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The English Patient is an illuminating novel written by Michael Ondaatje, who tells the story of four damaged lives tangled together at the end of World War II. The story involves characters like: the melancholy, childlike nurse Hana; the emotionally and physically maimed thief, Caravaggio; the pensive and wary Indian bomb-disposal expert, Kip; and the burnt and broken English patient, a mysterious wounded soul without a name. The story revolves around several major themes such as: war and the paradigm shift that takes place as cultures and people recover from such; love and the depths one will go to to acquire it; and the illusive but essential search for self-identity. The themes stretch across all aspects of human nature, but it is the development of self that receives the most attention. Ondaatje brings you into a transformative exploration of identity through multiple layering of meaning in each description. The author does this by drawing you far into the fantasy by luscious, sensuous elucidations. This book is not merely a thing to be read on an intellectual level. The book is to be sensed and physically processed, as you filter through smokey comprehension and hazy daydreams.
The book is a web of memories, and if you are expecting a linear story, you may be discouraged by the nonconformity to typical plot lines. The book weaves back and forth as memories reveal themselves into a tapestry of dream-like narratives. Ondaatje’s novel is a quilt of a story, much like the English patient's stitched together copy of Herodotus. The web of narrative is displayed much like how Hana reads to her patient from the books she tiptoes out of the library. She opens randomly to any page and begins reading. The plots of the stories are irrelevant to Hana and the English patient. The relevance for them lies in the moment, in the singular experiences that combine to make up the whole. The English Patient should be read on this level. Ondaatje says that he doesn’t know what his books are about until he finishes writing them. You may not completely understand what the book is about until you are done reading it, and even then the story changes and evolves as your own identity transforms. Very few books take you through this kind of self-discovery and leave you with a new awareness of the corporeal.
The book is a sensual journey that must be taken step by step, yet it is without a beginning or an ending point. The relevance of Ondaatje’s message is destroyed by constantly looking at the horizon to find the end of the road. And what is the message? For many it is the examination of self through poetically saturated text that the author employs to evoke personal discovery. The book brings up many questions to its watery surface for you to find answers to. For much of the text, the question you’ll be asking yourself is “Who is the English Patient�? For most of the narration you have no idea who this burned shadow of a man is. He seems to be a reminder of desperation and betrayal, pain and lost love, but this is not the story the author wants you to focus on. The English patient is merely a catalyst for the other characters, and you as well, to discover identity. Without him, the others would never have been able to interlace their stories and find understanding and comfort in each other.

This is a novel of revelation, and just as the identity of the English patient is slowly revealed as the novel progresses, so too are the inner selves and spiritual identities of the other characters in the novels. Every sentence is beautifully crafted and evocative, keeping you completely enthralled in the story. The story reaches across all boundaries of time and space to connect with people from all walks of life. Each of us who reads the story as the author intended, will find many connections with the story and its characters.
The text begins with Hana and the English patient living alone in a bombed out and abandoned hospital/monastery. From this location, all other places in the story are visited through memories and often painful recollections. Hana cares for both herself and her patient by keeping a simple garden and trading medical supplies for their other physical needs. For their intellectual needs she reads passages from odd books found in the possibly mined library. Throughout the story, Hana represents the scarred, insecure child in each of us; afraid to move beyond our sphere of comfort, but whimsical and playful within it. Hana cares for her patient as a substitute for how she would like to be cared for. She wants desperately to be wrapped and held and whispered to, and she does this vicariously through her patient, caring for him like he was a small frightened child in need of comfort. Yet, the English patient does not need this kind of comfort from Hana. The English patient no longer needs solace from others. He represents the resolve that the broken and tired have, who no longer have a choice in what they are given, and who can accept the circumstances without challenging them. He realizes that it’s the journey that gives birth to his identity and the means by which it ends is inconsequential. The duo is presently joined by a old friend of Hana’s father. The friend is Caravaggio, a thief and a morphine addict. The confused and wounded Caravaggio comes to find Hana as he looks for ties to the past and clues to his confused identity. The thief typifies most of us, who are somehow maimed whether physically or emotionally, who need to piece back the severed parts of our identities to make a new whole. Finally they are joined by Kip, the diviner, never looking at what is in front of his eyes, always searching through the layers beneath. He is afraid of connection and of loss. He is constantly aware of the dangers around him and therefore cannot appreciate the simple pleasures and safety nets of relationships. Many who have been afflicted with great loss and insecurity can identify with this character.
Ondaatje’s work draws many parallels to our own quest for self-awareness and our desire for peace with the past. The book is an examination of the nature of identity. Who are we when our world is torn apart? Who are we when our names are taken from us? Who are we when we no longer can be identified by our physical characteristics? Are we what other people make of us? Ondaatje doesn’t give you the answers, he gives you the questions and leads you lyrically through the journey of others on the same mission so that you may discover the answer for yourself. Ondaatje’s work is organic and alive. It will change your self-perception and gives charge to electrical pulses of discovery as you allow it to guide the form of your ever-changing identity.



*contains sexual material and swearing