Becoming The Third Dimension: Cubism In In The Skin Of A Lion

Becoming the Third Dimension

Images splatter against the viewer's face like a moth on the windshield when gazing at the pigmented speckles dappled along the textured canvas hanging on the wall in the local gallery. Examining the seemingly incomplete picture before them, the viewer may inquire as to the perception of the painted figure from various angles as opposed to the solitary linear image presented by the artist. Mona Lisa's intriguing smile may birth more questions if the art critic could view it from a profile, or the back of her head, or even from the underside of the canvas as a whole. Although a picture may say a thousand words, a panoramic view of the same subject would utter a hundred thousand more. Realizing the human desire to know and understand what they witness in full, artists such as Pablo Picasso began a style known as cubism between 1907 and 1914. Cubism acknowledges the idea that objects (and perhaps ideas?) are three-dimensional and should therefore be expressed as that. The cubist theory drives itself into the minds of artists of numerous mediums including literature. But in bringing a prismatic feel to a two-dimensional topic, the audience is bombarded with more questions than answers given. This reader then is likely to draw a blank at the images forming in his mind as he pieces the angles together. By producing these multiple angles, whether it be in art or literature, the creator fails to emphasize any particular perspective and often leaves one of them open without explanation, that of the reader. Through its development in the literary cubism method, In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje defies the reader's initial perception of a single story by trivializing the narrow linear view of the lead character and in turn completing the multidimensional view of the story by invoking the reader's own perspective.

In composing this multidimensional story line, Ondaatje eradicates the reader's inclination to base the story off of the linear perspective of one character by delineating the main character's nugatory existence. Obliterating the linear perspective concept, the author allows the cubist conditions of portraying a three-dimensional story contrived from the perspectives of a multitude of characters to unfold. This destruction begins when he states, in reference to Patrick Lewis' homeland, that "He was born into a region which did not appear on a map until 1910, though his family had worked there for twenty years and the land had been homesteaded since 1816" (Ondaatje 10). The Canadian government's failure to recognize the existence of his birthplace manifests into the minute role that Patrick actually plays in the natural order of the world. Born in an unknown region within a comparatively insignificant country, Patrick personalizes this blatant disregard for his homeland as a worldly negligence of his own being. This fact places the leading character as merely a common person of little importance. After leaving this geographically unimportant region and arriving in Toronto, Patrick "spoke out his name and it struggled up in a hollow echo and was lost in the high air of Union Station. No one turned" (Ondaatje 54). The people's ignorance of his call define once again that the reader should refrain from placing specific faith into Patrick's angle of the story's events. His voice simply harmonizes with the narratives of each character and therefore should not receive a greater weight.

Along with these other characters, Patrick's tale is necessary to compose the entire train of events that will mold into a complete story within the cubist perspective. Working alongside men on the Prince Edward Viaduct for example, Nicholas Temelcoff "never realizes how often he is watched by others" (Ondaatje 42). Although Nicholas accepts the idea that his life is relatively unimportant in the overall scheme of things, his coworkers monitor his daily actions thereby glorifying his existence through its impact on others. The contribution of individual stories in the actualization of the true events is not limited to the actions of major characters. Getting up from a recent sexual encounter with Clara, Patrick Lewis freezes at the window when he notices a moth and "Hello friend, he breathed towards the pale-green speckled body hanging against the pane" (Ondaatje 66). The mere tale of the moth's existence diverted the actions of Patrick enough to be written into the final overall narrative. With the moth continuing to disrupt the flow of the novel, Patrick later visualizes that the blind gardener Elizabeth's "green eye echoes somewhere within him. Aetias Luna - and its Canadian name, papillon lune. Lunar moth. Moon moth" (Ondaatje 170). Although on the lamb and dependent on this woman's mercy, her green eye plunges him into another account of this meddling insect. Its presence seems irrelevant at first glance, but the moth represents one fragment of the story just as the human characters. Each element of this book is simply that, an element. Although the account of one piece of the puzzle may have more detail than the next, they each are equally important.

As the jigsaw puzzle locks into place, the characters begin to realize what the reader has been told since the disclosure of Patrick's birthplace, that their angle of the world is not the true story. Although an individual's interpretation of events fails to define the entire story, it does affect the story. The distinctive angles, as compared to the story in its entirety, are much like an axe chopping down a tree. "At some moment, chopping into the hemlock, hearing only the axe and its pivoting echo, he must have imagined the trees and permafrost and maple syrup ovens erupting up in one heave, the snow shaken off every branch in the woods around him" (Ondaatje 15). Albeit only one tree is being cut down, the entire forest reverberates with change. The first instance of a character's acceptance of their themselves representing simply part of the story and not the story itself is on the part of an animal. "The face of the half-submerged cow, a giant eye lolling, seems unconcerned. Patrick expects it to start chewing in complete boredom" (Ondaatje 13). This beast emblematically portrays that life and death merely flavor the epic that the world continually writes even though its current state directly affects the destiny of two individuals. Its inaction shows an acceptance of fate due to its recognition of its place in life. Patrick eventually accepts that "His own life was no longer a single story but part of a mural, which was a falling together of accomplices" (Ondaatje 145).