The English Patient
is a 1992 novel by Sri
Lankan
-Canadian
novelist
Michael Ondaatje.
The story
deals with the gradually revealed histories of a critically burned
English man, his Canadian nurse, an Italian thief, and an Indian
sapper in the British Army as they live out
the end of World War II in an Italian
villa. The novel won the Canadian
Governor General's Award and
the
Booker Prize for fiction. The novel
was adapted into an award-winning
film of the same name in 1996.
The narrative is non-linear and the main characters are examined in
depth and detail.
Plot summary
The historical backdrop for this novel is the Second World War in
Northern Africa and Italy. Hana, a young Canadian Army nurse, lives
in the abandoned Villa San Girolamo in Italy, which is filled with
hidden, undetonated bombs. In her care is the man nicknamed "the
English patient," of whom all she knows is that he was burned
beyond recognition in a plane crash before being taken to the
hospital by a
Bedouin tribe. He also claimed
to be English. The only possession that the patient has is a copy
of
Herodotus' histories that survived the
fire. He has annotated these histories and is constantly
remembering his explorations in the desert in great detail, but
cannot state his own name.
The patient is, in fact, László de Almásy, a Hungarian
desert explorer who was part of a British
cartography group. He chose, however, to erase his identity
and nationality.
Caravaggio, a Canadian who served in Britain's foreign intelligence
service since the late 1930s, was a friend of Hana's father, who
died in the war. Caravaggio, who entered the world of spying
because of his skill as a thief, comes to the villa in search of
Hana. He overheard in another hospital that she was there taking
care of a burned patient. Caravaggio bears physical and
psychological scars; he was deliberately left behind to spy on the
German forces and was eventually caught, interrogated and tortured,
his thumbs having been cut off. Seeking vengeance three years
later, Caravaggio (like Almásy) is addicted to morphine, which Hana
supplies.
One day, while Hana is playing the piano, two British soldiers
enter the villa. One of the soldiers is Kip, an Indian
Sikh who has been trained as a
sapper or combat engineer, specializing in bomb and
ordnance disposal. Kip explains that the Germans often
booby-trapped musical instruments with bombs, and that he will 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 draw maps of the
desert, and the Cliftons' plane made this job easier. Almásy fell
in love with Katharine Clifton one night as she read from
Herodotus' histories aloud around a 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.
When
World War II broke out in 1939,
the members of the exploration team decided to pack up base camp,
and Geoffrey Clifton offered to pick up Almásy in his plane.
However, Geoffrey Clifton arrived with Katharine and tried to kill
all three of them by crashing the plane, leaving Almásy in the
desert to die. Geoffrey Clifton died immediately; Katharine
survived, but was horribly injured.
Almásy took her to "the cave of
swimmers
", a place
the exploration team had previously discovered, and covered her
with a parachute so he could leave to find help. After four
days, he reached a town, but the British were suspicious of him
because he was incoherent and had a foreign surname. They locked
him up as a spy.
When Almásy finally escaped, he knew it was too late to save
Katharine, so he allowed himself to be captured by the Germans,
helping their spies cross the desert into Cairo in exchange for gas
and a plane to get back to Katharine. He retrieved her body and
carried it to the plane that the Germans had given him. He tried to
fly back to civilization, but the plane was shot down during
flight. Almásy parachuted down covered in flames which was where
the Bedouins found him.
Caravaggio, who had had suspicions that the Patient was not
English, fills in details. Geoffrey Clifton was, in fact, an
English spy and had intelligence about Almásy's affair with
Katharine. He also had intelligence that Almásy was already working
with the Germans.
Over time while Almásy divulges the details of his past, Kip
becomes close to Hana. Kip's brother had always distrusted the
West, but Kip entered the British Army willingly. He was trained as
a sapper by Lord Suffolk, an English gentleman, who welcomed Kip
into his family. Under Lord Suffolk's training, Kip became very
skilled at his job. When Lord Suffolk and his team were killed by a
bomb, Kip became separated from the world and emotionally removed
from everyone. He decided to leave England and began defusing bombs
in Italy. Kip's best friend, a British Army sergeant, is killed in
a bomb explosion.
Kip forms a romantic relationship with Hana and uses it to
reconnect to humanity. He becomes a part of a community again and
begins to feel comfortable as a lover. Then he sees the Bristish
Army sergeant has been killed by a bomb and realizes that, although
the two worked together for so long, he never really knew him. He
becomes depressed and separates himself from everyone, including
Hana. He eventually leaves.
At the end, Almásy asks Hana to give him an overdose of morphine to
kill him. As the "patient" is dying, Hana reads him Katharine's
letter to Almásy as she was dying in the cave, so essentially, the
two die together. Then Hana, with the help of Caravaggio, leaves
the house to move on with her life.
Characters in The English Patient
Almásy
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
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, who was a
well-known desert explorer in 1930s Egypt and who did help the
German side in WWII; but he did not get burned or die in Italy, but
survived the war and lived until 1951. Moreoever, he is believed to
have been
gay .
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. She then 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.
Kip
Kip is an
Indian
Sikh. Kip was trained to
be a
sapper 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.
After this event, Kip decides to leave
England
and work as a sapper in 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 and dies so Kip stays on,
setting 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 twenty-first birthday, a
symbol of their friendship and Kip's acceptance; however, shortly
after, Kip hears news of America's dropping of the atom bomb on
Japan. He comes to the conclusion that the West can never reconcile
with the East, and that America would never have done something so
horrific to a White population. So he leaves and never returns,
though later in his life he often thinks of Hana.
Caravaggio
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 German captors had cut off his thumbs. He, physically
and mentally, 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.
Katharine Clifton
Katharine is the wife of Geoffrey Clifton. She has an affair with
Almásy which her husband finds out about. 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 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.
Sir Robert died of acute anterior
poliomyelitis contracted during an actual 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, TV or theatrical adaptations
In
1996, it was made into a
film of the same title by
Anthony Minghella, starring
Ralph Fiennes,
Kristin Scott Thomas,
Juliette Binoche,
Willem Dafoe,
Colin
Firth and
Naveen Andrews.
References
- "English Patient’s Real Lover was a Gay Nazi"
Times Online Accessed 16 August 2009
- "Lady Dorothy Clayton East Clayton, Nee Durrant
1906~1933" The Leverstock Green Chronicle Accessed 16
August 2009
External links
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