RUNNING IN THE FAMILY – ONDAATJE

            Running in the Family is a fictionalized memoir, written in post-modern style involving aspects of magic realism, by Michael Ondaatje. Running in the Family, published in 1982, is a memoir about his family in Sri Lanka which reaches back and forwards over several generations to tell a highly personal, yet historically and culturally fascinating story. It deals with his return to his native island of Sri Lanka, also called Ceylon, in the late 1970s. it also deals with his family. Much of the focus falls on his father Mervyn Ondaatje and his scandalous drunken antics. Michael’s grandmother Lalla is another family member that is explored in detail. Many themes are explored in the lives of his family, particularly luxurious frivolity (especially in the 1920s) and dipsomania.

           

The book often seems to blur the lines of fiction and history by offering diverse accounts of certain incidents and retelling of isolated events about which the author could not logically know so many intimate details. It is ultimately about a man’s quest to reconcile himself with the father he scarcely knew and come to terms with the loss of not knowing that man. Some important themes include: memory (its reliability, importance, and what makes it valuable), assumptions about others, the importance of family, and societal expectations. This book also contains many motifs including maps, nature and money.  It has all the hallmarks of a poet and imaginative novelist – wonderful imagery, incredible story-telling, atmosphere you can feel, emotion and humour.

            Ondaatje tells how he was drawn to travel to Sri Lanka to re-connect with his family and his roots by a “the bright bone of a dream I could hardly hold onto”. A special feature of this lyrical, explorative memoir is the story of Sri Lanka itself. The physical, cultural and historical background is beautifully, often humourously and graphically portrayed. One is constantly reminded of the physical surroundings – heat, rain, floods, cool shade, wonderful animal life, colonial architecture, spices, tea plantations, winding roads, jungle, plants, flowers, etc., In this sensual setting we hear equally wonderful stories about recent generation family members no longer alive. The recollections by friends and relatives of the authors father and maternal grandmother and both amazing and touching.

            The grandmother is depicted by relatives as an Aunty Mame character with a penchant for picking flowers from friends or public gardens and presenting them as gifts. Interwoven with the more fanciful, entertaining family stories is the authors visceral, dreamlike recollections, reconstructions and analyses of the family history going back some centuries but mostly looking back at two previous generations. There is one particular chapter “Don’t talk to me about Matisse” which delighted me with the literary references and feel for the place. In this chapter the author writes of an ancestor Dr. William Charles Ondaatje, a Tamil, who was a director of the Botanical Gardens in the mid 19^th century “who knew at least fifty-five specimens of poisons easily available to his countrymen” and wrote them up in journals. Running in the Family then is not the usual run-of-the-family memoir.

Character List:

·         Michael Ondaatje – the author of the memoir and thus the narrator. He was born in Sri Lanka and, at the time of the recounting, lives in Canada.

·         Mervyn Ondaatje – Michael’s father; a dipsomaniac. He was also in the Ceylon Light Infantry.

·         Lalla- Lalla is Michael’s maternal grandmother. She did not really blossom as a woman until her husband died. She does not really care what people think about her. She is ahead of her time and always trying the newest things. She is comfortable lying to people and she is unashamed even though she is poor. She loves the people who love her, she even hid a murderer and helped him escape because she believed he was a good man. She does not seem to have a very firm grasp on the concept of reality and what is appropriate. She loves playing practical jokes and messing around with people. As a young woman, she was very promiscuous. “she could read thunder”.

·         Billy- Lalla’s husband. Bought the “Palm Lodge” in the heart of Colombo and began a dairy. He died shortly thereafter, when Lally was not yet thirty.

·         Doris Gratiaen – Doris is Michael’s mother. She and Mervyn met because her brother was good friends with Mervyn. They were married for fourteen years. She later divorced Mervyn, and he remarried.

·         Philip – Philip is Michael’s grandmother. He owns the rock hill estate.

·         Gillian – Michael’s sister. She sometimes travels with him during his trips to Sri Lanka/Ceylon.

·         Rene de Saram – Lalla’s friend and next door neighbor. Both women “blossom” after their husbands’ deaths.

·         Noel Gratiaen – Doris’ brother, Lalla’s son.

·         Phyllis – one of Michael Ondaatje’s aunts.

·         Dolly – another aunt who smokes, and is half dead, half blind.

·         Aelian – Philip’s brother.

·         Dickie – Lalla’s sister.

Maureen – Mervyn’s second wife, mother of Jennifer and Susan. Mervyn was very different around his second family.

**NET SOURCES

A HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION OF LITERATURE – EDMUND WILSON

Ø  Historical criticism and Social change

Ø  In the excerpts below, Edmund Wilson presents his thoughts on what it means to understand literature in its “historical” aspects, that is “its social, economic and political aspects.”

Ø  Edmund Wilson, “The Historical Interpretation of Literature,” 1940, later published in Triple Thinkers.

Ø  He notes that this tradition of criticism began during the Enlightenment and developed during the subsequent centuries.

Ø  He begins by describing other prominent traditions of criticism then focuses on the historical one, which is a key critical tradition, especially its more progressive and revolutionary elements overviewed and explored by this site.

Ø  At the end of the article and the excerpts here, he touches on how literature, along with “all intellectual activity” may help bring about a better world, in its “attempt to give a meaning to our experience – that is, to make life more practicable; for by understanding things we make it easy to survive and get around among them.”

Ø  This weblog is basically geared towards this end, and is otherwise related to “understanding things” in order to “make it easier to survive and get around among them” especially to change conditions of life for the better, especially for the many currently in great need.

Ø   It might be noted too that at this perilous point in human history, the survival of the human species is ever more seriously threatened, as some authors have remarked for decades now.

Ø  In capacities professional and otherwise, those in the field of literature, given its largely though not entirely social, economic, and political nature, have great opportunity to do much toward addressing these urgent issues.

Ø  Edmund Wilson occupies an important place in the history of American literature in the 20nth century.

Ø  In his lasting literary life of half a century, Wilson’s literary achievements, which deals with many fields such as literary criticism, social comment, novel, poetry, drama, history, speech and so on, are very productive.

Ø  The speech “The Historical Interpretation of Literature”, which delivered in Princeton University in 1940 by Wilson, intensively embodies his literary outlook.

Ø  Based on the basic concept of the speech, dealing with the specific texts, this thesis tries to make a thorough exposition of Wilson’s criticism of “The Historical Interpretation of Literature”.

Ø  Wilson’s criticism of “The Historical Interpretation of Literature”, which intended for the literary authors and most of literary amateurs in society, based on Marxism, Freudian psychoanalysis, the traditional criticism of society and history and the criterion of “emotional reaction”, uses kinds of critical methods, attaches great importance to the literature character in criticism and relations between literature and society, embodies Wilson’s humanism spirit of seeking truth through literature, paying attention to real society nature of humankind and standing fast to independence and freedom.

Ø  In the first chapter, however reveals that “The Historical Interpretation of Literature” is based on Marxism, Freudian psychoanalysis, the traditional criticism of society and history and the criterion of “emotional reaction”.

Ø  The second chapter discusses the history of man’s ideas and imaginings.

Ø  The third chapter points out the significance of “The Historical Interpretation of Literature” lies in Wilson’s humanism spirit.

THE MEANING OF A LITERARY IDEA – LIONEL TRILLING

            Trilling’s “The Meaning of a Literary Idea”; or the Essay as Argument: Why the Research should be Abolished

            A study of a part of something can never be as interesting as a study of the whole to which the part belongs. Yet the Humanities has fragmented into so many divergent and divested parts that an emergent, whole picture is now easy to miss. The “art for art’s sake” attitude is in part responsible, for it denies the literary work its ideas, while “ art for art’s sake” is an ideology, not an idea. In “ The Meaning of a Literary Idea,” Trilling explains: “whether we deal with syllogisms or poems, we deal with dialectic – with, that is, a developing series of statements”. In other words, what we have come to call, “creative literature”, is no different in form than what we must now call “non-creative literature,” though of course there is no such thing: there is only one literature, all of its creative, and while literature may consist of various genres, such as fiction and non-fiction, poetry and drama, the impulse to further split non-fiction into creative or non-creative fiction can only have its source in funding disputes arising from the splitting of the discipline – for it can’t possibly have anything to do with reading, writing, or critical thinking.

            That is true because, as Trilling says, “The most elementary thing to observe is that literature is of its nature involved with ideas because it deals with man in society, which is to say that it deals with formulations, valuations, and decisions, some of them implicit, others explicit”.

Ideas are organic; ideology is manufactured. Ideas are malleable; ideology is rigid. “ideology is not the product of thought; it is the habit or the ritual of showing respect for certain formulas to which, for various reasons having to do with emotional safety, we have very strong ties of whose meaning and consequences in actuality we have no clear understanding”. And so in ideology, Trilling explains, we lose sight of this wholeness: “…..an intimate relationship between literature and ideas, for in our culture ideas tend to deteriorate into ideology”. If “Trilling could say that “Poetry is heuristic medium ……a communication of knowledge”, then why do we feel compelled to divorce essays (personal or any other kind or name the latest textbook has invented) from research papers? The very idea of the research paper is essay turned ideology. We must either abolish the research paper or watch literature continue its slow demise toward extinction, an extinction of ideas.

THE POWER AND THE GLORY – GRAHAM GREENE

            In The Power and the Glory, Greene examines the bases of sin and salvation by focusing on the final months in the life of a man who is the last priest still practicing his calling in Mexico. In his treatment of the fugitive, Greene offers two possible views of the protagonist’s plight, and he allows his readers to form their own conclusions concerning the priest’s fate in eternity. The first view sees the priest’s holiness as almost a truism. The clergyman has lived in the most dire conditions for years in Mexico – half starved, assaulted by fever and the police – simply to carry out God’s will. Even his death is caused by his sense of duty: he could have stayed across the mountains in safety, but he chose instead to administer Last Rites to the dying outlaw, Calver, although he sensed that he would be wasting his time and that the message summoning him was almost assuredly a police trick. We discover, however, that Calver did write the note.

            The second view is expressed by the pious woman incarcerated with the priest. She condemns him. In her eyes, the priest is merely a drunk, a lecher, a jester at Church precepts, and, above all, a sinner who will not repent. The novel alternates between these two positions, focusing on the priest’s own ruminations concerning the state of his soul. Greene has chosen a most complex man to carry the burden of his theological ideas. But the priest has the capacity – and the opportunity – to analyse theological problems that have always troubled humankind. The nameless priest becomes Everyman, picking his way through the labyrinths of Mexico’s mountain ranges and swamps in his attempt to do God’s will, even though his spiritual situation is unnecessarily complicated by issues that would bother no one but the priest himself. Greene’s priest has a tender conscience and a tendency to see only the evil in his actions and to exaggerate his blemishes. To such a man, virtues become vices and, added to valid guilt, they almost overpower him. Greene’s priest, however, does have reason to repent.

           

He was pompous in the early days of his priesthood; he subjugated emotions and concern for others to intellectual gymnastics; he did commit adultery; and he does drink far too much and might well be an alcoholic. But his imagined crimes, he feels, are much worse. He feels guilty because he loves the offspring of his sin, Brigitta; he suspects that his refused to leave Mexico stems merely from pride; he broods over taking a lump of sugar from a dead child and snatching a bone from a dying do – even though he himself is starving.

            He concerns himself unduly for enjoying a few days of rest at the Lehrs’ home, and while there, he is immediately conscious of his tendency to return to his old, stilted ways, so sensitized is his conscience to any possible rumblings of sin. The priest, then, is a fully drawn character; but he is also a spokesman for Greene’s view of the continuity of the Catholic Church. As a sensitive and thoughtful person, the protagonist is scarcely expendable; yet he is only a small part of a large spiritual organization – the Roman Catholic Church. In his debate with the lieutenant, the priest states that the totalitarian state is based upon personalities. When its leaders die, he says, the government will probably fall, consumed by corruption. The Church, he argues, does not depend on any one person, and the appearance of the new priest at the end of the novel manifests Greene’s thesis.

            But even the Church must work through people, and the novel traces the protagonist’s growing awareness of the need for compassion and acceptance of the faults of others. Without charity (benevolence and loving forbearance), the Church would be as cold and as brittle as the totalitarian state. The lieutenant can erase caricatures from the walls that might ridicule the government, but the Church must be more tolerant, while all the time retaining its sanctifying missions. Starting with his dreadful night in the jail cell and ending with his kindness to the half-caste as they approach Calver, the priest’s quest has been an effort to become totally human.

TO THE LIGHT HOUSE – VIRGINIA WOOLF

            Woolf is a great British writer who made an original contribution to the form of the novel, a distinguished essayist and critic, and a central figure of Bloomsbury group. This is a stream –of – consciousness novel. Especially, Virginia used the technique of stream of consciousness and symbolic writing perfectly, which was highly praised by many critics. A phrase used by William James in his Principles of Psychology (1890) to describe the unbroken flow of perceptions, thoughts, and feelings in the waking mind.

            This novel is an extraordinarily poignant evocation of a lost happiness that lives on in the memory. For years now, the Ramsays have spent every summer in their holiday home in Scotland, and they expect these summers will go on forever. In this, her most autobiographical novel, Virginia Woolf captures the intensity of childhood longing and delight, and the shifting complexity of adult relationships. From an acute awareness of transcience, she creates an enduring work of art.

            To the Lighthouse can be divided into three sections: “The Windows”, “Time Passess”, and “The Lighthouse”. Each section is fragmented into stream of consciousness contributions from various narrators.

Part – 1 The Window

           

The novel is set in the Ramsays’ summer home in the Hebrides, on the Isle of Skye. The section begins with Mrs. Ramsay assuring James that they should be able to visit the lighthouse on the next day. This prediction is denied by Mr. Ramasamy, who voices his certainty Mrs. Ramsay, and also between Mr. Ramsay and James. This particular incident is referred to on various occasions throughout the chapter, especially in the context of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay’s relationship. The Ramsays have been joined at the house by a number of friends and colleagues, one of them being Lily Briscoe who begins the novel as a young, uncertain painter attempting a portrayal of Mrs. Ramsay and her son James. Briscoe finds herself plagued by doubts throughout the novel, doubts largely fed by the statements of Charles Tansley, another guest, claiming that women can either paint or write. Tansley himself is an admirer of Mr. Ramsay and his philosophical treatises. The section closes with a large dinner party. Mr. Ramsay nearly snaps at Augustus Carmichael, a visiting poet, when the latter asks for a second serving a soup. Mrs. Ramsay, who is striving for the perfect dinner party is herself out of sorts when Paul Rayley and Minta Doyle, two acquaintances who she has brought together in engagement, arrive late to dinner, as Minta lost her grandmother’s brooch on the beach.

 Part – 2 : Time Passes

            The second section is employed by the author to give a sense of time passing. Woolf explained the purpose of this section, writing that it was ‘an interesting experiment that gave the sense of ten years passing’. This section’s role in linking the two dominant parts of the story was also expressed in Woolf’s notes for the novel, where above a drawing of an “H” shape she wrote ‘two blocks joined by a corridor’. During this period Britain begins and finshes fighting World War I.  In addition, the reader is informed as to the fates of a number of characters introduced in the first part of the novel. Mrs. Ramsay passes away, Prue dies in childbirth, and Andrew is killed in the war. Mr. Ramsay is left alone without his wife to praise and comfort him during his bouts of mortal fear and his anguish over doubts regarding his self worth.

Part – 3: The Lighthouse

In the final section, “The Lighthouse “, some of the remaining Ramsays return to their summer home ten years after the events of Part I, as Mr. Ramsay finally plans on taking the long-delayed trip to the lighthouse with his son James and daughter Camila. The trip almost does not happen, as the children had not been ready, but they eventually take off. En route, the children give their father the silent treatment for forcing them to come along. James keeps the sailing boat steady, and rather than receiving the harsh words he has come to expect from his father, he hears praise, providing a rare moment of empathy between father and son; Cam’s attitude towards her father has changed as well. They are being accompanied by the sailor Macalister and his son, who catches fish during the trip. The son cuts a piece of flesh from a fish he has caught to use for bait, throwing the injured fish back into the sea. While they set sail for the lighthouse, Lily attempts to complete her long unfinished painting. She reconsiders Mrs. Ramsay’s memory, grateful for her help in pushing Lily to continue with her art, yet at the same time struggling to free herself from the tacit control Mrs. Ramsay had over other aspects of her life. Upon finishing the painting and seeing that it satisfies her, she realizes that the execution of her vision is more important to her than the idea of leaving some sort of legacy in her work – a lesson Mr. Ramsay has yet to learn. The meaning of life is that the existence of life itself. So, no matter be “to the lighthouse” or anywhere else are always in the river of life. Don’t dispute, the journey of life is very different and very much the same. Wherever the river flows; all is one kind of existence, which is fleeting and never dies.

JUDE THE OBSCURE – OBJECTIVE QUESTIONS

1.      Jude the Obscure opens with the departure of school master from the villate Mary Green. His name is…………..

2.      Who advised Jude “Be a good boy remember and be kind to animal and read all you can”?

3.      Jude’s village is ……..

4.      Robert Phillotson left his village for the university city………

5.      Drosilla Fawley is Jude’s ……..

6.      Name the quack-doctor who earns his living by befooling simple cottagers……

7.      Arabella Don is daughter of a ………..

8.      After her marriage with Jude Arabella leaves Jude and migrates to ………

9.      Sue worked as a …………in Lumsdon.

10.  Why did Sue decide to marry Phillotson?

11.  Little Father Time was born to Arabella by?

12.  Who is the heroine of Jude the Obscure?

13.  Where did Sue get training for teacher?

14.  The novel Jude the Obscure is called……….

15.  Who says “husbands are only economical security”?

16.  Jude’s ambition is to become a …….

17.  Full name of Jude is ………..

18.  Hardy was awarded Order of Merit in ……….

19.  Hardy’s novels are called…….

20.  Hardy believed in the Philosophy of ………..

21.  Hardy’s chief pro-occuptation in his work with………..

22.  Jude Fawley, the novel’s protagonist, longs to become a ………… circumstances force him instead to become a ………….

23.  How does Arabella trap Jude into marrying her the first time?

24.  On their wedding night, what physical attribute of Arabella does Jude discover to be false?

25.  Where does Jude first see Sue?

26.  What statues does Sue buy from the street vendor?

27.  How are Jude and Sue related?

28.  Who introduces Sue to Phillotson?

29.  Where does Jude encounter Arabella for the first time since she has left him?

30.  What event causes Phillotson to consent to Sue’s desire to leave him for Jude?

31.  Why does Arabella grant Jude a divorce?

32.  According to the legend told by the Widow Edlin, what happened to Jude’s and Sue’s common ancestor?

33.  Why does not Sue want to marry Jude, even after they are already living together?

34.  Why is Drusilla opposed to Jude marrying?

35.  On what special day do Jude, Sue, and their family return to Christminster?

36.  What happens to Jude’s three oldest children?

37.  How does Sue react to the fates of her children?

38.  According to Jude, what are his two greatest weaknesses?

39.  On the eve of her second marriage to Phillotson, what does the Widow Edlin advise Sue?

40.  How does Arabell get Jude to marry her the second time?

41.  What is Sue’s fate?

42.  When Arabella discovers that Jude is dead, which of these does she do first?

43.  Which character utters the last lines of the novel?

44.  Which was Hardy’s first novel?

45.  Which novel of Hardy has a chapter in which a man sells his wife?

46.  In which year Hardy announced that he would not write fiction again?

47.  Who is Jude Fawley’s cousin in Jude?

48.  Which novel of Hardy first gained notice?

49.  Who conferred the Order of Merit on Hardy?

50.  When was Wessex Tales published?

ANSWERS:

1	Richard Phillotson
2.	Robert Phillotson
3.	Marygreen
4.	Christminster
5.	Aunt
6.	Vilbert
7.	Pig-breeder
8.	Australia
9.	Assistant teacher
10.	Jude did not tell his marriage Arabella, earlier
11.	Jude
12.	Sue Bridehead
13.	Melchester
14.	A deadly war between flesh and blood
15.	Arabella
16.	Scholar
17.	Jude Fawley
18.	1910
19.	Wessex novels
20.	Immanent will
21.	Man’s unequal struggle with the fate
22.	Scholar; stonemason
23.	She feigns pregnancy.
24.	Her hair
25.	In a portrait owned by his aunt Drusila
26.	Venus and Apollo
27.	They are cousins.
28.	Jude
29.	At a bar in Christminster
30.	Sue jumps out of a window to escape Phillotson
31.	She wants to marry another man.
32.	He was hanged
33.	She feels it will destroy their happiness
34.	Because their family has bad luck with marriage
35.	Remembrance Day
36.	They commit suicide
37.	She renounces her ties to Jude
38.	Women and alcohol
39.	Not to marry Phillotson
40.	She gets him drunk
41.	She consummates her marriage with Phillotson
42.	She goes to see the boat races
43.	Arabella
44.	The poor man and the lady
45.	The Mayor of Casterbridge
46.	1896
47.	Sue Bridehead
48.	Far from the Madding Crowd
49.	George V
50.	1912