Alcoholism Theme Analysis

Alcohol plays a constant and dominating role in Ondaatje’s memoir. Although the author and his friends all drink—in the opening passage of the story, Ondaatje is drunk at a party—the effects of alcohol are primarily explored through the author’s father, Mervyn. Mervyn is a lifelong alcoholic suffering from “dipsomania,” the sudden overwhelming craving for vast amounts of alcohol punctuated by weeks of sobriety. Although Mervyn is gentle by nature, his drunkenness unleashes all manner of destruction in his own life and the lives of his family members, causing immense pain that is still felt decades later. The sad account of Mervyn’s life explores the destructive havoc that alcoholism can wreak on one’s self and one’s family.

Mervyn’s alcoholism causes him to engage in dangerous and self-destructive behaviors, demonstrating the risk that alcohol abuse poses to one’s own safety. Throughout his life, Mervyn’s addiction inspires dangerous and potentially fatal actions. For several years, he habitually gets drunk on the train and acts erratically, pulling pistols on soldiers and even diving headfirst off of the train while it is moving at high speeds—which he somehow survives. Such heedless actions while drunk demonstrate how alcoholism can make a person heedless of physical danger. On top of his reckless behavior, Mervyn tries to actively kill himself on a drunken whim, again suggesting that alcoholism eliminates a person’s instinct for self-preservation. At one point during Marvin’s years of getting drunk on the train, he strips naked and marches into a train tunnel, hoping for an oncoming train to strike him dead. He waits there for several hours until his young wife, Doris, marches in after him and talks him out of the idea. After several decades of drunken near-misses, Mervyn’s alcoholism finally kills him via cerebral hemorrhage. Although Mervyn’s survival for so long seems nearly miraculous, his death demonstrates that alcoholism is an ultimately fatal condition, regardless of how much good fortune one possesses.

Although Mervyn is the one getting drunk, the pain that his alcoholism inflicts on his family suggests that such an addiction hurts not only the addict, but also the family members and friends who love him or her. Mervyn’s drunken antics often endanger his family. For example, on a pleasant (though intoxicated) afternoon drive, Mervyn decides to race their car at high speed along a cliff with his family inside. He passes out at the wheel, terrifying Doris and the children as the car teeters precariously on the cliff’s edge while Mervyn sleeps in the front seat, unaware of the danger he’s put his family in. In addition to physical danger, Mervyn’s drunkenness inflicts emotional pain on his family as well. Although his friends remember him as charming and most of his children remember him as a “gentle” father while sober, he is monstrous while drunk. In a fit of dipsomania, Mervyn aims a rifle at his second wife Maureen and threatens to kill her because he believes she hid his stash of alcohol. One of his children anonymously describes their childhood as “a nightmare.” Mervyn’s conduct toward his own family suggests that alcoholism can turn even a kind-hearted person into someone hurtful and hateful who emotionally scars their loved ones. For Ondaatje, the greatest pain that Mervyn’s alcoholism inflicts is the fact that Ondaatje never has the chance to truly know his father. Although Mervyn is alive for the early years of Ondaatje’s life, Ondaatje’s mother, Doris, takes the children and leaves Mervyn before Ondaatje is old enough to know him. By the time that Ondaatje is an adult and wishes to know who his father was, Mervyn’s drinking has already killed him. Ondaatje writes, “I never knew what my father felt […] My loss was that I never spoke to him as an adult.” The author’s loss implies that the absence of his father is a wound that will not heal, suggesting that the greatest damage one’s alcoholism inflicts upon their families is that it essentially removes the addict from family life, denying them the opportunity to be a proper father, mother, sibling, or partner.

Although the reader may look down on Mervyn for his addiction, the narrative reveals that alcoholism is endemic to Mervyn's family and community and is exacerbated by personal pain. This suggests that for alcoholics such as Mervyn, addiction isn’t a personal failing—their environment, family history, and psychological struggles may predispose them toward such a condition. Ondaatje’s grandmother Lalla is herself a heavy drinker who kills herself by drunkenly stepping into a flash flood, suggesting that alcoholism runs in Mervyn and Ondaatje’s family. Similarly, alcohol plays a major role in Ceylon’s social culture. Mervyn’s close friend Francis is the “first to drink himself into the grave” by drowning himself in 12 inches of water. The prevalence of alcoholism in Mervyn’s family history and social circle suggests that his environment predisposes him toward alcoholism. Late in the story, the narrative reveals that Mervyn suffers from crippling fear and depression, and implies that this mental illness contributes to his heavy drinking. As far as Ondaatje can understand, drinking helps Mervyn to “keep [his pain] within so the fear would not hurt others.” Thinking of his father’s ruinous alcoholism, Ondaatje quotes Goethe: “Oh, who will heal the sufferings / Of the man whose balm turned poison?” suggesting that Mervyn’s addiction is in part an attempt to soothe his own psychological pain. The image that the author ultimately creates of his father is more sympathetic than critical. Though Mervyn’s behavior is often selfish and destructive, Ondaatje’s narrative recognizes that as ruinous as his father’s alcoholism is, it is a product of both Mervyn’s environment and his own inner torment. Regarding both Mervyn and anyone suffering alcoholism and dipsomania, this suggests that alcoholism is often a symptom of a toxic environment and deep emotional pain. Mervyn’s addiction to alcohol costs him his family, his life, and steals Michael Ondaatje’s chance of knowing his father, demonstrating that such a condition is extremely destructive not only to the addict, but to the people around them as well.