In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje has numerous scenes of astonishing brilliance and beauty. Of course his background in poetry surely helped this immensely, but still one scene stands out amongst them all, and it starts on page seven and continues to the break on page eight. Although this is the first scene in the novel and no plot has really been built yet I still stand firm that this section of text holds the most beauty (not functionality).
“If he is awake early enough the boy sees the men walk past the farmhouse down First Lake Road. Then he stands at the bedroom window and watches: he can see two or three lanterns between the soft maple and the walnut tree. He hears their boots on gravel. Thirty loggers wrapped up dark, carrying axes and small packages of food which hang from their belts. The boy walks downstairs and moves to a window in the kitchen where he can look down the driveway. They move to a window in the kitchen where he can look down the driveway. They move from right to left. Already they seem exhausted, before the energy of the sun.”
Of course the passage continues, but to me I can even shorten its most beautiful part to this initial paragraph. As you can see the descriptive words make the section come to life, but this is not all that makes it beautiful. I can also relate to this scene quite a lot, as a little boy…uh I mean girl!-I encountered a similar phenomenon when I lived in the countryside alone with my father. This section also holds incredible importance artistically to the future of the book and it holds functionality for the reader’s future understanding. It gives the foreshadow of Patrick being a poor boy (one lantern to ten men), and it gives the foreshadowing to his type of work; which, common to immigrants at the time, was something difficult enough for them to be “exhausted, before the energy of the sun.” Artistically this passage begins our search for symbols and motif’s throughout the novel. The biggest one introduced in this section are; light, work, and temperature.
Although I believe this section to be one of the most beautiful it is not the only beautiful passage in the novel.
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3 comments:
Good posts, Blake, although I must point out, as a Canadian, that you have a dire spelling error in two posts. Not that my sense of national identity is offended, or anything! :)
Wait a minute, I'm confused... were you a little girl as a child? There's a line in here that has me scratching my head...
I think you should know that my spelling errors are not errors but simply a frustrated right-click. My browser, you see, corrects spelling into the all-to-familiar American version, and because the red-line pops up when things are 'spelled incorrectly' it tends to be annoying.
Also, 'Blake' can also be a woman's name.
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