Getting To Know Buddy Bolden

As Ondaatje says: "They lay there without words. Moving all over her chest and arms and armpits and stomach as if placing mines on her with his mouth and then leaned up and looked at her body glistening with his own spit", (111) we are able to make two assumptions about Buddy's relationship with Nora. Either they don't have the trust to have a conversation or they have a lot of it, therefore being able to have a good time without saying any word at all. Based on Ondaatje's intimate description of the moment: "Together closing up her skirt, slipping the buttons back into their holes so she was dressed again" (111), we deduce the two charachters feel comfortable with each other since

Ondaatje depicts a sexual moment where Buddy kisses Nora's body. The word "together",(111) has a lot of meaning since it shows they are a team. Somehow they are two in one. They act together, letting us infer that both of them wanted to do what they did. Nevertheless, we deduce friendship is involved in this situation aswell, since Ondaatje says: "Not going further because it was friendship that had to be guarded, they both wanted." (111) . It seems like this is something meaningful to both of them, so if they want to keep it that way, they must not do anything more, even though they are tempted. We know they feel temptation due to Ondaatje's use of "because" (111). This lets us see that there is a reason that explains why they won't go further, instead of their choice only. Following, we observe the presence of a metaphor which compares a diamond and earth. Ondaatje states a literal relationship between the two objects as he says: "The diamond had to love the earth it passed along the way, every speck and angle of the other's history, for the diamond had been earth too."(111) Despite this comparison is unknown to the theme of the novel, we are able to make a connection between it and Nora and Buddy. They had once been only one, knowing absolutely everything about each other, so now they have to love each other at least in some way.