Michael Ondaatje’s reflexive counter-history In the Skin of a Lion holds textual

integrity through its exploration of the human condition within complex societal
and historical systems, allowing for subjective responses to its depiction of
fundamental human concerns. Ondaatje’s 1987 novel In the Skin of a Lion
presents a ‘human’ order within its exploration of a range of perspectives with
the protagonist Patrick Lewis’ tying together of the novel’s various narrative
threads. Exploring the individual embedded in the colossal structure of civic
modernity, the novel explores the lives of migrant workers in early 20th century
Canada, its use of a fragmentary, fluid structure with subtle poetic prose
allowing for a complex depiction of the human condition. Opening up the
possibility of a history based on the humanity within the historical, Ondaatje
explores a cubist multiplicity of perspectives to illuminate those voices lost in
history.

Exposing contrasting perspectives on civic modernity in the industrialised

world, the personal and the monumental, Ondaatje seeks to elucidate the
varying experiences of humanity, providing a lucid representation of the
experiences of individuals regardless of social class. Sharing a post-colonial
agenda with literary theorist Edward Said in illuminating history’s ‘transient
presences,’ Ondaatje’s novel explores the interconnected experiences of
individuals silenced in official histories. In the chapter ‘The Bridge’ Ondaatje
employs juxtaposing styles of the clipped objective tone that dominates Western
capitalist histories (‘4000 photographs were taken form varying angles’) with
his allusive poetical prose allowing for a subjective multiplicity of
interpretation, contrasting the monumental against the personal. Ondaatje
explores the utilitarian conception of labourers in history through his metaphor
of men ‘an extension of drill, hammer, flame’ a conception he refutes as he
attempts to highlight the personal human experiences in history. Demonstrating
how migrants are diminished to utilitarian value, socially invisible, Ondaatje
evokes their social, human dimensions in imagery of transience and
vulnerability, describing them as ‘moth-like,’ ‘a shadow passing across the
bridge.’ The protagonist Patrick Lewis takes the role of ‘immigrant to the city’
and his experience of the loss of identity in the ‘reverberations of trade’ shows
how the human is often lost in the monumental – the ‘belly of the whale’, the
capitalist organism that swallows individual autonomy and places no value on
representations of individuals. Ondaatje’s work seeks to open up depictions and
interpretations of the human condition, often lost in the monumentalist histories
of the colonial world.

Ondaatje’s novel provides an insight into the interconnectedness of individuals,

outlining their subjective experience and shared identity throughout the novel.
Patrick Lewis at first epitomises the alienated individual, even as a child
withdrawing away from contact with others ‘carrying his own lamp’. Ondaatje
however asserts how awareness of the human condition and one’s own identity
is inextricably linked with one’s relations with others. Patrick’s viewing of a
‘strange community’ of migrant ice-skaters as a child illustrates how
interconnectedness illuminates personal and shared identity through the
metaphor of the ‘sparks falling on the ice and thin dark clothes’ as the skaters
twirl by one another, elucidating how shared experience allows understanding
of one’s own condition. Patrick’s relations with Clara and Alice demonstrate
this fundamental human truth, the metaphor of their drawing of him, ‘sketching
out a blueprint in a foreign country’ leading Patrick to a greater understanding
of himself, his life ‘not just one story but part of a mural’. Ondaatje’s novel
illustrates this ‘mural’ of human connections to explore the individual within
the greater societal realm, provoking insight into the shared nature of human
identities.

The novel further illuminates subjective experiences through its metatextual

foregrounding of the role of art in portraying a ‘human history, free from the
simplifications of ideologies. Often wrongly interpreted as a Marxist text due to
Ondaatje’s depiction of the socially stratified underclass In the Skin instead
asserts that the simplifications of ideology, whether monumental or Marxist
debilitate one’s understanding of the human condition. The statement ‘ideology
hates the private’ asserts how ideology doesn’t allow for subjective insights,
simplifying instead of expressing the complexities of the human conditions with
devastating results for the individuals, apicing in Alice’s tragic death. The
archetypal grand battle between good and evil, embodied in Patrick’s
confrontation of Commissioner Harris, is undermined as neither perspective is
victorious – Harris asserts that ideology ‘relies on an enemy’ and affirms
Patrick’s place in the ‘fabric’ of the historical age. Ondaatje’s work’s textual
integrity through his complex portrayal of human interactions is metatextually
represented in Temelcoff’s ‘moment of cubism,’ viewing the interlaced
architecture of the bridge and Patrick’s realisation of his role as a ‘prism
refracting the lives of others’. Ondaatje’s work creates a ‘fragile’ and a ‘human’
structure to history through his depiction of the interconnected experiences of
workers, opening possibilities for more complex, subtle and subjective
explorations of the human condition in art and literature.

Ondaatje’s novel In the Skin of a Lion explores the human conditions through
its cubist multiplicity of subjective perspectives, allowing for the possibility of a
history as an intricate ‘night web’ of interconnected stories, focusing on the
individual experiences imbedded in a larger historical structure.