Running in the Family: Photograph Summary & Analysis

Ondaatje’s aunt shows him the photograph he’s longed to see: the only photograph he’s seen of his parents together. They are on their honeymoon in 1932. Both are fashionably dressed and attractive, but making “hideous faces” as if they are mad. They’d made the photograph into a postcard and mailed it to various friends, captioned, “What we think of married life.” Ondaatje thinks they were “absolutely perfect for each other.”