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The Quest (from To the Lighthouse: From Social
language to Incantation)
The 'Time Passes' section exposes the fragility of
Mrs Ramsay's triumph at the dinner table. The world
goes on, deaths appear only parenthetically, and time
becomes an inexorable force, calling destruction in
the symbol of the deteriorating house where once there
had been light and joy, with only the elemental Mrs
McNab to combat it. The quest for reality dramatised
in Mr Ramsay's intellectual attempt to reach the end
of the alphabet, yet foundered on 'R' (significantly
his own initial and symbolic of the ego he cannot transcend)
and Mrs Ramsay's mystical communion with the lighhouse
( a traditional symbol of knowledge) is continued in
this section by the figure of the 'searcher'.
The searcher hopes to find 'some absolute good, some
crystal of intensity ... something alien to the processes
of domestic life ... which would render the possessor
secure.' (144)
The searcher's quest is frustrated: there is no absolute,
no escape from process, no security, and thus Lily takes
up the quest at the beginning of Part 111. 'What does
it all mean, what can it all mean?'(159), utilising
the perceptual modes of both Ramsays. She realises that
she cannot simply have faith only in Mrs Ramsay as this
has failed before. Instead she must incorporate fact
and vision: 'One wanted .. to be on a level with ordinary
experience, to feel simply that's a chair, that's a
table, and yet at the same time, It's a miracle, it's
an ecstasy.' She constantly acknowledges that there
is no one way of knowing people, similar to James' realisation
that 'Nothing is simply one thing' (202)
It is the whole complex being of Mrs Ramsay that she
is trying to capture in the purple triangle on the canvas
- a triangle that corresponds to the 'wedge of darkness',
the hidden side to Mrs Ramsay which emerges in her encounter
with the lighthouse, as well as to her more public talent
for creating relationships, weaving the social fabric,
embodied in the triangular shape of the sock she is
knitting.
She attempts to call upon Mrs Ramsay to help her vision,
but the vision only comes after the urgency subsides
('One got nothing by soliciting urgently .. Let it come,
she thought, if it will come') and she realises that
it must unite both modes of perception, and at this
moment she imagines Mrs Ramsay there - 'There she sat'.
She is not in flowers as Lily as previously imagined
her, but in a more characteristic pose, knitting. The
ecstasy has been combined with something more ordinary.
However, the process of knowing is not yet complete,
for Mrs Ramsay's love engenders love, and Lily immediately
moves to the edge of the lawn to offer her sympathy
to Mr Ramsay. When she feels that he has receive it,
and Carmichael has consecrated the moment with his embracing
gesture (the work of art as an act of love), she repeats
the words of Christ, 'It is finished', and by comparing
Carmichael to an 'old pagan God', Woolf brings together
Christian and pagan mythologies to extend the significance
of this 'ordinary miracle', making the reader feel that
Mrs Ramsay's love is eternally present, that it transcends
religious categories, that it is simply, as Lily suggested
earlier, necessary in order for the 'world to go on
at all'. This is the final vision Lily experiences.
Painting and novel are completed together. Lily unites
the perceptual modes of both the Ramsays, combining
the intellectual, rational and analytical with the intuitive,
contemplative and mystical. But she also combines the
qualities of the Ramsays in another sense. Mr Ramsay's
search is verbal. Whether chanting 'The Charge of the
Light Brigade', or looking forward to give a lecture
in Cardiff, or seeing all human knowledge as a great
alphabet. Mrs Ramsay's search, on the other hand, is
wordless. She achieves her wishes, forms social relationships,
brings hope through the things she does - knitting,
placing the shawl on the skull, bringing unity at dinner.
Allusions
Motif of 'We perish, each alone.' 207, 224 Allusion
to William Cowper's 'The Castaway' repeated by Mr Ramsay
relates to the idea that humans are inevitably left
to grow old and die, and that isolation and loneliness
make up a large portion of our lives. This idea is echoed
throughout the novel, however it is counterbalanced
in the end by Mr Ramsay reaching the lighthouse and
delivering the parcel (Mrs R's attempt to alleviate
loneliness) with a spring in his step 'like a young
man', and by Lily completing her painting and having
her vision. These lines link with the images of isolation
and desolation, and its resolution is inextricably tied
to the symbolic journey to the lighthouse.
It also symbolises Mr Ramsay's emotions and state of
mind at this point of his life. Mrs Ramsay is dead and
he has been left 'a desolate man, widowed, bereft'.
He is getting old and exhausted and he has failed to
reach Z. At that moment his quoting from Cowper's 'Castaway'
symbolises that Mr Ramsay feels that is 'whelmed in
deeper gulfs' beneath a rougher sea than the castaway.
It also suggests his determination to continue his intellectual
pursuits. He reads a 'little shiny book' even in the
boat. Like the castaway, who in the face of certain
death did not abandon his efforts to swim through the
engulfing waves, Mr Ramsay does not give up his endeavour.
Therefore his murmuring, 'Someone has blundered' and
'We perished each alone', besides evoking the sense
of chaos and loneliness of life, shows his unflinching
resolution to pursue his intellectual quest.
References to Tennyson's 'The Charge of the Light Brigade':
21, 36,
Mr Ramsay walks around the garden thinking to himself
of philosophical matters and at times voices outloud
lines from Tennyson's 'The Charge of the Light Brigade'.
Mr Ramsay sees himself in battle, an intellectual rather
tham military confrontation, and attempts to make sense
of the world. The enemy is his inability to fully conceive
reality and reach Z, and he is constantly at war with
himself. The line from the poem most repeated is 'Someone
has blundered', and it suggests that like the men who
had charged into a futile death because of a military
blunder, he too has made a mistake somewhere in his
life that has put him in this position. He knows that
his best work is behind him and that he has not arrived
at an answer (reaching Q and not Z in his metaphorical
alphabet that positions Z as the attainment of truth
and reality) and muses that perhaps had he not married
he might have written better books. This echoes in his
head as the 'blunder', the mistake that has caused his
downfall, yet like so many of his thoughts, it is shown
as just one view that is quickly displaced with its
opposite, acknowledging that marriage and eight children
showed that 'he did not damn the poor little universe
entirely' (76).
On one level Mr Ramsay's reference to the poem is just
another example of what Mrs Ramsay calls his 'phrase-making',
an over-dramatised reaction by a man concerned with
his own importance, yet it also shows the battles that
individuals face in trying to achieve an explanation
for their lives. Like the battle that the poem refers
to, it is doomed from the start, but one must nevertheless
fight to the end, just the other major allusion to Cowper's
'The Castaway', where in the rough seas the man still
swims to the end.
Religious allusions
After having seen Mrs Ramsay sitting with James in
the window with a rapture equivalent to the loves of
dozens of men, Bankes saw Lily's painting of Mrs Ramsay
reading to James, and he thought of Raphael's 'Madonna
and Child' - objects of universal veneration. This allusion,
therefore, becomes a symbol of Bankes' veneration for
Mrs Ramsay. In the same way Mr Ramsay's sharing bread
and cheese with the old fishermen and his son becomes
symbolic. It suggests Christ's breaking of bread with
the fishermen and evokes in the reader the respect that
James and Cam felt for their father. Cam thought, 'he
was most lovable, he was most wise, he was not vain
or a tyrant'. This scene with its religious significance
summons up Cam's old feelings of love and admiration
for her father, and helps her to break away from the
vowed pact she had made with her brother against him.
Social Class
In some of these cases gender representation is inextricably
woven into social class representation. Mrs Ramsay's
reverence of men of great intellect, of chivalry and
manners are all bound to educated men of the privileged
classes. Tansley on the other hand is intellectual but
he is from the working classes and lacks the refinements
and manners of the privileged classes, so that he is
disliked as he knows this is the attitude present at
the house and refuses to bend to their wishes of acting
the lowly-born who should be grateful of his limited
success. He does not play cricket, very much a game
of the privileged at the time, and is not comfortable
with the chit-chat of those who have always assumed
their superiority. The text never interrogates class
issues, but accepts his inferiority on the grounds that
he simply is not a 'polished specimen', with all its
associations of upper class gentility.
The novel explores gender, but again it is through
the eyes of the privileged women, who can afford cooks
and nannies, or in Lily's case, seem to have no financial
problems but can live genteel lives, concerned only
with worrying about not being married and painting.
Those of the working class do not have this luxury and
must marry to survive in many cases. Mrs Ramsay is no
doubt concerned with the plight of the poor and sick,
and pities them greatly, but again it is as if she is
the noble benefactor, going out of her way to help those
down the social scale from her. As she admits in her
relations with others, she wonders if it is only for
the sake that they will admire her and think of her
kindly.
English Patient
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 backwards 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 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.
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 English Patient
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.
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 one
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, Englsih, 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 toremove 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.
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.
******
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 a 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.') 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 ...' 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.' 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 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 in the West as the apex of civilised culture
NPOV
Fiction has often denied its own constructedness, passing
off stories as 'slices of life' and characters as 'real
people', and generally as reflections of the outside
world. They are also presented seamlessly as if life
flows this way. Of course texts are constructions and
must select detail and present events and characters
that are always arbitrary in nature. The modernist writers
of the early twentieth century questioned the premise
that people were 'knowable', and presented more complex
versions of possible identities. Postmodern writers
have gone further and have often called attention to
the actual artifice of the story as well as knowing
that all texts are informed by the existence of others
(intertextuality), that all are constructs, and that
our notions of identity as autonomous selves are mistaken.
The narrative point of view in The English Patient
is used as a device to explore the concept of identity.
(Post-modern texts often alert the reader to its own
artificiality and that it is a 'construct' to highlight
the idea it is a text that is presenting a version and
a set of values, and reminding the reader that it is
not a seamless portrayal of real life and human experiences
but a specially selected version.)
The English Patient is self-reflexive, 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 form and structure.
This is shown through:
- the repeated references to other books (stories that
can be read from Herodotus, bible, paintings, other
art works), the process of reading (Hana), the metaphoric
reading of others' identities
- characters shown as palimpsests, their stories inscribed
oon their bodies, the old identity erased and replaced
by the new. Yet their earlier stories are revealed during
the course of the current action, either as story they
tell about themselves or by other characters with knowledge
of their past or told by the narrator. Similarly, the
Italian landscape and desert are palimpsests for other
stories, which have been inscribed and erased throughout
history.
Mapping, espionage, the architectural structure of
the villa, the trompe l'oeil murals and mirages all
function as tropes that refract and reflect these notions
about identity. These all draw attention to the notion
of reality, truth and fact, showing them to be not fixed
and stable, but arbitrary and shifting.
The novel itself is yet another story, a fiction that
is told to the reader. Kim in a quotation from the Kipling
novel feels ' he would arrive at the solution of a tremendous
puzzle' as we do as readers as the novel is layered
on so many levels as well as being a mystery. Like Kip
defusing a bomb, trying to work out the 'trick' we as
readers attempt to find meaning of the EP's identity.
This is shown with the end of one particular plot strand
('So you have run me to earth' 252) yet throughout the
novel we have seen that identity is not fixed so this
ambiguity makes us see that other interpretations are
possible. In this way the work of the sapper, described
in minute detail is yet another trope for the process
of decoding and understanding a story about story and
identity.
Frequency in which events are narrated with an incremental
addition of etail in the pivotal events between Almasy
and Katherine.
1942 crash which causes the burns: 5, 174-175; both
versions are told by the English patient before he tells
us about the 1939 crash, in which Katherine is injured.
1939 crash: 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)
Three versions of leaving Katherine in the cave: 169-170,
248-249, 256-261.
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 to Caravaggio, aman 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.
Essay Opening
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.
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