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Tabula Asiae
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, Gillian, and their families visit a church in Colombo built in 1650, where they find the gravestones of many early Ondaatjes. Seeing his own surname etched in ancient stone makes Ondaatje feel “the excitement of smallness.” They find pages of legers recording the many different Ondaatjes. They look for Jurgen, an ancestor who was once a chaplain, and find that his son Simon is buried there as well. Simon was one of four sons, each an expert in their own field and each so strong-willed that they could not bear to be together. Ondaatje returns home for the night and transcribes notes about his ancestors from a leger to a notebook. When he washes his hands, he sees the “eerie” gray of “old paper dust” swirling down the drain.
Ondaatje’s felt “excitement of smallness” suggests that he feels a reverence for the past, seeing himself as one member in the long legacy of the Ondaatje family. Both his excitement to discover long-dead relatives and his care in recording their stories suggests that he values such information about his ancestry, as it speaks to his parents’ families as well—such as the prevalence of strong-willed individuals throughout generations. The gray paper dust running down the drain represents the passage of time, as Ondaatje returns his mind and self to the present.
Themes
