Skin Of Lion

"Any critical reading of a text will be strengthened by a knowledge of how a text is valued by readers in differing contexts."

Discuss this statement and show how your critical understanding of the text has been strengthened by at least two different readings.

Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion is a text that is given new meaning when viewed from differing perspectives. Readers approach the text with their own unique past and experience, which influences their perception and interpretation of the novel. Two such interpretations are the Post-Modern and Post-Colonial readings of In the Skin of a Lion. These two readings give the text more dimension, and with the awareness that this novel can be interpreted in numerous ways, a reader's understanding is strengthened and deepened.

Post-Modernism, the absence of any certainty, discredits the values of modernism, opposing the fixed principles of meaning and value. It is built on countless theories about society, the media and knowledge of the world, but it is also aware that there is no ultimate way of making sense of humanity. Ondaatje embraces aspects of post-modernism, by creating a novel that breaks away from the traditional narrative, thereby giving readers a greater perspective on the novel. One learns that any story is simply a storyteller's construction, and is never unbiased.

In the Skin of a Lion is self reflexive- it disrupts the reading process to explore its own textual nature. Ondaatje breaks the illusion of reality and engages the reader in the process of making the meaning of the text, rather than simply allowing them to receive it. The responder is made a producer rather than simply a consumer. "Only the best art can order the chaotic tumble of events. Only the best can realign chaos to suggest both the chaos and order it will become." Here, Ondaatje uses the device of intrusion, where an author makes a direct comment on his novel, telling readers to be patient and wait for the intentional disarray to fall into its natural order.

This "chaos" is also created through the use of frame- a story within a story. Towards the conclusion of the novel, the corners of the story are pulled together and readers are able to close the frame that encapsulated the inner story. The car ride is the result of Ondaatje's ability to transcend time and space- the story ends at the beginning of the novel and begins at the end, as if Patrick has told his story not only to the young girl Hana, but ultimately, to readers. This discontinuity and fragment is used in a deliberate attempt to destabilize the conventional narrative and proceed in a manner that imitates the sequence of memory, reminding readers that his novel, like one's memory, can be unreliable. He searches for a version of the truth through experimentation and human experience, disputing the way dominant cultures have imposed their views as the ultimate truth. There is no one grand narrative in history.

With the knowledge of the principles of Post-Modern literature, readers undertaking a critical reading of Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion can identify for themselves the sense of no boundaries, which leads to exciting experimentation and a playfulness of design. A close viewing of the text brings out hidden elements, giving new meaning to the text and allowing them to see another version of the truth, enhancing their overall understanding. One can now critically assess the novel as not only a story, but as a comment on the "European truth".

Post-Colonialism is a resistance to the colonial power and addresses and gives voice to the minorities who historically were silenced. Ondaatje retells the story of Toronto from the perspective of the migrants who literally built the foundations on which Toronto resides today. These once marginalised migrants are now given a chance to present history from their perspective and give readers 'the underside of history'.

Ondaatje tells the stories of the marginalised characters of Toronto. Caravaggio the thief, Nicholas Temelcoff the daredevil and Patrick the tunnel worker have all chosen to tell their own stories- to take control of their