From Sexual Love to Peace: Endless Care and Respect for Strangers in Michael Ondaatje’s Secular Love

Because many of the poems in Secular Love (1984) reveal the narrator’s pain, scholars have connected them to the life of Ondaatje, whose first marriage failed in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. However, the narrator’s reflections on ethical issues also deserve attention as he faces not only the sufferings of his wife and their children in the collapse of his family but also the pressure of his decision to cling to a female outsider. This essay shows that Ondaatje comes to propose a life-centered ethics that emphasizes the interconnectedness of lives as well as advocating mutual care and respect among them. According to this perspective, as life constantly changes, the desire to possess and control it should be replaced by an awareness of its fluidity and, consequently, more attention should be paid to the individual moments in life.