Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient

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Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient

World War II was a traumatic and life-changing experience for all who lived through the

time period. Michael Ondaatje’s novel, The English Patient is set in the direct aftermath of this

turbulent and violent era. Each of his characters is effected by the death and violence that go

hand in hand with war; Hana in particular is profoundly changed by her experience as a nurse in

an Italian hospital. Hana is a woman in ruins, both physically and mentally; by looking at her

experiences with death and her relationships to the English Patient, Kip, and her surroundings,

she can be seen as a representative of the victims of war, a complex human face on the backdrop

of the battleground. By comparing these traits of hers with the psychological perspective on death

and war, Hana is shown to begin life as an innocent child, though subject to human fears and

mortalities, death and war permanently handicap her to the joys of life.

Hana is born in Canada, far removed from the war-torn Europe that will someday ruin

her. Throughout the text, Ondaatje mixes flashes of Hana’s past into the narrative through other

characters or by her own tale to illuminate her ultimate loss of innocence. One of the most

important insights of Hana comes from the character Caravaggio. When he is reminiscing about

the past with her, he talks of many things, including a birthday party where she sang on a

barstool, prompts him to observe that “you didn’t know the exact words but you knew what the

song was about” (Ondaatje 53). He remembers a carefree Hana, sweet and innocent, who

understood the melody of life, even if she did not understand all the details. This...

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