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In The Skin Of A Lion - Online Essay

In The Skin Of A Lion

In the novel, “,” by Michael Ondaatje, the main character, Patrick Lewis, searches for identity and light. Without these elements, he lacks love and cannot survive the world. A passage in chapter three describes him as a lonely man that is isolated from the world around him. “Clara and Ambrose and Alice and Temelcoff and Cato- this cluster made up a drama without him. And he himself was noting but a prism that refracted their lives. He searched out things, he collected things. He was an abashed man, an inheritance from his father. Born in Abashed, Ontario. What did the word mean? Something that suggested there was a terrible horizon in him beyond which he couldn’t leap. Something ...

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out things, he collected things," (Ondaatje, pg.157) indicates that he is always searching for something. The title, “,” can also be used to illustrate Patrick's perpetual search. In the preface, Ondaatje states, "(T)he joyful will stoop... I will wander through the wilderness ." Patrick is wandering through the wilderness, searching and hunting. He has no purpose in life; he just searches. The thing that he is looking for is light. This ambiguous concept of light Ondaatje presents throughout the novel is not ordinary light, but one that illuminates the void of darkness. Just like the moths that Patrick is intrigued by that only tend toward light at night, Patrick only seeks light when there is none around him. Patrick continues his eternal search for light because he has none of his own to emit.
The central theme behind many stories is the loss and regaining of identity. Patrick has no identity of his own, and his only way of gaining a temporary one is through light. "And ...

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In The Skin Of A Lion. (2006, August 19). Retrieved January 22, 2025, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/In-The-Skin-Of-A-Lion/51030

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PAPER DETAILS

Added: 8/19/2006 02:36:41 PM
Category: English
Type: Free Paper
Words: 1010
Pages: 4

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