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 1947, Mervyn drives to Colombo and sits all afternoon on the terrace of the hotel where Doris works. He hopes she’ll see him and come speak to him. He waits and thinks about old friends, gone now, and drinks. When Doris does not come down all afternoon, Mervyn gets in his car and drives away, stopping at a bar to chat with journalists until they go home to their wives. He stops at a restaurant briefly and then drives into the night. He briefly considers sleeping in the post office, which is always unlocked, but drives on.
Ondaatje relays this anecdote with more detail than he could possibly know, such as what Mervyn is thinking about as he drives or drinks, making this an admittedly fictionalized memoir. However, by stepping into a direct, intimate space, Ondaatje makes his father’s pain seem as real to the reader as it feels to him, making it both more memorable and relatable. This method again demonstrates how the past may be preserved through storytelling, even when the story is embellished beyond strict fact.
Themes
Mervyn arrives at Rock Hill and just sits in the car, “aware that the car [i]s empty but for his body, his corpse.” He rises, leaving the car door open, and staggers into the empty house with a case of alcohol under his arm. He sits on his bed sheet, bottle in his mouth, and looks like “a lost ship on a white sea.” Mervyn searches for his book until he finds it next to the toilet. Ants are busy taking it apart, carrying an entire page across the floor. Mervyn decides not to disturb them, only watch, even though the page they’ve taken is not one that he’s read yet. He sits on the floor, leaning against the wall, and drinks.
Mervyn’s reflection that the car is empty except for “his corpse” suggests that he does not even regard himself as a living thing. Along with the loss of his family and his wealth, this tragically suggests that Mervyn’s alcoholism ultimately costs him his own sense of self. This is reiterated by the way Mervyn watches the ants slowly tear his book apart, even though he is not finished with it. He passively watches his own ruin.
Themes
