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- Mervyn Ondaatje Mervyn is Michael's father and an alcoholic. Through the many family stories recounting his irresponsibility and outrageous behavior, Mervyn becomes a tragicomic figure; by the end of the book, he is revealed to be a man who has lived much of his life in emotional pain, suffering under a heavy weight of anxiety and depression.
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Mervyn is the father of Michael Ondaatje, Gillian, and Ondaatje’s other siblings, and is Doris ’s husband for 14 years. Mervyn is born to a wealthy, respectable upper-class family in Ceylon.
Mervyn Ondaatje. Mervyn is the father of Michael Ondaatje, Gillian, and Ondaatje’s other siblings, and is Doris ’s husband for 14 years. Mervyn is born to a wealthy, respectable upper-class family in Ceylon. However, despite… read analysis of Mervyn Ondaatje.
First edition. (publ. McClelland & Stewart) Running in the Family is a fictionalized memoir, written in post-modern style involving aspects of magic realism, by Michael Ondaatje. It deals with his return to his native island of Sri Lanka, also called Ceylon, in the late 1970s.
Sep 5, 2023 · Michael Ondaatje is the author and narrator of Running in the Family. In this fictionalized memoir, he examines the stories of his family and his home country of Sri Lanka, formerly known...
While they are traveling around Ceylon together, Ondaatje describes Mervyn’s middle years, when Ondaatje’s siblings were very young and Ondaatje himself not yet born. Mervyn forms the habit of taking long trips and getting wildly drunk, which prompts increasingly erratic and delusional behavior.
Ondaatje was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 1943, to Major Mervyn Ondaatje and Doris Gratiaen of Tamil and Burgher descent (Dutch and Sinhalese). [4] [5] In 1954, he re-joined his mother in England. [4] where he attended Dulwich College.
He then describes his father’s life as an army officer, shortly before Ondaatje was born, when Mervyn’s drinking binges led to increasingly extreme behavior, including hijacking several trains...
