognition is slight
compared to the cost of distancing the immediate scene and the people taking part in it.
Shifting focus of characters as each assumed the skin of wild animals and took responsibility for
their story.
Blend of history and pseudo-history.
Abstract cinematic imagery.
Cinematic and dramatic as theme = structurally significant as Alices role as the human puppet
is paralleled by Ondaatjes role as puppet master.
Ondaatje manipulates narrative voice to empower the typically unheard: a nun on a bridge, a
daredevil who cannot sleep without drink, a boy watching the fire from his bed at night, an actress
who ran away with a millionaire.
Ondaatjes language initially contrasts with the characters lack of language, but comes to
complement their study of the importance of words.

COMPLEXITY OF POWER
Challenges anonymity of workers who built the physical and social infrastructure of Toronto in the
early 20thC.
Complex view: terrorism does not destroy the systems of exploitation because power emanates
from the dominant culture and is not located in one individual or building.
Power cannot be located and eradicated you dont understand poweryou dont want it to exist,
but you move around it all the time.
Real power has nothing to show because it is a fluid entity that is constantly shifting and changing.
Power operates from beyond the tangible.
Dramatic interchange between Patrick and Harris at the Waterworks resolves class
differences showing that the official attitude does not always dominate humanity.
Harris recognises Patricks contribution to society and gives him the chance to face the nightmare of
Alices death. The two then move beyond the idea that one is the enemy and the other the victim
to recognise that both should stand equally in society.
Marxist criticism: a later variant known as cultural materialism relates this conclusion to the
social assumptions of Ondaatjes time. They claim that the acceptance of this idea will change with
time and society.
ETHNOCENTRIC DOMINATION
Cultural dimensions of characters show their opportunities in life are limited because they do not
belong to the dominant cultural group.
Ethnocentric assumption of official history re-evaluates it to provide a counter-history which
acknowledges marginalised groups.
John Berger epigraph, never again will a single story be told as though it were the only one,
highlights the disempowerment of cultural groups.
Value given to characters irrespective of cultural identity: each character has his own time zone,
his own lamp, otherwise they were just men from nowhere
Dominant culture = extravagant Commissioner Harris and Ambrose Small who was bare-knuckle
capitalism.
Reveals colonial administrative structures as ethnocentric and criticises their detrimental impact
on different cultures illegal to speak a different language or have a public gathering, as in the
Waterworks.
Official histories and news stories were always soft as rhetoric and the common people like
Temelcoff were just an exclamation mark on the horizon.
Ethnocentric view of history silences the contribution of the masses, particularly the migrants.
Learning the language enables Alice to become an activist and shows Temelcoff how he has been
sown into history.
The characters discovery of language is matched by Ondaatjes exploration of poetic writing in
a narrative style and his development of imagery, such as the Finns skating with flaming cattails

used as torches and daily life as schoolchildren tearing off chunks of tar from a roadbed to chew
like gum.