Paper Example on Michael Ondaatje: Journey Through Mixed Cultures

Background Information

Michael Ondaatje has experienced mixed social-cultural activities in the course of growing up and has expressed it in one of his famous works by the title "Running in The Family." In this piece, Ondaatje expresses that he experienced the cultures of Sir Lanka and Canada. During his childhood days, he spent them in Sir Lanka. It is essential to understand that he comes from a family with mixed ancestry and lineage. Not only is he affected by the multiculturalism issue but also a victim of racial classification indeterminacy. Despite Ondaatje having the Sir Lankan origin and mixed lineage, he migrated to Canada to find his identity. Being a Sir Lankan, it was difficult to fit in the Canadian culture. It also became more challenging the more he tried to find his identity without being defined by his origin.

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Just like Ondaathe, Lahiri also experiences mixed cultures in her life. Lahiri experienced both American and Indian cultures. Notably, that Lahiri explains about the multiculturalism that she experienced in her short story title as “The Interpreter of Maladies." Lahiri was sired by Bengali parents whose origin was initially Calcutta. However, when Lahiri was two years old, the family shifted to New York. She has also experienced life in Boston because that where she studied. Lahiri experienced struggles with identity and belonging in the course of growing up. She was a girl with the Indian race and Indian hair; however, she practiced the western lifestyle. Additionally, Lahiri expresses that she experienced anxiety associated with many immigrants due to the two different cultures that were well-rooted in her.

A bicultural upbringing is never easy for most of the children and teenagers who experience it. It is often likely to negatively affect the self-confidence and self-esteem of an individual, especially if they are victims of bullying. These are the effects of struggling to find one’s identity and belonging. The process of discovering an individual’s identity for people brought up in bicultural setups is difficult because it is difficult to detach from one of the cultures. For instance, in the case of Lahiri, it was difficult to behave and live like an American without expressing some Indian cultural elements. On the other hand, she could practice full Indian cultures without expressing the American way of life. Ondaatje also experienced the dilemma of living like a Canadian or attaching with the Dutch community. Therefore, each of these individuals developed strategies for negotiating the issue of identity and belonging at their times.

Identity and Belonging in Michael Ondaatje’s “Running in The Family”

As you begin reading “Running in the Family,” the author introduces himself through the words “Half a page and the morning is already ancient.” The author's existence fades gradually to offer the lives of other people to be identified through the text. The presence of others is used to give meaning to the author’s identity. As one can understand, the sentimental book must be written by someone that has traveled to both Canada and England. He, therefore, lost his childhood to emigration. Returning to Ceylon at the age of 25, the author tries to justify the incidents that he recalls from his childhood to recreate a life that he lost.

Ondaatje's central idea in the text is to develop or create his self-identity with the childhood that he missed. According to him, the perception of identity and belonging lies in reconnecting with his childhood. He tries to understand himself by recollecting many key people or figures playing a role in his life. In other words, the author tries to see himself through the reflection of other people. Some of the people that he reconnects with include his father, who is a prominent leader. He describes his father’s life as being peculiar. In the text, the father turns out to become a rebellious and scandalous person. The author mirrors himself as the image of his father.

Through the realization of his identity in other people, Ondaatje understands the complexity of his roots. With the early migration and spending most of his life away from his homeland, the return leads to the questioning of his true belonging. The author realizes that he needs something substantial with which he will associate. This need is created by his expatriate position in a state where identities are diverse. The fight to know the true identity of the author is not among the local community and the author, who is seen as a foreigner. It is between a multi-ethnic local community and a single foreigner. The many ethnic communities in his homeland were created through colonization. Ondaatje, being aware of his status as a migrant, keeps the question of identity next to his heart. He remains in search of an absolute identity that is pure. His identity can be explained as one of the hybridized nationalities of an invader and a foreigner. As he seeks to understand his identity, Ondaatje realizes that the place that he struggles to remember is not in its pure form. It is now made up of sedimentary layers of memories that do not add up.

Multiethnicity is a challenge in determining his true identity. The presence of a diverse ethnic community makes the ground upon which he tries to stand on loose. As a result, his sense of identity is aggravated, and he is unable to relate to his ancestors completely. He remains distant from his ancestors and can not be able to associate with any of the actual heritage. As a result, Ondaatje fails to connect with the purpose he is pursuing. He is captioned saying that “Everyone was vaguely related and had Sinhalese, Tamil, Dutch and Burgher blood in them going back many generations. There was a large social gap between this circle and the Europeans and English who were never part of the Ceylonese community.” Even at the time of the past, his unclear roots could not be quickly established.

The author needs to identify himself with his ancestry in an encompassing manner. Thus, he uses all that is in his power to try filling the gaps in his life. This is done to create a complete story to which he can easily relate. He can only act through the nature of dual status. First, he needs to be part of his own story simultaneously. At the same time, he has to remain detached from it to have an objective perception and understanding of his past perspectives. Given the title, “Running in the Family,” we can say that the author runs toward and away from his own family. He seeks to understand his life in all the dimensions of it. This pursuit results in tension and a more complicated situation.

The fact that Ondaatje is a foreigner to his homeland is a tormenting feeling for him. Most times, he is confused by the thoughts of whether he is worthy enough to write about his motherland. Throughout his writing, the expatriate position he takes is gnawing at him. The author notes that he is a foreigner and a prodigal that hates the foreigner. Aside from the question of identity that arises within him, there is also the question of legitimacy about his writing on his homeland. He does not differentiate any of these from the possibility of his expatriate position, giving him the authority to live in a place with which it is difficult to reconnect.

Ondaatje creates a history of Sri Lanka in a way that it was not but in a version of a migrant. Through the personal reminiscence, amusing comedy, and poetry, he defines Ceylon as he recalls rather than in its actual history. His writing shows a migrant trying to reconnect with his homeland by collecting the false facts through imagination and creation. The setting in of time and space challenges his ability to express himself as an affiliate of his country. He tries to establish a connection with his country through the imagination of luxurious pleasures and life colors that he sees in his own country.

The writing by Ondaatje is, therefore, not an objective history of his homeland. It is his awakening of consciousness to the reality to discover his connections with his country. He tries to establish this connection by lining his literature with contemplated evidence. His exoticism illustrates the detachment from his homeland. He is now only relying on false evidence to establish his identity and belonging rather than relying on a clear and objective understanding of his association with Ceylon.

The author’s parents are no longer together as his mother left his father for being an alcoholic. Her mother raised them separately in a foreign country. Despite being away for 25 years, Ondaatje still remembers his father. He understands the aspect of being true to one’s feelings. From his father’s young years, he knows how to be whimsical, juvenile, and carefree. The author understands how important each of the figures in his life was important in shaping his past. Therefore, the perceptions of identity and belonging are inclined to the people in one’s life and the place of childhood.

Identity and Belonging in Jhumpa Lahiri in “Interpreter of Maladies”

While Ondaatje's work dwells on establishing self-identity and belonging to his homeland, Jhumpa Lahiri tells stories that mostly show how women struggle with the aspect of identity. The work by Lahiri is comprised of six different stories. The stories contain a rich cultural tradition and the context of a modern globalized world, giving them the ability to allow the characters to reflect themselves subjectively. The author also captures how the continuous change process has influenced people from different parts of the world more or less radically. To best explain the aspects of identity and belonging, this text will consider three stories from Lahiri's work. These include “The Treatment of Bibi Haldar,” “A Real Durwan,” and “This Blessed House.” All these stories have a female protagonist as a character living in a unique historical and social circumstance. Two of the characters focused on are single and live in India, and the other one is married to an Indian husband, and together, they live in the United States. The marriage was traditionally arranged, and the country where they live is multi-ethnic.

In the story “A Real Durwan,” the protagonist Boori Ma is a woman offering caretaker services in an apartment building. Most people view her as having no job. However, she acknowledges her occupation better than any other person and is committed to delivering services to the residents' satisfaction. Through her services, the people have come to like her. She makes a living out of the services that she offers. A humble old lady manages to do cleaning and other odd jobs and is tolerated by the resi...