Running in the Family part du

The new assigned section of Running in the family is starting to make a bit more sense than the opening of the book. I find myself more interested in reading, because Ondaatje has started to fill the reader in on more family background, instead of just dropping the reader into the middle of the action and forcing them to figure out what lead up to the event. This book is starting to remind me a lot of The Last Lecture, because it doesn't seem to have a solid flow from one essay to the next, instead it just seems to be a whole bunch of scattered essays put into one book.

On page 64, we finally get a better understanding of where Ondaatje's family came from. I enjoyed reading about how Ondaatje got his family name from the Dutch. In my mind, this essay is where Ondaatje truly opened us up to his family and made us understand where he came from, along with the hardships of the family. Also we find out that he has a brother whom lives in Toronto.

While reading page 70, I instantly thought of our last class and that exercise where we had to describe three people as vividly as possible with only a few words. Ondaatje goes all out capturing me in his detail about the gecko with the dragonfly. "And the Gecko on the wall waving his tail stiffly his jaws full of dragonfly whose wings symmetrically disappeared into his mouth."(70).

Along with filling us in on his family, Ondaatje also finds it important to fill us in on the type of culture that Ceylon has to offer. On page 74 he reflects on a story about a Kabaragoyas and Thalagoyas, two very common creatures that live in Ceylon, resemble a crocodile and are seen as having mythical importance.