Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Running in the Family, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Memory, History, and Story
Alcoholism
Ancestry, Homeland, and Identity
Irresponsibility in the 1920s
Colonialism
Summary
Analysis
Mervyn’s chicken farm in Rock Hill is constantly invaded by cobras looking for eggs. Often they make their way into the house and Mervyn or Maureen find them sitting on radiators, countertops, or tables. Whenever they find one, they blow it to pieces with a shotgun. After Mervyn dies, a strange gray cobra appears in Rock Hill. Maureen tries many times to shoot it, but misses at point blank range every time. The gray cobra isn’t aggressive and doesn’t hunt, just wanders around the property or follows one of the daughters. The other snakes seem to fear it and keep away from the farm. Maureen and her daughters realize that the gray cobra is Mervyn, back from the dead to look after them.
Ondaatje admits that his memoir is fictionalized at various points, and this seems to be one of them. Here, Ondaatje uses magical realism to give the reader a sense of the way Maureen and her daughter feel Mervyn’s presence in their lives, even after his death. The cobra’s protective role suggests that the family’s memories of Mervyn are pleasant enough that they are some comfort even after he is gone—although he is flawed, his legacy to his second family is still ultimately positive.
Themes
In 1971, the year of the Insurgency and the year before Maureen sells Rock Hill, teenage insurgents comb through the countryside, demanding every family’s firearms so the fighters can use them to overthrow the government. They've stolen a registry from a government office and know which families owned which weapons. The insurgents are courteous toward Maureen, and while the leader takes the shotgun and an air rifle, the others start up a game of cricket with Susan and “play[] for most of the afternoon.”
The insurgents’ mixture of threatening actions (forcibly confiscating everyone’s firearms) conflicts with their good-natured, youthful behavior. This combination of pleasant and threatening behavior reflects Mervyn’s own conflicted character as a kind and gentle father with a monstrous alcohol addiction.
Themes
