Identity Of The Patient example essay topic

A 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. The aim of this paper is to show the slow development of the recognition of the characters' identities with all it'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 (Alm " as), 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 draw a conclusion and present my investigations made in this seminar paper. With this paper I hope to show clearly that the contents of this book are strongly related to the question of the self and the other and that identifying truth is a matter of self-finding, which sometimes turns out to be work for a lifetime and which seems to roll up mankind. The term "identity " In general we differentiate between two "kinds" of identity. On the one hand there is the so called social identity, which stresses self-interpretation as a member of a certain social group and on the other hand there is the personal identity, which puts it's emphasis on individuality and distinctiveness.

This distinction is widely known as "patchwork-identity". Both identities are only a subgroup of many different subjectively interpreted identities that everyone of us has innate. "Life is made up of many windows and real life is only one of them". The question is, which of these identities will I present, which of them will I develop and how do I realize other persons' identities? In the novel "The English patient" both of the above mentioned identities can be discovered within all the ex pressingly dynamic characters. If we take Hana as a first example we might simply say that she is a canadian nurse aiding injured soldiers during the second world war.

This statement can be referred to as social identity - it is the way Hana behaves within society. Her personal identity, however, is much more subtile and not that easy, neither to discover, nor to understand. The same, of course, applies to the other characters, especially to the English patient, whose rediscovery of identity is the focus of this novel and mainly dealt with. His story of identical background is told in flashbacks, as he has lost his memory after an air crash in the middle of the Sahara and afterwards only gradually regains his mind again. While he desperately makes an effort to remember everything, Hana and Caravaggio had better forget their past. The young nurse admires her patient, although she does not know anything about him - where he may come from, what his name is, who he actually is - he has no identity.

For her, the english patient is a ghost she is in love with, because his spiritual charisma keeps her alive after she has lost her family and friends. 2) The Characters from the beginning on) Hana in the focus The book begins with pages and pages of description of an unnamed character, a woman who lives in an Italian deserted building, caring for a burnt man, we also do not know yet. We finally learn, on page 32, that her name is Hana, the 20-year-old nurse. Hana seems selfless, practicing just a series of devoted actions.

The young nurse, without an explained past, performs her nursing tasks on this dying man without an apparent physical or historical identity in such an emotional way that the reader may come to the conclusion that the patient might be a very good friend of hers: "I love him. He is a saint. I think. A despairing saint.

Our desire is to protect them". (p. 48) Later on we learn that her beloved father and her boyfriend, both, have recently been killed in the war, and now the solitude and passion for her patient helps her to deal with their death. Moreover, Hana was pregnant and has recently had an abortion (p. 83) and now feels she destroyed the child. She strongly believes that a curse lies on her and her consuming love means death because everyone she loves dies. She cuts off all her hair, discards her femininity in grief. She longs to perform acts of reparation by nursing the English patient, who is described as the ghost she is caring for (p. 28).

The Allies are moving up the ankle of Italy and the Germans are in retreat. Hana has found a beautiful Italian villa in which she can take care of the skinless man and embellish his last days, as he obviously does not have enough to care for himself. Through burnt lips her nameless patient begins to speak. This is the point where memories start to return and gradually he reveals his identity like a mosaic built of thousands of little stones that slowly become a picture. He remembers his accident, which arouses our sympathy for him as a victim, and next that he was an idealistic explorer seeking to document the desert, and find a lost ancient city, near where there had been a lake in the midst of what is now desert. Hana too has something to hide: herself.

'There was something about him she wanted to learn, grow into, and hide in, where she could turn away from being an adult. ' (p. 52) The Villa seems at first to be a respite from the war. Hana is nomadic in it, half-adult and half-child (p. 14). She is there not only to nurse, but because she is fed up with war. 'She would not be ordered again or carry out duties for the greater good.

' But the Nazis are not yet defeated, and one cannot but think that this wish to close her eyes and make the war go away is child-like. The only catch is that she is not safe in the Villa, for it, like the English patient's story, is mined. Hana more and more seems to be overtaxed. She cries a lot and does not cope with her destiny as a lonely woman. She needs someone to help her with her duties, someone who is her opposite, who will her. b) The English patient in the focus Our first impression of the English patient is of course that he is a patient, in the very dependent position. But he seems to be impressively stoical, never feeling sorry for himself.

He always seems to live in his own internal world, which only cons its of patterned memories and emotions. We are told of his life before his accident and he seems, at first glance, to represent reason, refinement, knowledge, and universality. Indeed, he seems to know about everything, from jazz-music to Plato. As a learned explorer he takes one book with him, his precious Herodotus, and attached to its pages are all his collected drawings, notes, discoveries and letters. But, though he knows so much, we hear absolutely nothing about his family history. His past is a blank.

The second section, 'In Near Ruins', introduces David Caravaggio, a charming thief of Italian-Canadian extraction and a friend from Toronto of Hana's father Patrick. Again it is told in a flashback that Caravaggio has had his thumbs cut off by the Italians as punishment for his activities as British thief and spy. In one note able scene he climbs into a bedroom in the German high command by night and steals back a camera in which there is a photograph of himself, silently observed by a woman who is having sexual intercourse with a German officer. Caravaggio hears of Hana's whereabouts, travels to join her and the two circle each other in the villa, a kind of love between them, he a quasi-uncle of 45, but Hana is in love with the English patient. Caravaggio is actually the one who first realizes that the English patient is not really English, in fact. Asked about his past, the English patient begins to tell the others his story and reveals parts of his identity.

His real name is Almasy, though this is not definitely confirmed until Chapter IX. He spent the years from 1930 to the start of World War II exploring the North African desert. His job was to make observations, draw maps, and search for ancient oases in the sands. Along with his fellow European counterparts, Almasy knew every inch of the desert and made many trips across it. In 1936, a young man from Oxford, Geoffrey Clifton, and his new wife Katharine, joined their party. Geoffrey owned a plane, which the party found especially useful in helping to map the desert.

The explorers, Almasy, and the Clifton got along very well. One night, after hearing Katharine read a passage from his book of Herodotus, Almasy realized he was in love with her. They soon began a torrid and tumultuous affair. Everywhere they stole glances and moments, and they were obsessed with each other. Finally, in 1938, Katharine broke up their affair, telling Almasy that Geoffrey would go mad if he ever found out. Although their affair was over, Almasy remained haunted by her, and he tried to punish her for hurting him by being particularly mean to her in public.

At some point, Geoffrey somehow found out about the affair. World War II broke out in 1939, and Almasy decided to close up their camp and arranged for Geoffrey to pick him up in the desert. Geoffrey arrived in his plane with Katharine. Geoffrey attempted to kill all three of them by crashing the plane into Almasy, who was standing on the ground. The plane missed Almasy, but the crash killed Geoffrey, left Katharine severely injured, and left them with no way to escape the desert. Almasy placed Katharine in a nearby cave, covering her with a parachute for warmth, and promised to come back for her.

He walked across the desert for four days until he reached the nearest town, but when he got there, the English army would not help him get back to Katharine. Because Almasy had a foreign-sounding name, the British were suspicious and locked him up as a spy, prevented him from saving Katharine. Almasy was eventually released, but he knew it was too late to save her. He worked for the Germans, helping their spies make their way across the desert into Cairo. After he left Cairo, he walked to the cave to get Katharine. He took her dead body and placed it in a plane that had been buried beneath the sand.

The plane malfunctioned during their flight and caught fire. Almasy parachuted down from the plane, his body covered in flames. That was the point at which the Bedouins found him and cared for his burns. Little by little, the English patient tells this whole story. Caravaggio, who has suspected the English patient was not really English, has his suspicions confirmed. He fills in gaps for the Almasy, telling him that Geoffrey Clifton was really an agent of British Intelligence and that Intelligence had known about Almasy and Katharine's affair the whole time.

They knew Almasy had started helping the Germans and planned to kill him in the desert. They lost him between Cairo and the plane crash, and now, of course, he is unrecognizable.