Michael Ondaatje's Recreation of Identity in "Running in the Family"

Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2009 in the subject English - Literature, Works, printed single-sided, grade: 1.5, University of Bern (Institut für Englische Sprachen und Literaturen), course: Problems of Intermdiality in Canadian Literature, language: English, abstract: In my paper I shall explore the various functions and connotations of the coast/the beach in Charles Simmons' Salt Water and Iris Murdoch's The Sea, the Sea and substantiate my thesis by scrutinising these works of fiction- the paper's analysis is predominately based on text imminent examinations and their extrapolations- and assess their importance on grounds of the represented relationship between space and identity negotiations in re to the two opposing forces of sexual awakening on the one, and death and detrimental deterioration on the other hand. As the dramatic first sentence in Charles Simmons' Salt Water illustrates, "In the summer of 1969, I fell in love and my father drowned" (13), these two entities are intimately intertwined. Additionally, the beach figures as the uncertain boundary between nature and culture, between the past and the present as well as between the imaginary and the real. Related to this, the beach is a site of wishful thinking, reverie, nostalgia, (unreliable) and mediated memory as well as of the emergence of gripping, obsessive thoughts and their somewhat fabulous constructions. Whenever an act of rejuvenation or a nascent notion of the protagonists' own sense of sexuality is in progress, this development is harshly interrupted by the death of a central figure. I shall elaborate on the claim that here, death acts as an impediment on sexual awakening with unfavourable effects.