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
A poem states that if the speaker were a cinnamon peeler, after he made love to his subject she would reek of cinnamon and all would know what they’ve done together. Because of this, the man cannot touch the woman until they are married since her mother and brothers would know. After the woman becomes the cinnamon peeler’s wife, the unshakable smell becomes a bold and public mark of their love: “I am the cinnamon / peeler’s wife. Smell me.”
By tying the romance to the scent of cinnamon, Ondaatje merges his sensory descriptions of Ceylon with the whimsy of his parents’ early adult lives, again providing the reader with a sense of Ceylon rather than an objective description of it. Such emphasis on the sensory details of his environment suggests that they, too, form a part of the identity he is trying to rediscover.
Themes
