Reading The Cat’s Table was an eye opener for me as I watched Michael Ondaatje’s young characters make bad decisions and learn from their mistakes. The young narrator named Michael, narrates his 21-day journey at the age eleven as he travels across the world to live with his mother, someone he has really no relationship with. He encounters people on the ship who become his friends that later on help shape him as a person. Ondaatje continuously demonstrates Michael’s innocence which leads to some of his most absurd actions and consequences. In so doing, Ondaatje encourages us to consider how innocence allows us to make decisions that are both risky yet important. It is only through making mistakes and being willing to look back at those mistakes…show more content… “He went up the gangplank, watching only the path of his feet—nothing ahead of him existed—and continued till he faced the dark harbour and sea” (Ondaatje, 4). Not like the normal child that would be elated to be going “away”, Michael isolates himself as he joins the others who are entering the ship for the first time. Earlier on, Michael kept himself overly closed off when meeting the other children, demonstrating his fear for being on the ship without an adult’s supervision. “In spite of resulting curfew, Ramadan, Cassius, and I slipped from our cabins that night, went along the precarious half-lit stairways, and waited for the prisoner to emerge” (Ondaatje, 19). Michael’s isolation interferes with his bonding experiences with the children he is around on the boat. He and the boys have fun adventures but do not get to know each other more than their hangouts. They are busy breaking the rules of the ship instead of spending the time to understand why they are all on the voyage without an adult, for instance. Other than Emily, Michael has not opened up to anyone else on the…show more content… Ondaatje shows another example of Michael allowing his innocence to get him into situations with people. “Looking back, I think he may have convinced me that the breaking and entering that followed was a private game between him and some friends” (Ondaatje, 83). Instead of Michael asking the Baron questions, he listened to the Baron’s needs and snuck into the people’s room. After the Baron greased him with oil, Michael noticed a side of him that he's never seen before. Although he did not know that he was taking a massive risk entering other people’s rooms, he felt the bravery after viewing himself in the mirror with the oil all over his body. As Ondaatje describes Michael’s feeling when looking back on the incident, he writes on Michael’s feelings of being convinced by the Baron. Knowing this is not Michael’s first time following someone’s idea of “having fun”, it shows that he grows after every one of those experiences. I believe this because he immediately realizes that something seems wrong or dangerous. Martin Rubin from Wall Street Journal also helps demonstrate Michael’s growth as Ondaatje discusses how Michael felt about himself in the beginning of the novel: “Early in the novel, the narrator, writing from the perspective of the present day, says that he is trying "to imagine who the boy on the ship was." The novel then moves seamlessly into a
