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
Ondaatje relays a dialogue among himself, Gillian, and several others. The statements are recorded without attributing who said what, and the conversation overlaps, contradicts, and repeats. They are all talking together about two men who loved Lalla, though in one instance of the story she is nine years old and in another she is 65, and the conversation jumps through the elapsed time between those periods as well. The listeners (presumably Ondaatje and Gillian) are confused and struggle to track the different threads of story. In the story, Lalla sees a man drown, but tells the man’s wife that he is just out having tea.
Ondaatje’s included dialogues demonstrate how history is preserved through memory, even though those memories are unreliable and often contradict themselves. Since the memoir is based upon such memories, Ondaatje points out that his own memoir is an unreliable record of the past—which is another mark of postmodern literature. Despite being unreliable, the many memories provide different perspectives on the same story, which creates a richer understanding of the past, even if some details may not be accurate.
Themes
