|
1. Themes and issues: critique of nationalism, imperialism
and colonialism; explores notions of identity; love and
desire; investigates the natures of story telling and
intertextuality; on a metaphorical level it shows the
demise of imperialist discourses and the rise of the oppressed
and dispossessed indigenous populations.
2. NPOV
3. Setting
4. Symbolism: fire, water, religious, desert and villa,
books, paintings (Isaiah 77-78, 294), David and Goliath
(116-117)
5. Intertextuality
6. Image of palimpsest
7. Imperialism; imperialist discourses Imperialism
colonises a land by imposing practices, ways of thinking
and seeing, and conceptual paradigms . It is an act
of expropriation.
Relationship between themes of imperialism and nationalism
with - painting of David and Goliath, image of palimpsest,
symbolism of desert, image of ruins, Books (Kim, Last
of Mohicans)
Discourse:
Discourse: is a way of speaking and writing about things.
The stories, the narratives that exist in society (in
literature, advertising, anecdotes, morality, religion,
science, etc) that tells us what is normal and acceptable.
Specific attitudes are embedded and naturalised in these
narratives. Discourses also allow certain things to
be said and thought, in the very language they use.
Imperialist discourse - talks of progress, civilisation
and savagery, democracy, science and religion, bringing
enlightenment to the dark backward customs of indigenous
people. It positions white European, Christians as superior
and knowledgeable and marginalises and oppresses those
constructed as the 'Other' as the binary opposite.
In the past it has manifested itself in war and colonialism,
where non-European cultures imposed their beliefs over
(mapped) others.
At present America has imperialistic policies (cultural
and economic) that they impose on other cultures, yet
they are not labeled as oppressors and tyrants or constructed
in the media in this way. Instead they are the champions
of democracy, freedom of speech, free enterprise and
demonise others who are usually Arabs, Muslims, and
communists. (this is the power of ideology and discourse)
All have done nasty things but more people have died
in the name of democracy and christianity than other
political creeds. Of course we never hear much about
these.
The novel is a story about stories and the act of creating
narratives. It is a story of love and desire; four damaged
people in a villa who need healing; it is concerned
with war and loss; the tyranny of imperialism, nationalism
and colonialism; personal and national identity. On
a metaphorical level it shows the demise of imperialist
discourses and the rise of the oppressed and dispossessed
indigenous populations.
1. Themes
imperialism, colonialism and nationalism (138- 139,
283-287, 290 )
- maps, borders, Kipling's Kim, war, bombing of Japan,
cultural imperialism and oppression , image of palimpsest,
metaphor of desert and garden, references to David and
Goliath and Caravaggio's painting
Ondaatje's critique of imperialism, nationalism and
colonialism is shown through four characters in a villa
who have been damaged by war. The English patient and
Caravaggio are physically injured, Hana is psychologically
wounded by what she had seen in war as well as being
shell-shocked, while Kip is damaged by the trauma of
being a sapper, but later through the realisation that
he had inadvertently supported a civilisation that had
exploited and oppressed his own people and had been
responsible for dropping a terrible weapon on a fellow-Asian
country.
The very idea of nationalism with its jingoistic rhetoric
of saving the world for civilisation is shown to be
responsible for creating borders and divisions between
people. It is the cause of most wars as it pits nation
against nation when really the differences have been
constructed for other reasons, often economic and in
the interests of those in power.
In the novel there are many references to maps and
borders. 'All I desired was to walk upon such an earth
that had no maps.' 261
The English patient after years in the desert came
to see the absurdity of nationalism and war. In the
desert these artificial borders were lost: 'We were
German, English, Hungarian, African - all of us insignificant
to them. Gradually we became nationless. I came to hate
nations.' (138) The novel uses the desert as a metaphor.
The desert defies national identity, 'could not be claimed
or owned - it was a piece of cloth carried by winds,
never held down by stones, and given a hundred shifting
names' (p.138) It disappears and reappears as a changed
landscape and can only be defined by its indefinability.
The desert refuses to be mapped, an activity that attempts
to impose artificial borders and fabricated identities.
The English patient suggests it is therefore a place
of freedom where artificial boundaries are shown as
destructive: 'All of us, even those with European homes
and children in the distance, wished to remove the clothing
of our countries. It was a place of faith ... Erase
the family name! Erase nations! I was taught such things
by the desert.' (139)
Ondaatje's critique of nationalism is shown by the
terrible consequences of war and by using the desert
as a metaphor to highlight that all notions of difference,
the lines we draw on maps, the places we name are all
artificial and are in essence destructive.
colonialism
'I grew up with traditions from my country, but later,
more often, from your country. Your fragile white island
that with customs and manners and books and prefects
and reason somehow convertedd the rest of the world.
You stood for precise behaviour. I knew that if I lifted
a teacup with the wrong finger I'd be banished.' 283
Kip is distraught by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
He sees the 'streets of Asia full of fire.' and significantly
he sees this in the image of the map (the coloniser's
way of subjugating a nation), 'It rolls across cities
like a burst map.' This was the culture that had proclaimed
itself civilised and now sees the terrible hypocrisy,
and sees it in the irony of 'This tremor of western
wisdom' (284)
Kip had never believed in his brother's outward rebellion
against his colonisers, and it is only after the bomb
that he sees that his brother is right: 'My brother
told me. Never turn your back on Europe. The deal makers.
The contract makers. The map drawers.' 284
Individual books also are used symbolically in The
English Patient to draw parallels between the two cultures.
Kim sets up another level of meaning in relation to
colonial dispossession and cultural imperialism that
foreshadow Kip's realisation at the close of the novel.
The Last of the Mohicans is another text written by
a white man showing the dispossession and genocide of
an Indian race. In both cases they show the European's
disregard and disdain for cultures other than their
own; a sentiment forgrounded in the novel when the two
cities of Japan are destroyed and Kip and Caravaggio
agree that this would not have happened if they were
a white race.
3.Setting: The Villa & the Desert
The English Patient is set in villa outside Florence,
where four characters from different cultural backgrounds
attempt to come to terms with the terrible things they
had experienced in war. It is through the badly burnt
English patient that the narrative shifts to his experiences
in the desert of North Africa in the previous decade.
The settings of the villa and the desert are not simply
physical backdrops or geographical locations for a plot
to emerge, but are imbued with many other symbolic meanings.
The villa is a refuge from the outside world and war.
It is a peaceful place, almost a paradise from the last
acts of war and destruction in the outside world: 'It
is still terrible out there. Dead cattle. Horses shot
dead, half eaten. People hanging upside down from bridges.
The last vices of war. Completely unsafe.' (29) Yet
while it has these elements of paradise - the quiet
solitude, gardens painted on the walls - it also shows
the effects that humankind has had on it in its constant
activity of war. Wall are missing and rooms are littered
with rumble. Moreover, there is danger in paradise with
the threat of unexploded bombs and mines booby trapped
within the villa. It is these reminders of war that
symbolise the great depths humanity had fallen, with
mines killing indiscrimately anyone who may come in
their way. The bombed ruins in what was once acclaimed
as the most civilised of places (Florence) reveal that
there is no correspondence between civilisation - humanity's
great feats of culture, its art and literature - and
any innate goodness and humanity. The novel, through
this symbolism, shows that all the claims of so-called
civilised nations that they have risen above savagery
in their quest for civilisation, and have often asserted
their superiority over other nations because of their
civilised ways, is not true as their actions have been
as barbaric as any in history.
Significantly the villa was once used as a nunnery
and a hospital. It is in these aspects that it echoes
the idea that the villa, besides being a bombed ruin,
is a place of healing and possible spiritual redemption.
The destroyed chapel attached to it may show that institutionalised
religion have little power in a world a power politics
and nationalism, but within the villa, with no formal
religious ties, it can still be a healing place where
the characters seek redemption through simply helping
others. This is certainly the case for Hana who dedicates
herself to the dying English patient, while Caravaggio
also overcomes his hatred and plans of revenge, finally
accepting the English patient as no longer responsible
for the torture he suffered. Hana and Kip also find
love here and it is only events in the outside world,
so momentous as the dropping of the atomic bomb that
separates them.
Another important aspect of the villa is that it had
long lost the divisions, the borders that separated
one room from another or the inside from the outside.
In many ways the villa and the garden flowed into one
another - 'There seemed little demarcation between house
and landscape, between damaged building and the burned
and shelled remains of the earth. To Hana the wild gardens
were like further rooms.' (43 ) This suggests metaphorically
that unlike the outside world where nationalities are
divided up according to border lines the Villa San Girolama
is a place free of these impositions and all the characters
are finally able to transcend their constructed national
identities.
The other important setting in the novel is the desert.
Unlike Europe it had no borders and was a place where
one could lose all notions of identity and nationality.
According to the English patient the 'desert could not
be claimed or owned - it was a piece of cloth carried
by winds, never held down by stones, and given a hundred
shifting names long before Canterbury existed, long
before battles and treaties quilted Europe and the east.'
This evocative passage reveals the impermanence of all
things. Ownership and possession are Western notions
when it comes to land, and have no meaning in the desert.
For the English patient it is a liberation from his
old ways of understanding and sees that concepts such
as identity and nationality are constructs that deceive
the individual. People's ideas of their identity were
tied to where they came from, yet in the desert this
disappears: ' All of us ... wished to remove the clothing
of our countries.' Finally he wants to shed himself
from this restriction and be free of such things - 'Erase
the family name! Erase nations. I was taught such things
by the desert.' (139) It is this collective identity
that had led to wars through their pride in ownership
and their intrinsic sense of being distinct and superior
that had then manifested itself in imposing their beliefs
on others.
The English patient repeats this idea of losing all
notions of identity and nationality when he claims that
being in the desert for two weeks made him forget the
crowded metropolis where the self is stifled: 'the idea
of the city never entered his mind' and it was the 'place
they had chosen to come, to be their best selves, to
be unconscious of ancestry' (246). Through this the
desert is seen as a place of redemption where one can
transcend the stifling constructed notions of who we
are (self and identity) as well as a world preoccupied
with money and war. The English patient states this
spirituality of the desert when he says, 'There is God
only in the desert, he wanted to acknowledge that now.
Outside of this there was just trade and power, money
and war. Financial and military despots shaped the world.'
(250). In the desert preoccupations of materialistic
gain do not exist, 'In the desert you celebrate nothing
but water.' (23)
The novel uses the desert as a metaphor. The desert
defies national identity; it disappears and reappears
as a changed landscape and can only be defined by its
indefinability. The desert refuses to be mapped, an
activity that attempts to impose artificial borders
and fabricated identities. The English patient suggests
it is therefore a place of freedom where artificial
boundaries are shown as destructive: 'All of us, even
those with European homes and children in the distance,
wished to remove the clothing of our countries. It was
a place of faith ... ' (139)
Ondaatje critique of nationalism is shown by using
the desert as a metaphor to highlight that all notions
of difference, the lines we draw on maps, the places
we name are all artificial and are in essence destructive.
******
5. Symbolism
Patterns of imagery, symbol and metaphor inform a reading
of the novel as much as character or plot. The novel
starts with an image of a man on fire falling from the
air to earth and then investigates why this has happened
and the identity of the man. The plot moves back and
forth, incorporating a series of related images - fire,
scars, mutilated hands, bombs, warfare and healing as
well as a fascination with esoteric knowledge. Added
to this are the four main characters who together form
another image: a constellation, perhaps, of the four
elements, but essentially fire.
On another level the novel operates on symbolism, with
the desert and water, books, names, paintings, mirrors
and religious symbolism all being essential parts that
signify central ideas in the text.
Fire is the central symbol in the novel. The English
patient falls burning from the sky ('I fell burning
into the desert. I flew down and the sand itself caught
fire. 5') and the narrative revolve around his burnt
body. Hana is devoted to her patient as her own father
had died of burns: 'So burned the buttons of his shirt
were part of his skin, part of his dear chest.' Caravaggio
also while escaping is thrown into a burning river ('He
swam up to the surface, parts of which were on fire.')
and his ascent through burning water parallels and inverts
The English patient's descent on fire. And Kip works
each day as a sapper with the threat of fire.
The symbolism of fire can be seen as having both political
and personal significance. In the former sense the novel
is concerned with the interaction between private identity
and public events, and with the inescapable intrusions
of geopolitical forces into people's lives. The villa
may be a haven from the war but the text moves towards
the terrible apocalyptic event of the atomic bombs being
dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The symbolism of
fire culminates in Kip's vision of Asia: 'He sees the
streets of Asia full of fire. It rolls across cities
like a burst map ...284' In this case all characters
have foreshadowed the apocalypse that ends the war and
the novel. They have each been scarred physically or
psychologically from fire and in the microcosm of the
villa they represents the world that is to come. It
also captures on the visual level the horrific cities
with people burning to death, while also symbolising
the ultimate destruction and pain that fire brings in
this context.
Besides being a novel that fits into the genres of
war, spy thriller and historical research it is a love
story. It is in these personal dimensions of the novel
that fire in a more conventional way symbolises passion.
In the English patient's diary he had written: 'the
heart is an organ of fire.' 97) The cause of all the
events emanates from the passion and love that turns
to jealousy and anger felt by Clifton. Finding his wife
had deceived him he attempts to kill all of them: from
this the narrative evolves.
All the characters are bound by love and loss, absence
and desire. In the relationship between the English
patient and Katharine their love is an all-consuming
fire of passion. But her death becomes a literal fire
which burns away every trace of her lover's identity,
leaving him as an anonymous patient in an English hospital.
Ironically this anonymity and loss of identity is what
he had desired. He didn't believe in nations and family
names: "Ain, Bir, Wadi, Foggara, Khottara, Shaduf.
I didn't want my name against such beautiful names.
Erase the famly names! Erase nations! I was taught such
things by the desert.' (139) Also ironic is that this
is achieved only by having his body reduced by fire
to a blackened scar.
The love relationship between Hana and Kip is also
ended by the news of the apocalyptic fire over Asia.
Though Hana tries to explain she had nothing to do with
this Kip sees all white nations as representing the
one oppressive and cruel power that had always ruled,
to which he had been blinded before. This realisation
arrives only after his 'vision of fire'.
There are also other parallels between characters that
have the image of fire at their centre. Onto the anonymous
and unreadable map of the English patient's body Hana,
and Kip project their own passions. For Hana he becomes
every man who she had watched die under her care and
more importantly her own father who dies from burns.
Kip sees in him the one good Englishman he knew, Lord
Suffolk, who dies from in the fire from an exploded
bomb.
The opposite to fire is water and this is also used
as an important symbol in the novel. Interestingly the
English patient is associated with fire and also the
desert, while Katharine is aligned with water, an element
essential in surviving both fire and desert. She is
seen as 'happier in the rain, in bathrooms steaming
with liquid air, in sleepy wetness' (170), while he
found peace in the starkness, the dryness of desert
('Everything that ever happened to me that wa important
happened in the desert.' 177) Their love is in many
ways based on their opposing nature and for the English
patient, who is frequently aligned with the desert,
he needs her as 'in the desert you celebrate nothing
but water.'(23) In this context water is the traditional
symbol of life and sustenance, making it possible for
both to survive.Katharine is also said to have only
a 'temporary passion for the desert' (171) and she is
a stranger who cannot live fully here, just as their
love relationship ended, not because of a lack of love
but the inability to survive in a different element.
The description of water in the desert early in the
novel, foreshadows this event: 'Water is the exile,
carried back in cans and flasks, the ghost between your
hands and mouth.' (19)
Books
Books are used symbolically, though they vary between
characters. The English patient is a learned man who
looks to books to give him information about the world
and himself. His Herodotus is a prized possession, full
of stories that give insights in human existence, but
it has served a functional use in teaching him about
the desert, almost a map where he had found towns and
caves. For him Herodotus did not simply tell of the
past, but 'the histories in Herodotus clarified all
societies.' (150). Hana uses books as an escape from
the present, 'she fell upon books as the only door out
of her cell. They became half her world.' (7) It is
also Hana who repairs the staircase with twenty books,
thus making it possible to reach the English patient
in his room, and symbolically representing how books
can be used to reach out and understand others.
In contrast Kip distrust books ('He did not yet have
faith in books), which is not surprising as all the
books were English and it was these books, such as Kim,
that perpetuated the values and beliefs of the colonial
conquerors, and represented the privileged position
of Westerners as natural.
Individual books also are used symbolically in The
English Patient to draw parallels between the two. Kim
sets up another level of meaning in relation to colonial
dispossession and cultural imperialism that foreshadow
Kip's realisation at the close of the novel. The Last
of the Mohicans is another text written by a white man
showing the dispossession and genocide of an Indian
race. In both cases they show the European's disregard
and disdain for cultures other than their own; a sentiment
forgrounded in the novel when the two cities of Japan
are destroyed and Kip and Caravaggio agree that this
would not have happened if they were a white race.
The symbolism of burned body
The novel explores the way imperial discourses have
been used to subjugate and oppress non-European nations
and cultures, constructing them as the 'Other' and consequently
legitimating their dominance in the name of progress,
christianity and civilisation. It is in this context
of the novel that the blackness of the charred skin
of the English patient can be seen as representing these
imperial discourses and the demise of white male civilisation
ravaged by WW11 and the onslaught of nuclear war. Moreover,
it questions the very identity of Englishness and the
white imperial discourse is now shown as a burnt-out
discourse (soon realised in the demise of imperialistic
colonies and the rise of independent indigenous nations)
which reveals that the Empire has been expelled and
been replaced with the rights of the indigenous people.
Initially Kip is enamoured with the white culture that
represents civilisation and refined manners despite
it positioning him as an inferior and destroying his
cultural identity. He acknowledges later that his brother
had been right in defying and fighting the English and
that he had been tricked ('oh, we were easily impressed
- by speeches and medals and your ceremonies' 285).
Being a colonised subject he had been positioned to
accept his own culture's inferiority and though marginalised
and oppressed through history Kip still comes to the
rescue of his master's civilisation, showing how thoroughly
he had internalised the dominant ideology. This idea
is shown metaphorically when he is consumed by Western
civilisation when on his first training mission he finds
himself in the heart of white civilisation, 'Then he
descended, down into the great white chalk horse of
Westbury, into the whiteness of the horse, carved into
the hill.' (181)
The novel traces the change in Kip's attitude and his
subsequent decolonisation when he learns of the bombing
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He defies all things English
as represented by the English Patient and returns home
to become a doctor. He journey on a motor bike through
Italy from Florence through other cultural centres is
a symbolical journey backwards through these icons of
Western civilisation, shedding himself of acculturation
and beliefs of the West which he had been forced to
see as the apex of civilised culture
NPOV
The narrative point of view in The English Patient
is unconventional in the manner that it relays the events
of the novel as it continously shifts between different
modes of narration (third person through various characters,
first person monologues by the EP about the past and
entries written years before that are pasted in a copy
of Herodotus), juxtaposing past and present and by often
telling about specific events only to speak of the immediate
time before these events at a later point in the novel.
In its very structure the narrative point of view is
integral to an examination of the central concerns of
the text, especially in its exploration of the concepts
of identity, truth and reality, all of which the novel
constructs as arbitrary, shifting and unstable.
On one level the narrative point of view in The English
Patient through its fragmentation and constant shifting
from one voice to another is similar to the metaphor
of the desert used in the novel: 'The desert could not
be claimed or owned - it was a piece of cloth carried
by winds, never held down by stones, and given a hundred
shifting names long before Canterbury existed, long
before battles and treaties quilted Europe and the East.'
It is a device used to add ambiguity to the novel, to
show that identity, truth and reality are problematic
and that traditional narrations fail to acknowledge
these aspects of human experience. The narrative point
of view shows that the idea of 'knowing' anyone or anything
is complex and cannot be adequately relayed through
traditional linear narratives and narrators who present
a version of reality with an authorative presumption.
More importantly, the very device of presuming to 'know'
is false and Ondaatje goes to great lengths to undermine
this notion of omniscience.
These ideas are shown when the narrative point of view
shifts between past and present without clear demarcation,
often causing the reader to be uncertain about the very
nature of the narrative. In conjunction with other narrative
devices, especially the EP's narration while under morphine,
it creates an ambiguity that is at the core of the novel:
is the EP Almasy the spy or someone else? Are the stories
reliable? Are their words really depicting what is and
has gone before? The novel also draws attention to the
nature of words ('Words are tricky things') and the
articiality of the written word, in particular the novel
itself. The English Patient is self-reflexive, as it
draws attention to its own artificiality. The reader
is not lulled into a linear narrative that constructs
an illusion of reality, but the reader is enlisted as
an active participant in a process of reading, which
constantly draws attention to the fact that what we
are reading is a story, not because of content , but
the form and structure of the npov.
The English Patient is seen as a postmodern novel in
the way it questions the nature of stories, emphasising
its constructed nature. One way this is done is through
drawing attention to the intertextuality of all works
of fiction - that is, all texts are not just works of
genius but informed by the existence of other texts.
This aspect of the novel is shown in the way Ondaatje
consciously uses other famous books in his narrative
(Kim, Herodotus, Anna Karenina, The Charterhous eof
Palma) as echoing important ideas. The references to
them form a subtext in the novel , giving echoes of
the stories that have gone before that have explored
similar ideas. More importantly is his use of the palimpsest,
where Herodotus is pasted over with other texts - some
from the Bible or EP's own personal writings. This pastiche
effect reiterates the postmodern notion that all texts
are constructs and fragmentary as well as serving to
take away the authority of Herodotus (in this case representing
all great works) by replacing them with other texts
that tell of other stories. It shows that all books
are versions and from a particular point of view but
by the uses of the palimpsests give a voice to otherr
stories that have been buried just as colonial powers
had buried the languages and cultures that they had
conquered.
The novel explores the notion of reality, truth and
fact, showing them to be not fixed and stable, but arbitrary
and shifting. This is achieved in the novel through
the repeated references to mapping, esp;ionage, the
architectural structure of the villa, the trompe l'oeil
murals and mirages whuch all function as tropes that
refract and reflect these notions about identity, and
all these ideas are in-built into the structure of the
narrative itself with all things appearing as not as
they seem.
The frequency in which events are narrated with an
incremental addition of detail in the pivotal events
between Almasy and Katherine reveals not the whole story
but fragments that must be picked up by the reader.
Often the event is shown first and the time leading
up to it is revealed later. Again this disrupts the
reader's usual expectations from a novel and forces
them to link together fragments to make meaning instead
of having it told chronologically with cause and effect
as the main structural device. Besides questioning the
way we experience time this method adds to those notions
that question the way menory records experience and
how we rearrange them to create stories about ourselves
which are part of our own identity. The1942 crash which
causes the burn are related twice, both versions told
by the English patient before he tells us about the
1939 crash, in which Katherine is injured.
The 1939 crash is told briefly (171) though we have
already been told one of the versions of leaving Katherine
in the cave before (169-170). Greater detail of the
crash is then given later (256-257) and there are three
versions of leaving Katherine in the cave (169-170,
248-249, 256-261). The reader is left with having to
experience the selective memories in the same way that
the EP recalls them rather than chronologically and
certainly without cause leading up clearly to the event.
This complexity within the narrative structure subverts
the traditional mode of a linear narrative, drawing
attention to the story as a construct as well as questioning
the way time is experienced, especially in memory. It
also destabilises notions the reader may have on the
veracity of the stories as the English patient is telling
these memories while being administered massive doses
of morphine. On another level it might be asked how
truthful can this story be as he has been a spy and
he is telling it to Caravaggio, a man who has been a
spy and a thief. The question of reliability is still
present even after we are told the mystery of his identity.
On another level the npov can be understood in the
way it does function to give certain information and
insights into characters. At times the reader hears
EP's writing as read by Hana as they appear pasted into
Herodotus. Most of the things said by EP are either
in these poetic writings or as long monologues as he
recalls his story to a listening Hana. In all these
the EP reveals he is an erudite and intelligent man
with a sensitivity to the complexities of life. He speaks
in poetic diction: 'I have always had information like
a sea in me. I am a person who if left alone in someone's
home walks to the bookcase, pulls down a volume and
inhales it. So history enters us.' (18) and he tells
evocative exotic stories of the desert which are more
introspective and concerned with his more personal observations.
This is juxtaposed with the narrator's third-person
account which often picks up from EP's musings and then
tells of the more prosaic details related to plot.
It is used to position the reader to sympathise with
certain characters, understanding the way they interpret
the world. Excluding dialogue it is only the EP who
the reader ever hears speak in first-person. The reader,
who is already sympathetic as this man has suffered
terrible burns, is a witness to hi s story, seeing it
from his perspective, and as he is constructed as an
intelligent, erudite man who seems to have transcended
the material world we are sympathetic. More persuausive
perhaps is his great love for Katherine who his loses,
and we come to see that any acts that have caused harm
have been as a result of his need to return to her in
the cave.
The Texts and Contexts section is in basically about
identity - how identity is constructed by discourses
operating in society which are then 're-presented' in
literature. Discuss the representation of identity in
a text in the light of this comment.
Identity is a construct: the ways an individual understands
what it is to belong to a certain gender, race or cultural
identity is initially constructed by the discourses
operating in society which naturalises certain ways
of knowing what it is to belong to this social group.
Literature can either perpetuate or challenge these
notions through the representations of these groups.
In The English Patient Ondaatje writing in the 1990's
about the second World War questions the very notion
of identity, showing how the dominant discourse of Western
imperialism and civilisation have dispossessed those
people of different races and cultural identities.
The novel foregrounds the the way non-Western nations
had been colonised and dispossessed by European imperialism.
Kip, the Sikh sapper, is shown throughout the novel
to be the most sensitive and intelligent of men, yet
he has been treated as an inferior by the British because
of his race. Western civilisation on the other hand,
which has always regards itself as racially and culturally
superior (a belief Kip had inadvertently internalised
in India) is constructed by the text to be simply materialistic,
belligerent and lacking spirituality. The novel's final
scenes reveal these values with the apocalyptic atomic
bomb dropped being on Japan and Kip believing that the
West would have never dropped an atomic bomb on a white
race.
The English Patient explores these ideas of racial
and cultural identity through the events and conflicts,
yet Ondaatje also shows these complex ideas through
other novelistic techniques such as symbolism and intertextuality.
Throughout the novel Kip is used to symbolise the colonised
East and this is seen through the importance of his
name and its link with Rudyard Kipling's Kim.
Kim is the most important intertext in the novel. Kipling
represents the old traditional forces of imperialism,
where the British colonised in the name of civilisation
and dispossessed the Indians of their land and cultural
heritage. Kip, unlike his brother, has accepted this
and had become 'English' in many ways. His name Kirpal
Singh is changed to 'Kip', which combines both 'Kim'
and 'Kipling'. Ondaatje's Kip can be seen to represent
the drama of the indigenous person becoming decolonised,
as he rebels finally at the end seeing how he had been
tricked, and the English patient being the burnt-out
imperial discourse. Through these techniques the text
reveals through its representation of race and cultural
identity a critique of Western notions of identity and
supports the liberation of dispossessed races from the
tyranny of the West.
Kip recognises his own colonisation when he confronts
the English patient with his belief that the West would
never had used such a weapon on a white race.
'My brother told me. Never turn your back on Europe.
The deal makers. The map drawers ... But we, oh, we
were easily impressed - by speeches and medals and your
ceremonies. What have I been doing these last few years?
Cutting away, defusing, limbs of evil. For what? For
this to happen? (284)
This outburst signifies Kip's despair over all the
beliefs and practices he had embraced. It marks his
final understanding of his race's subservient position
in the colonial relationship and he renounces all the
things that he thinks the English patient stands for.
In some cases this is ironic and Kip is mistaken as
the English patient is not English and he shuns nationalism,
possessions and the things Kip equates with the English.
However it is more as a symbol that he sees the English
as and recognises how he had been made into an 'Englishman'
in some of his earlier attitudes. More importantly Kip
equates war on other non-European nations as a distinctly
English trait ('American, French, I don't care. When
you start bombing the brown races of the world, you're
an Englishman ... You all learned it from the English'
286).
Kip also rejects the cultural map that had been drawn
over his own, together with his name. This rejection
is mapped out in Kip's leaving and retracing his route
- 'travelling against the direction of the invasion'
(290) - through Florence, Greve, Cortona, Arezzo, Sansepolcro
and Gabicce Mare to Ortona. Through this he consciously
sheds himself of the cultural heritage that had shaped
and enveloped him. At the end the narrative finds him
as Kirpal Singh in India, a country that had also become
independent in 1947.
The devastated Europe in 1945 can also be seen in a
post-colonial reading as an end of imperialism and the
English patient, a burnt out case, symbolises the end
of notions of cultural superiority and heroism. Significantly
he always carries a copy of Herodotus' Histories, the
first narrative history of the ancient world and one
whose main theme was the enmity between East and West.
He changes the nature of this history as he has turned
it into a 'commonplace book', inserting into its text
pages of other books and his own observations. This
subversion of the authority of the text is also seen
in the way he refutes the conventions of colonial mapping
by recognising that the 'desert could not be claimed
or owned' (138), and that it had existing, beautiful
names over which no new ones should be inscribed.
The image of the palimpsest is repeatedly used to show
how one text is buried by another or added to. This
represents the way indigenous cultures have been mapped
and written over by other dominant cultures. This has
happened in history by colonial and imperialist forces
who have dispossessed the indigenous people of their
language and customs and replaced it with their own.
The relationship between colonised and coloniser seen
in the references to David and Goliath and the painting
by Caravaggio of the same name. These represent the
old relationship of the old oppressor with seemingly
invincible power (European imperialism) being slayed
by the small and weak by (indigenous nations)
Civilisation has often been represented by the ordered
garden that has tamed Nature, while the desert is represented
as dry, infertile and unstable with its borders built
on shifting sands. Significantly it is in the desert
that fulfilment can be obtained and the destructive
forces of nationalism are abandoned and seen for their
divisive nature.
Identity
The novel evolves around the question of whether the
English patient is English or Hungarian, a victim or
a former spy, yet the crucial issue of identity is transferred
at the end to Kip.
The English patient talks about the 'accident of nationality',
claiming it is the cause of disputes and wars. It is
an absurd and futile notion and he loves the desert
as out there all sense of nationality and even identity
disappears.
The novel presents two varying versions of identity.
The English patient sees it as the cause of war and
hatred, a catalyst to intolerance and prejudice. He
wants to shed himself of such constructed notions and
become a man without family or nation. This is a spiritual
act, similar to some Eastern religions, where the self
is perceived as an illusion and peace can only come
after this perception is transcended. The text endorses
this viewpoint to a degree as the reader had witnessed
throughout the novel the horrors of war that have resulted
from nationalism and a sense of cultural identity.
However the novel also shows how Kip sheds the cultural
identity of the English imposed upon him and returns
to his roots, a member of a small nation with its traditions
that he takes up by being the second son who becomes
a doctor. His also rids himself of the name given to
him by the English, with all of its suggestions of colonialism
inherent in Kipling and Kim, and takes back his native
name of Kirpal Singh. This is also seen as a positive
act of liberation as he has now realised how he and
his people had been exploited and treated like inferior
subjects of a greater power.
***
Ondaatje uses the names of his characters at both a
thematic and metafictional level to define the central
dynamic of his narrative.
Kip - see post-colonial reading/Caravaggio/Herodotus
- the book that the English patient carries with him
has great significance to the issues explored in the
novel as Herodotus was the first historian of the ancient
world, especially the desert countries that the English
patient surveys.
Intertextuality
The Histories by Herodotus is the most important literary
text referred to in The English Patient as it is a book
the English patient carries with him at all times and
is constantly mentioned in the narration and dialogue.
Herodotus was the first historian of the ancient world,
and he explored the enmity between East and West, saying
the two could never be reconciled. Two thousand years
later the reader can see that this is still the case
and it is this realisation that drives Kip to his renunciation
of the West, claiming that they would have 'never dropped
the bomb on a white nation.'
The Histories by Herodotus which the English patient
cherishes does not remain the authority on matters though
and he adds to it, pasting in pages from other books,
especially the Bible, and writing in his observations.
The book, which carries all this other information,
becomes an example of intertextuality, a concept that
refers to the way literary texts themselves can be understood.
Instead of being simply 'influence' or 'allusion', intertextuality
is an active interaction between texts and this interaction
is the very precondition for the existence of a text.
In the novel Ondaatje translates this theoretical concept
(interaction between texts) into literal images. The
English patient writes his own observations into the
blank pages of Herodotus. Hana also does the same with
books in the villa's library, especially The Last of
the Mohicans ('She opens The Last of the Mohicans to
the blank page at the back and begins to write in it.
There is a man called Caravaggio, a friend of my father's.
I have always loved him.')
Through this Ondaatje shows the connection between
texts, how they are created and conceived. While Hana
discloses her feelings in blank pages of books and the
English patient writes out his love for Kathaine Clifton,
Ondaatje does the same in the novel by quoting endlessly
from other texts, such as Kim, The Charterhouse of Parma
The Last of the Mohican, Paradise Lost and works of
Christopher Smart. On one level this operates to echo
and reinforce thematic concerns in the novel. Kim sets
up another level of meaning in relation to colonial
dispossession and cultural imperialism that foreshadow
Kip's realisation at the close of the novel. The Last
of the Mohicans is another text written by a white man
showing the dispossession and genocide of an Indian
race. In both cases they show the European's disregard
and disdain for cultures other than their own; a sentiment
foregrounded in the novel when the two cities of Japan
are destroyed and Kip and Caravaggio agree that this
would not have happened if they were a white race.
On another level though the intertextuality shows the
power of words. They are instruments of love and weapons
to destroy. The English patient falls in love with the
voice of Katharine as she tells the story of Candaules
and Gyges from The Histories. The story is in one way
the catalyst for their love affair and events that take
place after. She tells the story of the ancient King
Candaules who is so proud of his wife's beauty that
he did not believe any other man could conceive of her
great beauty. He forces his friend Gyges to view her
naked, but the queen sees him and later tells him that
he must die himself or kill the king for seeing what
was not his. Gyges kills Candaules and marries the queen.
In her narration she makes the clear implication that
she is the queen, her husband Candaules and the English
patient must play the role of Gyges. The English patient
does act the part of Gyges as lover but ironically it
is Geoffrey Clifton who attempts to kill her rival.
Thus the events in the novel as shown are closely intertwined
with the narratives of the past (the story in Herodotus
in this case), as if the same stories are constantly
being retold, only in different forms - just as love
and jealousy are acted out in worlds thousands of years
apart.
In this way parallels are drawn between texts and one
narrative informs and projects itself onto another.
Moreover it is not passive but an interactive relationship
where story is responsible for the creation of another.
Characters like Caravaggio and Kip in the novel often
mention the power of words. Caravaggio notes that 'Words
are tricky things' and
***
The villa is also full of books, most echoing important
issues and concerns in the novel. Novels that deal with
lost love, the might of Empire and the exploitation
of indigenous people. Hana and EP both find solace in
books, an escape from this world, while Kip does not
trust books as most are part of the cultural heritage
of European civilisation, a culture that had imposed
its own beliefs over his own people's.
The EP thought that it might be at the same villa where
Poliziano lived also gives its another level of significance
57. This imbues the villa with the cultural tradition
of the Renaissance. In history it was a meeting place
of the past and the new ('Pico and Lorenzo and Poliziano
and the young Michelangelo. They held in each hand the
new world and the old world') This is paralleled with
1945 where the world was about to change with the dropping
of the bomb and the end of colonialism was soon to occur,
significantly with the independence of India in 1947.
Microcosm of world outside.
::
Next Page ::
|
