SOURCE: Bök, Christian. “Destructive Creation: The Politicization of Violence in the Works of Michael Ondaatje.” Canadian Literature, no. 132 (spring 1992): 109-24.

In the following essay, Bök discusses the sociopolitical implications of the glamorized violence that characterizes the male protagonists of The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, Coming through Slaughter, Running in the Family, and In the Skin of a Lion.

Michael Ondaatje has repeatedly demonstrated a writerly interest in violent, male protagonists who exhibit aesthetic sensitivity. William Bonney in The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970), Buddy Bolden in Coming through Slaughter (1976), Mervyn Ondaatje in Running in the Family (1982), and Patrick Lewis in In the Skin of a Lion (1987), all play the role of violator, and often they resort to physical violence as an expressive outlet that is paradoxically both creative and destructive at the same time. Ondaatje's romanticization of such protagonists, however, suggests a potentially...