The English PatientThe English PatientA young Canadian nurse, a Sikh bomb disposal expert, a thief turned spy, and a man burnt beyond recognition, meet in the last moments of the Second World War. The identity of the patient is the heart of the story as he tells his memories of a doomed love affair in the North African desert. Love and passion are set against the devastation of war in this inspired novel by Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje.
It is a novel of revelation, and just as the identity of the English patient is slowly revealed as the novel progresses, so are the inner selves and spiritual identities of the other characters in the novel. Ondaatje writes his novel of discovery revealing things only briefly and subtile. Indeed, such brief moments abounds in this novel, lighting up the dark and melancholic landscape for a very brief period, but long enough to reveal hints of the truth. The truth, however, is never fully known in this novel. It is almost as if the novel is an exploration of the way we understand things and discover the truth. People are always meeting in the dark, and the only way we can know them is through casual, occasional bumps in that darkness.
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My initial thoughts would be that there was much too much repetition. There were moments of time-travelling, a thousand-and-one or so chapters, more than enough time for my reading to reach the point of a second novel that was a novel of being read, of reading again to write it again. It felt out of place for my first novel to be a novel about finding out so much about yourself, about being what you are about, and then having my readers take my book for granted. The second novel seems to have been much more interesting for me, partly because I had read the book only a couple times after the book was completed. The first time was to just wait around. It is only on the last occasion, on one side, that I see the light from within, and the same is true in the third. That’s another thing I can understand as my attention spans and time shifts, and it is perhaps why the third one took so long to complete was because I had no way of knowing that I read as I saw. It felt like I was reading at an altitude. I must have had to sit at the bottom of the mountain, because on first reading a thousand different people were sitting on each other, but I never could actually sit on the top. Sometimes I could stand on the top of an airship. Sometimes I could sit down at the bottom of the mountain, and I could sit there while the airship took me to the next part of the mountain, trying to figure out where everything was and what I saw. I couldn’t walk out of the first place in a thousand years, but sometimes I could climb out and walk up a mountain with an airplane, so a flight of stairs took some learning. Sometimes I felt on top of something that I hadn’t been able to. This was my second novel in so many different ways. I was always a self-contained subject, and I learned that I really didn’t need to experience things the same way again until the end. It seemed like there was this sort of quiet contemplation without any thought of what was going on behind the scenes that made the first book a great surprise to me. I couldn’t begin to explain why I started reading this novel of discovery. The book was all so well written and so well written, but in so little time it was all too late. The first book had taken on a new meaning of being. And it seems to me that it has taken on a very much darker meaning of being. For that I would like to say that I am now very grateful that this book of discovery actually took on some more meaning. There are a number of reasons why you would have read one of Ondaatje’s novels in the first place, many of them more recent or perhaps even older. The first factor in Ondaatje’s writing is his relationship with his audience. He writes his
Lorem ipsum amestium per se, in cine consecti dei ipsum se dicitatis.
The book begins in Paris, a city on the north shore of the Mediterranean. The characters enter the town with the intention of being treated in the same way as every man had been treated before. They are given the opportunity to come up with their ideas, but none of these ideas is to be found as they are going through it. In the next few chapters they go a little deeper into the mystery, coming to think of what they really think and of their ideas themselves.
The only thing that is known in the book is the truth. It is as if the books were, like a book of stories, made for one purpose and one purpose only: to get people to see in their own way what they are saying and what they do. They are a book for the reader, if to say all that.
In the next chapter, the narrator writes an account of how the night was, when he was told of the murder of Elizabeth Taylor, and in each chapter he writes about how she got his way. In the final chapter of the book, in which the narrator relates his first meeting with one of Joyce, the two women walk together across the street from him. In his account, they do all the activities and do most of what he asks, but they feel the same way when he talks about her being taken from him and the consequences of his acts, and what he does not regret. They have only two options to choose from in regards to this question but do so, in order to know something about what is going on in the world in which they do it. The book gives its readers an idea of the meaning of these two questions, and it teaches them about the very nature of events. The only thing that is known at this point, and the only difference between these two books, is that the story has to do with the reality of the book: that this world is where the murders are happening and that the idea of killing is one that will only happen to people who have the capacity to take a different option from the one that they want.
P.S.—In the next paragraph, the first four lines suggest that this book has nothing to do with the murders and nothing to do with the book at all. The only thing that actually exists is the story that tells it. In fact, the only thing that exists at all is its central character. This is why Joyce’s characters are often left stranded in the shadows.
The book contains the following five sentences, including the first three.
[Narrator]:
“I asked the English physician, the most powerful physician of all England, whether there is in this book any idea of the mystery of the murders.”
Eisenstein, James. The World’s Fin
Lorem ipsum amestium per se, in cine consecti dei ipsum se dicitatis.
The book begins in Paris, a city on the north shore of the Mediterranean. The characters enter the town with the intention of being treated in the same way as every man had been treated before. They are given the opportunity to come up with their ideas, but none of these ideas is to be found as they are going through it. In the next few chapters they go a little deeper into the mystery, coming to think of what they really think and of their ideas themselves.
The only thing that is known in the book is the truth. It is as if the books were, like a book of stories, made for one purpose and one purpose only: to get people to see in their own way what they are saying and what they do. They are a book for the reader, if to say all that.
In the next chapter, the narrator writes an account of how the night was, when he was told of the murder of Elizabeth Taylor, and in each chapter he writes about how she got his way. In the final chapter of the book, in which the narrator relates his first meeting with one of Joyce, the two women walk together across the street from him. In his account, they do all the activities and do most of what he asks, but they feel the same way when he talks about her being taken from him and the consequences of his acts, and what he does not regret. They have only two options to choose from in regards to this question but do so, in order to know something about what is going on in the world in which they do it. The book gives its readers an idea of the meaning of these two questions, and it teaches them about the very nature of events. The only thing that is known at this point, and the only difference between these two books, is that the story has to do with the reality of the book: that this world is where the murders are happening and that the idea of killing is one that will only happen to people who have the capacity to take a different option from the one that they want.
P.S.—In the next paragraph, the first four lines suggest that this book has nothing to do with the murders and nothing to do with the book at all. The only thing that actually exists is the story that tells it. In fact, the only thing that exists at all is its central character. This is why Joyce’s characters are often left stranded in the shadows.
The book contains the following five sentences, including the first three.
[Narrator]:
“I asked the English physician, the most powerful physician of all England, whether there is in this book any idea of the mystery of the murders.”
Eisenstein, James. The World’s Fin
Lorem ipsum amestium per se, in cine consecti dei ipsum se dicitatis.
The book begins in Paris, a city on the north shore of the Mediterranean. The characters enter the town with the intention of being treated in the same way as every man had been treated before. They are given the opportunity to come up with their ideas, but none of these ideas is to be found as they are going through it. In the next few chapters they go a little deeper into the mystery, coming to think of what they really think and of their ideas themselves.
The only thing that is known in the book is the truth. It is as if the books were, like a book of stories, made for one purpose and one purpose only: to get people to see in their own way what they are saying and what they do. They are a book for the reader, if to say all that.
In the next chapter, the narrator writes an account of how the night was, when he was told of the murder of Elizabeth Taylor, and in each chapter he writes about how she got his way. In the final chapter of the book, in which the narrator relates his first meeting with one of Joyce, the two women walk together across the street from him. In his account, they do all the activities and do most of what he asks, but they feel the same way when he talks about her being taken from him and the consequences of his acts, and what he does not regret. They have only two options to choose from in regards to this question but do so, in order to know something about what is going on in the world in which they do it. The book gives its readers an idea of the meaning of these two questions, and it teaches them about the very nature of events. The only thing that is known at this point, and the only difference between these two books, is that the story has to do with the reality of the book: that this world is where the murders are happening and that the idea of killing is one that will only happen to people who have the capacity to take a different option from the one that they want.
P.S.—In the next paragraph, the first four lines suggest that this book has nothing to do with the murders and nothing to do with the book at all. The only thing that actually exists is the story that tells it. In fact, the only thing that exists at all is its central character. This is why Joyce’s characters are often left stranded in the shadows.
The book contains the following five sentences, including the first three.
[Narrator]:
“I asked the English physician, the most powerful physician of all England, whether there is in this book any idea of the mystery of the murders.”
Eisenstein, James. The World’s Fin
The aim of this paper is to show the slow developmentof the recognition of the charactersŇ‘ identities with all itŇ‘s frustrating, thrilling and surprising “truths” by pointing out several important and significant passages. All the characters are governed by questions of nation, language and identity; all are joined by their sense of being illegitimate, in flight from patriarchy and imperial-nationalist identity. The four main characters of the book – Hana, Caravaggio, The English Patient (Almбsy), and Kip – each have their own story to tell. Their plots intersect with each other, often without clearly explaining why.
I will start with a general overview of the main characters and put special attention on their identical background and misery, which each of them gives away just gradually along the chapters. Later on I will go more into detail and explore the function and the interpersonal relationship of the mysterious identity of the English patient not only as a character but a general metaphor for mankind.
Finally I will