Introduction

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he finally able to announce to Clara “I am her father” (SL 218) which formalizes
the adoption of both Patrick and Hana. It is also at this point that he takes up the
lion’s skin and becomes a story teller who on their journey to Marmora tells her
the story that is contained in the novel as the frame indicates: “This is a story that a
young girl gathers in a car during the early hours of the morning” (SL 1; emphasis in original).
It is a story that locates Patrick in the immigrant community and as well introduces
Hana to her heritage (Criglington 132; Gorjup 94; Overbye 12). It also
altogether emphasizes the transnational lives of father and daughter by highlighting
their various affiliations and belongings and the fusion of different nationalities
in their family.
In addition to this, Stolar points out that telling Hana the story of her community
also turns Patrick into a “spokesperson” for the immigrants (128). She further
states, “The political force of the revolutionary immigrant is thus transferred to
the English voice that has been naturalized an immigrant voice by virtue of his
choice of urban residence and employment” (128). She fails to see that Patrick is
only able to use his “English voice” because he has finally learned to use language
effectively. Yet, the story of his learning the language doubles back to the immigrants
because Patrick begins to learn to use language through Alice when she
introduces him into the community. Alice’s connection to the immigrant community,
however, in turn started by the bond formed between her and Temelcoff on
the night she fell from the bridge when she became his “twin” (SL 49). Patrick
would not be able to be the person he is at the end of the novel had it not been
for the influence of the immigrant community in his life. Patrick’s becoming a
representative of the immigrant community thus becomes another instance in
which “the whole idea of socio-cultural centrality is undermined” in the novel
(Vauthier 72) since the Canadian protagonist of the novel is only able to act when
he is no longer purely Canadian. There is hence no longer just one dominant homogeneous
national culture, which dictates the behaviour of minorities and forces
them to assimilate to its order but the immigrant minorities can be seen to change
their host country from within and to be much better suited to living in such heterogeneous
nations (see also Werth 127). Accordingly, the national space of In the
Skin of a Lion’s Canada becomes a transnational space in which the formation of
transnational identities is possible.
5.3. The English Patient: Transnational Dreams
The English Patient just as In the Skin of a Lion makes abundant use of symbolic
spaces to depict its characters’ identities while also applying the fusion of boundaries
characteristic of Anil’s Ghost and Running in the Family. As Ondaatje’s most
famous and therefore most thoroughly researched novel, there are a plethora of
different opinions concerning its stance towards the interplay between nations and