Michael Ondaatje's "In the Skin of a Lion "

Abstract

This discussion analyses Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of The Lion, especially focusing on its two male protagonists, Patrick Lewis and Nicholas Temelchoff, and their inner journeys towards acquisition of subjectivity. To achieve this, the argument will be centred on Patrick and Nicholas, in order to illustrate how their incremental movement from private to communal (and the other way round) symbolic registers facilitates their quest to subjectify themselves within society. In short, it may be claimed that this dissertation poses three main questions which will ultimately try to be answered: In what way the journeys of Patrick and Nicholas are similar and in what they differ? What was it to be an immigrant? Will the two characters finally free themselves at all of that nationalistic western concept that silences their voices and gain a fuller understanding of the important roles that collective discourse and narrative play in the development of their subjectivity?