The English Patient (Themes)

Themes

War

The English Patient is centered around the events of World War II, but markedly absent from its narrative is any mention — save the bombing of Hiroshima, which has great personal significance to the character Kip — of any of the major action or history of the war itself. Rather, it focuses on the personal experiences of war of the four main characters and, in doing so, portrays war as an endeavor that results not in glory, but destruction and, ultimately, betrayal to those who take part. Hana's letter to her stepmother Clara at the end of the novel most clearly states the betrayal of the war towards those who joined its efforts; Clara was the only one of Hana's family not to join the war effort, and Hana asks of her, "How were you not fooled like us?" What Hana — and the others — were "fooled" by was the sense of honor and duty that drove each of them to join the war effort. Hana, Kip and Caravaggio have all voluntarily left their own countries to join the Allied forces in Europe, but the novel focuses on what the war took from these characters: Caravaggio is horribly maimed; Hana loses her father, her lover, and her child; Kip, who joined the British army out of a sense of loyalty to England and the West, not only loses his best friends in a bomb disposal, but in the end is betrayed by the West by the bombing of Hiroshima, which he views as an act of blatant racism. The patient himself, who wanted nothing to do with the war, is unable to save Katharine as a direct result of the conflict and is forced to take sides; he also loses his best friend, Madox, who commits suicide as a direct result of the war. None of the characters exit the war with a sense of honor or glory; as Caravaggio notes angrily, "The armies indoctrinate you and leave you here and they f―off somewhere else to cause trouble, inky-dinky parlez-vous."

Nationhood and Identity

The patient says to Hana that the idea of nations is one that deforms people. The novel The English Patient explores the attempt of the characters to transcend the constrictions of nationhood, and their helplessness and inability to do so because of the greater power of politics, government, and the war that surrounds them.

In the desert, the patient and his international band of friends had no need or desire to label themselves according to their nationality; being in the desert — removed, at that time, from the politics of Europe — they were able to forego their labels of nationhood. However, the war brought the politics of Europe to the desert; it forced the disbandment of the Geographical Society and therefore, symbolically, put an end to the patient's dream of transcending nationhood. The patient's best friend, Madox, shoots himself rather than be forced to ally himself with Britain against other men simply because of their nationality. Most tragic of all is the very fact that it is the patient's name, and the nationhood it implied, that kept the patient from saving Katharine's life. The English soldiers stationed outside the desert took him prisoner rather than help him rescue Katharine, simply because his Hungarian name denoted an association — albeit nonexistent — with their enemy. In the end, the patient is only able to shed his identity through the literal loss of his face, as he is severely burned beyond recognition.

Kip, too, attempts to transcend the constrictions of nationality by attempting to straddle both his Sikh culture and the Christian British culture; his attempt at assimilation into British culture is especially symbolized in his adoption of the nickname given him by the British soldiers — throughout the book, he is known as "Kip" rather than "Kirpal Singh." For Kip, however, transcendence is even more impossible because of his Asiatic race: he, a member of the British army's elite sapper unit, is indelibly marked as Indian by the very color of his skin, the "brownness" of which is evoked repeatedly throughout the novel. Even in the heat of dismantling a bomb, he is still conscious of the brownness of his skin and, therefore, his status as an outsider. Kip originally joins the British army with the conviction that he can transcend the superior racism of the British, and therefore gain acceptance, simply by ignoring the laws, written and unwritten, that impinge upon his personal freedom. However, by the end of the novel, it is the bombing of Hiroshima — an act of extreme violence that he views as motivated by the racism of the white West against Asia — that makes clear to Kip that he cannot escape the racism with which the West would regard him. He leaves the British Army and returns to his own nation, resuming his name, Kirpal Singh. Although he loves her, that Kip leaves Hana behind denotes that he completely gives in to the labeling of nationality that he had so desperately tried to overcome: he leaves because he associates Hana, as a white Canadian, with the racism of the West.

Trauma, Personal Grief, and Healing

The novel, in its focus on the private, internal lives of each of the characters through their personal memories, examines the effect of trauma and, in the case of Hana, the progression from trauma, through denial, to acceptance.

The narrative of the novel is often propelled by the characters' dealing with anguish: for example, the English patient finds himself unable to face the death of Katharine, and his emotional shock and inability to fully face her death is reflected in the very narrative structure of the novel: his conversation and hallucination greatly alters as he begins to either speak or think about her. For example, the chapter "Cairo 1930 – 1938," the patient is speaking with Hana of his past and discusses the beginning of his affair with Katharine; throughout this chapter, he speaks in the first person. However, during his drugged conversation with Caravaggio he is eventually forced to confront the circumstances surrounding her death. The patient's narrative style shifts considerably: rather than speaking in the first person, he begins to speak in the third person of Almásy (the patient's true name), causing Caravaggio to wonder whether the patient is speaking as himself or as another person. This third person narration disconnects the patient from the person of Almásy and thus from Almásy's pain, making it the only way possible for him to discuss Katharine's death. The patient's hallucinations and refusal to acknowledge his true identity allows him to keep separate from his personal anguish and, therefore, to not have to face it fully. As he says to Hana, "Death means you are in the third person."

But, while the patient does not seem to receive a respite from his grief except through his own eventual death, Ondaatje uses the character of Hana to show redemption through acceptance: Hana's character development is one from debilitating grief and denial, to healing and acceptance. Throughout the novel she refuses to acknowledge the death of her father, even going so far as to tell the patient that he is alive in France. The entrance of Kip into her life, and the happiness and comfort he brings her, helps Hana to be able to feel happiness again. Although in the end Kip leaves her, Hana is left with the ability to move on in her life. Her transformation is evident in the letter she writes to Clara at the end of the novel, in which she is finally able to openly discuss her father's death.

Geography

Hana, in her letter to her stepmother Clara at the end of the novel, writes, "Do you understand the sadness of geography?" Hana is discussing her sorrow at being unable to be with her father, Patrick, while he died in France and she was tending soldiers in Italy. Here, her sorrow is a helpless sorrow aimed at the impossibility of transcending the physical space of geography. In The English Patient, the physical geography of the earth symbolizes nationhood and the separateness that it forces between people. During their courtship, Hana constantly imagines Kip as an extension of his continent and as the embodiment of all of India. Indeed, their relationship is consistently described in terms of the geography they represent: for example, an intimate moment between Hana and Kip is described: "Hana now received this tender art, [Kip's] nails against the million cells of her skin, in his tent, in 1945, where their continents met in a hill town." The climax of the novel occurs when Kip, unable to separate Hana from the West he has come to despise, leaves her and returns to India. Hana returns to Canada; their retreat to their respective homes is as impossible a separation to surmount as the larger, political forces that drove them apart.

However, Ondaatje creates an ending that is almost magically surreal, allowing Kip and Hana to transcend the physical space of geography: as Hana, in Canada, knocks a glass from a shelf, Kirpal Singh reaches down to catch a falling fork in India. This ending to the novel seems to leave the hope that there is indeed a plane that transcends the constraints of both the political and the physical world.

Topics For Further Study

• The film version of The English Patient has several differences from the original novel. Watch the film after reading the novel. Compare and contrast the differences in the plot and the characters. Why do you think these changes were made and how do they change the overall story? Take a chapter or event from the book that was not in the film, and write a scene for it. How would you have fit this scene into the film?
• At the end of the novel, Hana writes a letter to her stepmother, Clara, and discusses in detail the death of her father, Patrick. This letter signifies an emotional healing on Clara's part because she had previously been unwilling to acknowledge his death. Kip and Caravaggio, also, have been emotionally wounded by the events of the war. Do you think that, like Hana, either of them achieved a sense of healing by the end of the book? Write a letter, in the voice of either Caravaggio or Kip, that reflects what you believe their state of mind is by the end of the novel.
• Kip's brother is jailed in India for refusing to join the British army. At this time, India is a colony of Great Britain. India would gain independence only two years after the end of WWII, in 1947. Kip's brother is a protestor against the British presence in India. Write a research report on the independence movement in India. Who were the key figures? How is the British influence still seen in India today? What has been the impact of Indian culture on the British?
• The English Patient is actually a sequel to an earlier novel, In the Skin of a Lion, which takes place in Canada and includes the characters of Hana and Caravaggio. Read In the Skin of a Lion. What are the thematic elements in the earlier novel that carry over to The English Patient? How do you feel Hana and Caravaggio have changed as characters? Based on your reading of In the Skin of a Lion, how do you think their lives would have played out if they had never gone off to war?
• The bombing of Hiroshima by the United States is, to Kip, an unforgivable act of violence that he believes is fueled by racism. Kip is also angry over the way that he hears the bombing reported over the radio. Research news clippings on the bombing of Hiroshima, from the time of the bombing to the present time. How is the bombing reported? What is the tone? Is the bombing condoned? Is there ever a sense of injustice or wrongdoing that would reflect Kip's feeling? See if you can find news sources from different countries regarding the bombing. How have different cultures responded to the bombings? What is the lasting impact on those cultures today, specifically in Japan?