The language used in Running in the Family is descriptive and poetic. The variety forms of figurative languages (especially metaphors and similes), vivid imagery, and unusual sentence structure Ondaatje utilized elaborate the sentences making the novel Running in the Family sounds more of a poem than a novel. For instance, the description of Hetti Corea's voice is written as a poem using simile and imagery: "Your voice sounds like a scorpion being pushed/ through a glass tube/ like someone has just trod on a peacock/like wind howling in a coconut..."…
