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April 11, 1932
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
Ondaatje lists various headlines from the local papers. A tennis championship ends in Colombo; Fred’s Astaire’s sister marries; a Russian man assassinates the French President; American women try to steal Valentino’s corpse from his grave; Charlie Chaplin is in Ceylon, studying dance.
In several chapters, Ondaatje presents events or sensory details as a stream of consciousness without explanation or context. Rather than explain a situation, these passages provide the reader with an overall sense of the time or place. In this case, these headlines situate the upcoming action of the story in the 1920s.
Themes
