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Articles

Volume 08, Number 1 (1983)

"I Send You a Picture": Ondaatje's Portrait of Billy the Kid

  • Judith Owens
Submitted
May 22, 2008
Published
1983-01-01

Abstract

In Ondaatje's The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, a complete picture emerges of a Billy who feels vulnerable, threatened by death, by the unleashed energy of sexuality, by the disorder of the natural world. Instinctively, he seeks to restrain and contain the forces ranged against him: he compiles lists, tries to deny the passage of time, distances himself from the knowledge of mortality. Fearing there is no God, no ordered universe, yet desperately wanting structure, Billy feels the need to create order where none exists. And though he begins to take advantage of his role as "author," he inevitably submits to the fact of his ultimate powerlessness.