The English Patient

1
The English Patient

• Michael Ondaatje

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Michael Ondaatje

• Philip Michael Ondaatje (born 12 Sep. 1943)
• Born in Ceylon to a Burgher (see Note in the
  next page) family of Dutch-Tamil-Sinhalese-Portugu
  ese origin, in 1954 moved to England with his
  mother.
• Became a Canadian citizen in 1962.
• Received his BA from the University of Toronto
  and his MA from Queens University in Kingston,
  Ontario

3
Note

• The Burghers are a Eurasian ethnic group,
  historically from Sri Lanka, consisting for the
  most part of male-line descendants of European
  colonists from the 16th to 20th centuries (mostly
  Portuguese, Dutch and British) and local
  Sinhalese women.

4
Michael Ondaatje

• Teaching University western Ontario in London,
  Ontario 1971-1988, York University and Glendon
  College in Toronto.
• Style of fiction non-liner, creating a narrative
  by exploring many interconnected snapshopts in
  great detail.

5
Michael Ondaatje

• Works in other genres
• Memoir Running in the Family (his Sri Lankan
  childhood)
• Poetry The Collected Works of Billy and the Kid
  (1970) Theres a trick With a Knife Im Learning
  to do Poems 1973-1978 (1979) both won the
  Governor Generals Award

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Michael Ondaatje

• Fiction
• Anil's Ghost winner of the 2000 Giller Prize,
  the Prix Médicis, the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book
  Prize, the 2001 Irish Times International Fiction
  Prize and Canada's Governor General's Award.
• The English Patient winner of the Booker Prize,
  the Canada Australia Prize, and the Canadian
  Governor General's Award and later made into a
  motion picture, winning the Academy Award for
  Best Picture. The English Patient can be
  considered a sequel to In the Skin of a Lion
  (1987).

7
Michael Ondaatje

• Fiction
• In the Skin of a Lion winner of the 1988 City
  of Toronto Book Award and finalist for the 1987
  Ritz Paris Hemingway Award for best novel of the
  year in English. It was selected for the first
  "Canada Reads" edition in 2002. A fictional story
  about early immigrant settlers in Toronto, In the
  Skin of a Lion eventually won the competition.
• Coming Through Slaughter a fictional story of
  New Orleans, Louisiana about 1900, very loosely
  based on the lives of jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden
  and photographer E. J. Bellocq. Winner of the
  1976 Books in Canada First Novel Award

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Michael Ondaatje

• In 1988, was made an Officer of the Order of
  Canada (OC) and two years later became a Foreign
  Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts
  and Letters.
• Brother Christopher Ondaatje, a philanthropist
  and businessman.

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The English Patient

• A 1992 novel by Sri Lankan Canadian novelist
  Michael Ondaatje
• A story about the gradually revealed histories of
  a critically burned man, his Canadian nurse, a
  Canadian thief, and an Indian sapper in the
  British Army as they live out the end of World
  War II in an Italian villa

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The English Patient

• Plot summary (see the handouts)
• Characters
• Almasy/the English Patient
• 1. A slippery, cryptic character, not adept at
  self-examination.
• 2. Lacking any identification, serving a sort of
  blank canvas onto which the other characters
  project their wishes (healing wounds).

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The English Patient

• Characters
• Almasy
• 3. An Hungarian not an English (irony)
• 4. Rejecting nationalism, so can be forgiven for
  his actions (e.g., helping a German spy across
  the desert)

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The English Patient

• Characters
• Hana entirely paradoxical
• 1. Internal wound losing her father to an
  accident where he was burned beyond recognition
  lover killed
• 2. Young 20 years old playing hopscotch I the
  villa and seeing the patient as a noble hero who
  is suffering.

13
The English Patient

• Characters
• Hana
• 3. Mature treating patients but immediately
  detaching from them once they are dead Having a
  particular affinity for death.
• 4. Chaining herself to the English patient for
  atonement seeing Almasy as saintlike and with
  the hipbones of Christ falling in love with
  him in a purely non-sexual way,

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The English Patient

• Characters
• Hana
• projecting her own romanticized images onto the
  blank slate of the patient, forming a sort of
  fairytale existence for herself.
• 5. Falling in love with Kip Almasy urges her to
  find that fire (of love) within and to kindle it.

15
The English Patient

• Characters
• Kip the most conflicted character, uncomfortable
  with his own race and being part of a culture
  that was subservient to the British
• 1. Internal wound Lord Suffolks death
• 2. Emotionally withdrawing racial discrimination

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The English Patient

• Character
• Kip
• 3. Regaining confidence and a sense of community
  (Hana)
• 4. Choosing to leave after the dropping of the
  atom bomb on Japan (escaping? Emotionally
  withdrawal again? Or having seen through the
  reality?)

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The English Patient

• Characters
• Caravaggio
• 1. A Canadian thief and long-time friend of
  Hanas father.
• 2. Two thumbs amputated, making him lose his
  nerve (not capable of stealing, physically and
  mentally)
• 3. Coming to the villa to try to get Hana to
  leave, but eventually falling in love with her

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The English Patient

• Characters
• Katharine
• 1. An Oxford-educated firebrand
• 2. Stubborn and feisty
• 3. The figure who leads Almasy to sensuality
  (reading Herodotus)
• 4. Breaking off the affair sense of guilty and
  Almasys dislike of being owned

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The English Patient

• Major themes
• 1. Healing vs. denial
• 2. Passion vs. frigidity
• 3. Drive towards life vs. drive towards death
• 4. The desert
• 5. Loneliness vs. connection
• 6. Surrogate parents
• 7. debt