The English Patient

The English Patient

First edition cover
Author	Michael Ondaatje
Cover artist	Cecil Beaton
Language	English
Genre	Historiographic metafiction
Publisher	McClelland and Stewart
Publication date	September 1992
Publication place	Canada
Media type	Print (hardback and paperback)
Pages	320 pp
ISBN	0-7710-6886-7
OCLC	26257641

The English Patient (1992) is a non-linear North African/Italian Campaigns of World War II themed romantic drama novel by Sri Lankan-born-Canadian novelist Michael Ondaatje. The story deals with the gradually revealed histories of a critically burned English accented Hungarian man, his Canadian Army nurse, a Canadian-Italian thief turned British intelligence operative, and an Indian-born British Army sapper as they live out the end of the war in an Italian villa. The novel is distinguished by awards as a work of fiction: the Canadian Governor General's Award (1992) and the Booker Prize. The award-winning film of the same name (1996) is an adaption. The narrative examines with depth and detail the main characters.

Plot summary

The historical backdrop for this novel is the North African/Italian Campaigns of World War II. Hana, a troubled young Canadian Army nurse, lives in the bombed out and abandoned Villa San Girolamo in an Italian Monastery, which is filled with many hidden, undetonated bombs. All she knows about her English patient is that he was terribly burned beyond recognition while in a plane crash before being taken to the British hospital by Bedouin. He also claimed to be British speaking English; his only possession is a well worn copy of Herodotus' histories that survived the fire. He has annotated the book with many pieces of information that constantly recalls memories in great visual detail of his explorations in the desert; yet remains unable to recall is name. The patient is, in fact, László de Almásy, a desert explorer portending as a Hungarian Count; just one of many members of a British cartography group. Instead, He choses to erase his identity and nationality.

Caravaggio, a Canadian in the British foreign intelligence service since the late 1930s, was a friend of Hana's father, who died in the war. His skill as a thief was his entre to the world of spying and seeks out Hana when he learns she is at the villa. He also learns that she was there taking care of a burned patient. Caravaggio bears physical and psychological scars; to spy he remained when German forces gained control in northern Africa and was eventually caught, interrogated and tortured with his thumbs cut off. Seeking vengeance three years later, Caravaggio (like Almásy) is addicted to morphine, which Hana supplies.

Two British soldiers enter the scene at the villa when Hana plays a piano. Kip, an Indian Sikh trained as a sapper or combat engineer that specializes in bomb and ordnance disposal, explains that pianos were often booby-trapped by the Germans. So he decides to stay in the villa to rid it of its dangers. Kip and the English Patient immediately become friends.

Prompted to tell his story, the Patient begins to reveal all: An English gentleman, Geoffrey Clifton, and his wife, Katharine, accompanied the patient's desert exploration team. The Patient's job was to map the desert and the Cliftons' plane aided in the task. Almásy fell in love with Katharine when she read aloud from Herodotus' histories at the campfire. They soon began a very intense affair, but in 1938, Katharine cut it off, claiming that Geoffrey would go mad if he discovered them.

War broke out in 1939 so the expedition team decides to break base camp; Geoffrey Clifton, along with Katherine on board, offer Almásy transport out of the camp in the plane. Geoffrey reveals his knowledge about the affair by crashing the plane on arrival at camp in order to kill all three. Geoffrey dies immediately; Katharine is horribly injured and Almásy takes her to "the cave of swimmers" -- a place discovered during the expedition -- where she is covered by a parachute while he seeks help. Three days later he makes a British-controlled town, but being incoherent just makes them all the more suspicious of him especially with a foreign surname. They detain him as a spy.

Almásy escapes but realizes it was too late to save Katharine, so he allows capture by the Germans, helping them spy cross the desert into Cairo. Eventually he collects Katherine's body but the Germans site him and he goes down in flames. Almásy parachutes covered in flames which is when the Bedouins find him.

Caravaggio, suspected that the Patient was not English and adds detail; Geoffrey was a British spy that had knowledge of the affair and that that Almásy was known collaborating with the Germans.

Kip becomes close to Hana despite he having a brother reticent of the West. That Kip volunteered willingly for military service and trained as a sapper by the Lord Suffolk, an English gentleman, who befriended Kip welcoming him into the family. He became very skilled. In England, Kip suffers when Lord Suffolk and his team are killed by a bomb and he becomes emotionally removed from everyone and the world. So, he decides to leave England, began defusing bombs in Italy and becomes best friends with a British Army sergeant who is eventually killed in a bomb explosion.

When Kip forms a romantic relationship with Hana, he reconnects to humanity, becomes a part of a community again and feels comfortable as a lover. Over the wireless he learns that the United States has dropped the atomic bomb on Japan. He becomes depressed and separates himself from everyone, including Hana. He eventually leaves.

Characters in The English Patient

Almásy

Count Ladislaus de Almásy is the title character. He arrives, under Hana's care burned beyond recognition. He has a face, but it is unrecognizable and his tags are not present. The only identification they have of him is that he told the Bedouins that he was English. Thus, they call him just the English Patient. Lacking any identification, Almásy serves as a sort of blank canvas onto which the other characters project their wishes. Hana finds in him redemption for not being at her father's side when he died in a similar fashion without anyone to comfort him. Kip finds a friend. The irony in the tale arises in that Almásy is not, in fact, English. Rather, he is Hungarian by birth and has tried to erase all ties to countries throughout his desert explorations.

Because of his complete rejection of nationalism, many of Almásy's actions which would otherwise seem reprehensible are somewhat forgiven. To a man with no nation, it is not wrong to help a German spy across the desert. The German is simply another man. Almásy is portrayed in a sympathetic light. This is partly because Almásy tells his own story, but it is also because Almásy always adheres to his own moral code.

Almásy is also at the center of one of the novel's love stories. He is involved in an adulterous relationship with Katharine Clifton, which eventually leads to her death and the death of her husband, Geoffrey Clifton. Katharine is the figure who leads Almásy to sensuality. He falls in love with her voice as she reads Herodotus. Sensuality—in both the sexual and observational senses—is a major theme to the novel.

The character is loosely based on László Almásy, a well-known desert explorer in 1930s Egypt and who helped the German side in World War II. Almásy did not suffer burns or die in Italy, but survived the war and lived until 1951.

Hana

Hana is a twenty-year-old Canadian Army nurse. Hana is torn between her youth and her maturity. In a sense, she has lost her childhood too early. A good nurse, she learned quickly that she could not become emotionally attached to her patients. She calls them all "buddy," but immediately detaches from them once they are dead. Her lover, a Canadian officer, is killed. Hana comes to believe she is a curse whose friends inevitably die. Symbolic of her detachment and loss of childhood, she cuts off all of her hair and no longer looks in mirrors after three days of working as a nurse.

In contrast to this detachment, upon hearing of her father's death Hana has an emotional breakdown. Then she puts all of her energy into caring for the English Patient. She washes his wounds and provides him with morphine. When the hospital is abandoned, Hana refuses to leave and instead stays with her patient. She sees Almásy as saintlike and with the "hipbones of Christ." She falls in love with the English Patient in a purely non-sexual way.

The character of Hana is entirely paradoxical. She is mature beyond her years, but she still clings to childlike practices. She plays hopscotch in the Villa and sees the patient as a noble hero who is suffering. She projects her own romanticized images onto the blank slate of the patient, forming a sort of fairytale existence for herself. A strong relationship with sapper, Kip, is also formed during his stay at the villa.

Kip

Triumph 3HW 350cc motorcycle used by Kip in the novel

Kirpal (Kip) Singh is an Indian Sikh. Kip was trained to be a sapper officer by Lord Suffolk who also, essentially, made him a part of his family. Kip is, perhaps, the most conflicted character of the novel. His brother is an Indian nationalist and strongly anti-Western. By contrast, Kip willingly joined the British military, but he was met with reservations from his white colleagues. This causes Kip to become somewhat emotionally withdrawn.

The one place in England where Kip is completely and unreservedly accepted is the household of Lord Suffolk, the eccentric English nobleman who develops the practice of dismantling unexploded German bombs, a complicated and highly dangerous discipline – and who becomes Kip's mentor, friend and in effect surrogate father. Kip's emotional withdrawal becomes more pronounced when Lord Suffolk and his team are killed while attempting to dismantle a new type of bomb, which detonated. (It should be noted that Charles Howard, 20th Earl of Suffolk, was an actual historical person, who did develop the practice of dismantling bombs and was indeed killed in the manner described in the book).

After this event, Kip is ordered to Italy where he meets Hana. He and his partner hear her playing piano, and, as musical instruments were often wired, entered the villa to stop her. Kip's partner leaves the villa but Kip stays on to clear the large number of mines and booby-traps he believes the Germans have left and sets-up camp in the courtyard.

Kip and Hana become lovers and, through that, Kip begins to regain confidence and a sense of community. He feels welcomed by these westerners, and they all seem to form a group that disregards national origins.

They get together and celebrate Hana's 21st birthday, a symbol of their friendship and Kip's acceptance. He leaves and never returns, though later in his life he often thinks of Hana.

David Caravaggio

David Caravaggio is a Canadian thief and long-time friend of Hana's father. His profession is legitimized by the war, as the Allies needed people to steal important documents for them. Caravaggio arrives in the villa as "the man with bandaged hands." His Italian captors had cut off his thumbs when he was caught in Florence. He recalls the one who ordered the act was named Ranuccio Tommasoni; this is a reference to a man by the same name who was murdered by the historical Caravaggio in 1606. Physically and mentally, he can no longer steal, having "lost his nerve."

Hana remembers Caravaggio as a very human thief. He would always get distracted by the human element in a job. For instance, if an advent calendar was on the wrong day, he would fix it. She also has deep feelings of love for Caravaggio. It is debated if this love is romantic or simply familial; however Caravaggio does display a romantic love towards Hana in parts of the book.

Caravaggio is also addicted to morphine, as is Almásy. He uses this to get information out of Almásy.

Caravaggio hears of the atomic bomb being dropped on Japan and comments that he does not believe the Americans would have dropped it on a country of white people. Michael Ondaatje stated in an interview on BBC Radio 4 broadcast 9 August 2012, that most people think this comment is attributed to Kip, but it was in fact Caravaggio.

Katharine Clifton

Katharine is the wife of Geoffrey Clifton. She has an affair with Almásy which her husband discovers. She is Oxford educated. Almásy falls in love with her as she reads from Almásy's borrowed copy of The Histories around a campfire.

Katharine and Clifton met at Oxford. During the context of events told by The English Patient, she had been married to Geoffrey for only a year. The day after they get married, she and Geoffrey fly to the desert to join Almásy's expedition crew. Once the affair begins, she is torn by guilt and eventually breaks off the affair. After Geoffrey kills himself, and they are stuck in the desert, she admits she always loved Almásy.

Geoffrey Clifton

Katharine Clifton's husband. He joins Almásy's exploration group as another desert explorer, but is in fact on a secret mission of the British government (military intelligence) to make detailed maps of North Africa. The plane he "owns" is not a "wedding present," but Crown property. To perform his mission, he leaves his beautiful young wife in the desert with the real explorers. Everything else follows.

Geoffrey and Katharine Clifton were based on Sir Robert Clayton East-Clayton, 9th Baronet of Marden, and 5th Baronet of Hall Place, Maidenhead, and his wife, Dorothy, both of whom were dead by the time the novel takes place. Clayton's plane, a Gipsy I Moth, was called "Rupert," and both he and Dorothy were pilots. Clayton died of acute anterior poliomyelitis contracted within two months of completing an actual spring 1932 expedition to the Gilf Kebir for which he hired Almásy and Pat Clayton (the basis for the character of Madox); Dorothy died in an airplane accident in 1933.

Film adaptation

It was adapted into a film of the same name (1996) by Anthony Minghella.

References

• Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven. "Ondaatje's The English Patient and Questions of History." Comparative Cultural Studies and Michael Ondaatje's Writing. Ed. Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek. West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 2005. 115-32.
• Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven. "Michael Ondaatje's 'The English Patient,' 'History,' and the Other." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 1.4 (1999)[1].

External links

• Michael Ondaatje discusses The English Patient on the BBC
• The writings of László Almásy, available in English translation.