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
As children, the last estate that Ondaatje and his siblings live on is a well-known garden called Kuttapitiya. Lalla often visits to steal flowers. In his irritation, Mervyn starts growing cactuses and succulents instead, dissuading Lalla’s thievery and her visits. Mervyn’s passion for cactus grows and he founds The Ceylon Cactus and Succulent Society. Ondaatje calls Kuttapitiya “the most beautiful place in the world.” When he visits with his and Gillian’s families, his daughter tells him, “If we lived here it would be perfect.”
Mervyn and Lalla’s rivalry is ironic, since they are alike in many ways, though it suggests that each cannot handle their own eccentricity mirrored in another person. Mervyn’s passion for cactus and succulents grows from his simple desire to irritate Lalla, suggesting that much of his personality is reactionary, formed in response to the people and things around him.
Themes
