Reader's Own Perspective example essay topic

Becoming the Third Dimension Images splatter against the viewer's face like a moth on the windshield when gazing at the pigmented speckles dappled along the textured canvas hanging on the wall in the local gallery. Examining the seemingly incomplete picture before them, the viewer may inquire as to the perception of the painted figure from various angles as opposed to the solitary linear image presented by the artist. Mona Lisa's intriguing smile may birth more questions if the art critic could view it from a profile, or the back of her head, or even from the underside of the canvas as a whole. Although a picture may say a thousand words, a panoramic view of the same subject would utter a hundred thousand more. Realizing the human desire to know and understand what they witness in full, artists such as Pablo Picasso began a style known as cubism between 1907 and 1914. Cubism acknowledges the idea that objects (and perhaps ideas?) are three-dimensional and should therefore be expressed as that.

The cubist theory drives itself into the minds of artists of numerous mediums including literature. But in bringing a prismatic feel to a two-dimensional topic, the audience is bombarded with more questions than answers given. This reader then is likely to draw a blank at the images forming in his mind as he pieces the angles together. By producing these multiple angles, whether it be in art or literature, the creator fails to emphasize any particular perspective and often leaves one of them open without explanation, that of the reader. Through its development in the literary cubism method, In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje defies the reader's initial perception of a single story by trivializing the narrow linear view of the lead character and in turn completing the multidimensional view of the story by invoking the reader's own perspective. In composing this multidimensional story line, Ondaatje eradicates the reader's inclination to base the story off of the linear perspective of one character by delineating the main character's nugatory existence.

Obliterating the linear perspective concept, the author allows the cubist conditions of portraying a three-dimensional story contrived from the perspectives of a multitude of characters to unfold. This destruction begins when he states, in reference to Patrick Lewis' homeland, that 'He was born into a region which did not appear on a map until 1910, though his family had worked there for twenty years and the land had been homesteaded since 1816' (Ondaatje 10). The Canadian government's failure to recognize the existence of his birthplace manifests into the minute role that Patrick actually plays in the natural order of the world. Born in an unknown region within a comparatively insignificant country, Patrick personalizes this blatant disregard for his homeland as a worldly negligence of his own being. This fact places the leading character as merely a common person of little importance.

After leaving this geographically unimportant region and arriving in Toronto, Patrick 'spoke out his name and it struggled up in a hollow echo and was lost in the high air of Union Station. No one turned' (Ondaatje 54). The people's ignorance of his call define once again that the reader should refrain from placing specific faith into Patrick's angle of the story's events. His voice simply harmonizes with the narratives of each character and therefore should not receive a greater weight. Along with these other characters, Patrick's tale is necessary to compose the entire train of events that will mold into a complete story within the cubist perspective. Working alongside men on the Prince Edward Viaduct for example, Nicholas Temelcoff 'never realizes how often he is watched by others' (Ondaatje 42).

Although Nicholas accepts the idea that his life is relatively unimportant in the overall scheme of things, his coworkers monitor his daily actions thereby glorifying his existence through its impact on others. The contribution of individual stories in the actualization of the true events is not limited to the actions of major characters. Getting up from a recent sexual encounter with Clara, Patrick Lewis freezes at the window when he notices a moth and 'Hello friend, he breathed towards the pale-green speckled body hanging against the pane' (Ondaatje 66). The mere tale of the moth's existence diverted the actions of Patrick enough to be written into the final overall narrative. With the moth continuing to disrupt the flow of the novel, Patrick later visualizes that the blind gardener Elizabeth's 'green eye echoes somewhere within him. Aetas Luna - and its Canadian name, papillon lune.

Lunar moth. Moon moth' (Ondaatje 170). Although on the lamb and dependent on this woman's mercy, her green eye plunges him into another account of this meddling insect. Its presence seems irrelevant at first glance, but the moth represents one fragment of the story just as the human characters.

Each element of this book is simply that, an element. Although the account of one piece of the puzzle may have more detail than the next, they each are equally important. As the jigsaw puzzle locks into place, the characters begin to realize what the reader has been told since the disclosure of Patrick's birthplace, that their angle of the world is not the true story. Although an individual's interpretation of events fails to define the entire story, it does affect the story. The distinctive angles, as compared to the story in its entirety, are much like an axe chopping down a tree. 'At some moment, chopping into the hemlock, hearing only the axe and its pivoting echo, he must have imagined the trees and permafrost and maple syrup ovens erupting up in one heave, the snow shaken off every branch in the woods around him' (Ondaatje 15).

Albeit only one tree is being cut down, the entire forest reverberates with change. The first instance of a character's acceptance of their themselves representing simply part of the story and not the story itself is on the part of an animal. 'The face of the half-submerged cow, a giant eye lolling, seems unconcerned. Patrick expects it to start chewing in complete boredom' (Ondaatje 13). This beast emblematically portrays that life and death merely flavor the epic that the world continually writes even though its current state directly affects the destiny of two individuals.

Its inaction shows an acceptance of fate due to its recognition of its place in life. Patrick eventually accepts that 'His own life was no longer a single story but part of a mural, which was a falling together of accomplices' (Ondaatje 145). Although it may be a stretch to suggest that this mural being created is meant to be a cubist one, in light of the facts of cubist theories it does resemble this notion of multiple perspectives on a particular subject. Patrick realizes that his life has developed into a brush stroke on the canvas or reality.

His story, being a part of the whole, directly affects and is directly affected by the stories of others. Patrick's realization of his own place in the world brings him to direct these other tales in a similar direction. To Nicholas Temelcoff, 'Patrick's gift, that arrow into the past, shows him the wealth in himself, how he has been sewn into history' (Ondaatje 149). Nicholas, with Patrick's picture of him in the building of the Prince Edward Viaduct, visualizes his own importance in the history of Toronto. Previously imagining himself as a solitary moth, he now realizes that he is more like a member of a vast colony of insects. His role in the grand scheme plays a vital part in the drama of life.

Although his fragment of the mural is minuscule in the eyes of recorded history, natural history will be indebted to the bridge-workers and himself indefinitely. With this idea, each individual's parable when compared to everyone else's was 'a prism that refracted their lives' (Ondaatje 157). The book itself thereby brings forth the notion of the text and its telling of the characters's tories as a prism refracting the interpretation of the reader. Through leaving gaps in the story line and using elliptical context clues, the author forces the interpreter to figuratively 'write' the missing pieces of the novel.

Nicholas Temelcoff saves the life of a nun that was thrown off of the bridge by a gust of wind, yet her identity being Alice Gull stays hidden until much later in the story (Simmons). This latent information provokes the reader to question who the nun is hence compelling him to create his own story with what minimal information is bestowed. Nearly one hundred pages pass after Alice's death before the method in which she died is revealed (Simmons). This elliptical moment tends to drag the reader through a cycle of molding his own viewpoint into the circumstances surrounding her demise. Also, Patrick Lewis' ability to fall asleep randomly in extreme situations challenges the reliability of reality. It becomes virtually impossible to determine what events can receive the label of truth and which must be limited to a dreamlike fantasy of Patrick.

Being told that he once had a dream of a criminal swimming to a lighted ship, Patrick's race to the boat after he detonated explosives treads water on the borderline of fantasy and fact (Simmons). These images provide an inlet for the analysis of reader thereby causing him to add his own narrative to the story, this being one of the key elements of cubism. The last chapter, although tying the novel together as simply a reflection of life's events on behalf of main character, forces the reader to become the writer once again as Patrick's arm is broken without an explanation of how it was done (Simmons). Again with the cubist 'blank side' perspective, Ondaatje opens the book up and hands the pen to the reader allowing them to decipher what truly transpires within the lives of the characters. Hence, the reader develops his own story much like that of the other characters all of which combine to create In the Skin of a Lion. Through the perspectives of both the reader and the individuals depicted within this story, Michael Ondaatje twists the stereotype of the classic novel by giving an extensive view of it through the methods of cubism.

By throwing the reader into a loop where different narratives collide in order to form the overall story, he is able to give the reader more information about the story than in a linear narrative and at the same time tell him less. Leaving out key details, Ondaatje pulls the reader into the novel not only by entertaining him but also by making him a character himself. Although this novel was written fourteen years prior to this reading of it, it was not completed until the last page was read.

Bibliography

Ondaatje, Michael. In the Skin of a Lion. Vintage Books, New York; 1997.
Simmons, Rochelle. 'In the Skin of a Lion as a Cubist Novel. ' University of Toronto Quarterly Sum 1998: 699-715.