Book-Running in the family by Michael Ondaatje- Explain why Lalla is a Romantic

Running in the Family

In Running in the Family , Michael Ondaatje masks the serious side of the family history with comedy . This approach is very useful because it lets all the readers take all the events which happened in the life of the family with a bit of humor and may be get a better idea of the events in some ways . The humor involved in the stories about Ondaatje 's crazy grandmother Lalla suggests that these are light tales for entertainment prose

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Michael 's grandmother , Lalla was a horticultural kleptomaniac who stole flowers in front of their owners , drank eau de cologne and had a false breast which she used to leave lying around , and which the dog was once found chewing on the lawn . As we can understand , the author doesn 't represent Lalla as a mean character and doesn 't focus on her bad features but shows her rather as a humorous and romantic character and makes the readers like her despite of her not very virtuous character . Lalla is an alcoholic like Michael 's grandfather but this is not mentioned often in the book Ondaatje calls Lalla an "overbearing charmed flower (125 , and one can readily see what he means from his brilliant , if somewhat fictionalized characterization . Lalla appears like a romantic character who reminds of a flower to Michael and who , despite of everything , he loves very much because she is an important part of his family . Lalla is a humorous character and in order not to ruin that impression , the author decides that some sadness should be shown through the minor characters of the novel

The author 's humor is revealed when he describes a story about Lalla on a bus ride , and a man fondles Lalla 's fake breast . `Lalla looked at the man next to her . and saw that his hand had come over her left shoulder and was squeezing her breast . She had not felt a thing . Her left breast had been removed five years earlier and he was fondling the sponge beneath her gown . As we can tell , Ondaatje describes lots of humorous scenes with Lalla and they entertain the readers

After Lalla loses her husband and , ` . as her children grew older they discovered that Lalla had very little money . She would take groups out for meals and be refused service as she hadn 't paid the previous bills (Ondaatje , 117 . However , the fact that Lalla didn 't have money didn 't make her a mean and unkind person and she still wanted to do something nice for her family . She was always trying to please people who were around her and bring joy to them . It was a very good feature of her character

There were lots of situations mentioned in the novel which showed the character of Lalla . One of the episodes which shows her good temper was an episode with a goat . During one of her grand...