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
In Toronto, Ondaatje’s brother has hung a series of “false maps” on his walls, drawn by European explorers and traders when they had only caught glimpses of Ceylon and didn’t yet know its topography or nature. The maps portray the island’s shape as an “amoeba,” a “squat rectangle,” and various other misinterpretations until after many iterations, the proper pendant-shape begins to form. The maps reflect “routes for invasion and trade” by various countries. Ceylon “seduced all of Europe” and the Portuguese, Dutch, and English each took their turn trying to rule over it. Ceylon simply “pretended to reflect each European power till newer ships arrived and spilled their nationalities.” One of Ondaatje’s Dutch ancestors arrived in 1600, which is why the family name bears a Dutch spelling.
The false maps symbolize the manner in which “history,” in the Western authoritative sense of the word, is often woefully inaccurate, limited by its single perspective. Just as many of the maps were drawn with only one perspective of Ceylon’s shoreline, much of “history” is told from the perspective of a single individual or group and does not account for other people’s experiences. This demonstrates the weakness of “history” as a method of preserving the past, suggesting that collective memory, with its many perspectives, is a better alternative.
Themes
