Of Father and Son: The Configuration of the Trauma of Return in Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family

This third chapter analyses Michael Ondaatje’s condition as ectopic insider by articulating his trauma of return as an urgent need to come to terms with his father, a key figure from the past that keeps haunting his present and thwarts his identity as writer. Published in 1982, one year before the outbreak of the Sri Lankan civil war, Ondaatje’s Running in the Family is literally a mourning memoir whereby, following LaCapra’s approach, the father’s absence is transformed into a loss. The absence/loss diatribe that modulates Ondaatje’s memoir restores the father back to the family history and, in turn, also unearths the colonial history of the island. Whereas a reclamation of the land informed Vassanji’s And Home Was Kariakoo, Ondaatje’s Running in the Family is constructed upon blood. Put differently, Ondaatje uses his ancestors as the means to express his belonging to the Sri Lankan land. Ondaatje writes his ectopic inside-ness from the position of the prodigal son and, as such, his claim to the land is conditioned by uncertainty and a certain degree of guilt.