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The English Patient (Michale Ondaatje)

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1. What is the genre?

Global—Society > Historican

Secondary—Worldview > Disillusionment

2. What are the conventions and obligatory scenes for the genre?

Conventions

One Central Character The English Patient, who worked first for the English in World War II and then for the Germans, lies helpless in the villa surrounded by three characters.  Like the English Patient, Caravaggio was a spy during the war.  He suffered as a consequence of events put in motion, in part, by the English Patient. Hana lost the man she loved to the machinations of war as the English Patient lost Katherine. Kip’s intelligence and skill as a sapper mirrors the English Patient’s intelligence and skill mapping the desert.

Big Canvas (internal or external + social problem added by Status internal genre): World War II and the temporal and geographic landscape of four people and four continents.  

Clear Revolutionary Point of No Return: The use of atomic bombs in Japan renders all of their external roles in life — military intelligence, nurse, and sapper – impotent.  In the villa, power shifts from the English Patient to Caravaggio when Caravaggio reveals that he understands Almasy’s story better than Almasy, because Almasy thought his life was private, and Caravaggio knew its public ramifications. 

Vanquished Are Doomed to Exile: After the bomb drops on Hiroshima, Kip leaves the group and the Villa forever.  In the story within a story, Katherine and Almasy are left in the Cave of Swimmers after George crashes his plane.

The Power Divide Hana’s nursing powers versus the death all around her; Kip’s defusing skills vs. mega bombs and landmines hidden everywhere; Caravaggio’s powers as a spy and thief versus torture; individuals who attempt to do the hard but incremental work of defusing mines, nursing, and loving each other vs. atomic weapons. 

Win-but-lose/lose-but-win ending: Although atomic weapons threaten them all and dwarf their attempts to make life meaningful and safe, Kip and Hana have good and seemingly indestructible characters. Caravaggio has succeeded in ferreting out the truth about the English Patient and his past.  The English Patient heard Katherine express her love for him before she died, and although it is a bitter pill to swallow, he knows the truth about the public context and ramifications of his private actions.

Obligatory Scenes

Inciting Threat to the reigning power: In the greater landscape of the story, the allies have recently prevailed over the formerly omnipotent German troops, ending WWII in Europe but not yet in Japan. 

Protagonist denies responsibility to respond: Hana, a nurse, continues to tend to the wounded, as always; Kip, a sapper who defuses mines, continues his work in the same way. 

Forced to respond, protagonist lashes out: When the nurses and patients are moved to begin the long journey home, Hana refuses to go, insisting on remaining with the English Patient, who has no say.  Kip, slogging through mud and mines during the retreat, travels in his mind to the artwork in churches “that showed judgement, piety and sacrifice.” Caravaggio, recovering from having been tortured by the Germans, learns that Hana, the daughter of his friend, is in the villa with the English patient, and he decides to find her.

Each character learns what the Antagonist’s object of desire is: Hana realizes that war has killed everyone she loves, and will continue to do so.  Kip discovers a new type of bomb with a trick built into it that is designed to kill anyone who attempts to defuse it. Caravaggio hears the English Patient reminisce in detail and then say he can’t remember his name, and he suspects him of hiding his identity.  In the story within a story that the English Patient tells about his previous life, Katherine – the woman he was in love with — ends their affair to protect her husband, George, from going mad.   

Initial strategy fails: Hana’s efforts to separate herself from love in order to avoid loss fail when she begins a relationship with Kip. Despite his skill, Kip is not there to save his friends and superiors when a bomb they are trying to defuse detonates.  Caravaggio asks Hana to give the English Patient morphine so that he will reveal the truth, but Hana refuses. In the story within a story, George does go mad and attempts to kill himself, Katherine, and the English Patient in a plane crash.  Although only George dies immediately, the English Patient is tortured all the more because Katherine is wounded.

Protagonist, realizing they must change their approach to turn the power tables, reaches all is lost moment: Caravaggio bypasses Hana and delivers a morphine cocktail to the English patient, but because he is also an addict, he joins the English patient in a morphine haze. Kip hears news of the detonation of atomic bombs over Japan – a bomb that renders his skills impotent and targets a nonwhite civilization like his own. Hana loses Kip even though he is not killed. In the story within a story, the English Patient – now known by his name, Almasy — enters the desert in search of medical help for Katherine, leaving her alone in the Cave of Swimmers.

Revolution Scene: The Americans drop the atomic bomb, seizing power not just from Japan, but from the realm of individual intervention personified by Kip.  Kip points a rifle at the English Patient, holding him responsible for the actions of Western Civilization, but then he exercises the power of restraint, throwing down the rifle and leaving the villa. Hana writes a letter to her only surviving family member, her step mother, and confronts the real source of her grief – the death of her father– directly. Caravaggio reveals to Almasy that he worked for British Intelligence and knows both the private and public truth about Almasy. In the story within a story, Almasy returns to Katherine too late.  He carries her to an abandoned plane to bring her body back to civilization.  When his plane crashes, a desert tribe works to heal his wounds so that he can express his negative gift and show them where the weapons are hidden in the desert.

Protagonists Are Rewarded on one or more levels: The war ends. Caravaggio has all his questions answered, and ceases to be haunted by Almasy, who retreats toward death. Hana reconnects to her only living family member and plans her return home, and in the future, Kip becomes a doctor, a father, and a husband.  Living separate lives, he and Hana remain tied by the invisible threads of love and memory. 

Learn more about obligatory scenes and conventions.

3. What is the point of view?

POV: Free indirect style.

Learn more about point of view.

4. What are the objects of desire?

Kip wants to protect innocent people by disarming landmines; Hana wants to comfort the English Patient as she could not comfort her father when he died; Caravaggio wants to uncover the truth about the English Patient.  The English Patient wants to tell his story, and in the story, he wanted Katherine.  The allies want the war to end in victory.

Learn more about objects of desire.

5. What is the controlling idea / theme?

Tyranny prevails when we ignore our interdependence and the relationship between the public and the personal worlds.

Learn more about controlling ideas.

6. What is the beginning hook, middle build and ending payoff?

Beginning Hook: The English Patient lies in bed, his entire body covered with burns, while his nurse Hana washes him, and he tells her stories beginning with the way he fell burning from a plane into the desert.  World War II has just ended in Europe, and the English Patient and Hana are alone in a villa that had served as a makeshift hospital until the other allied nurses and patients moved on.  Hana, having just learned that her father died, had chosen to break ranks and stay behind to nurse the dying English patient.  Her decision draws two other men to the villa to live through this transition time with her and the English Patient:  David Caravaggio, a past friend of her father’s recovering from being tortured by the Germans, and Kip, a sapper who defuses mines for the British and who is drawn to the villa when he hears Hana playing the piano — a common way of triggering a hidden bomb.

Middle Build:

Once Kip ascertains that there is no bomb in the piano, he sets up a tent outside the villa for an indefinite amount of time while he works to clear the villa and the local area of bombs, and he and Hana enter into an intimate relationship.  Meanwhile, the English patient tells Hana the story of his tragic love affair with Katherine Clifton, the wife of his colleague, George Clifton, who broke off the affair with him because she thought George would lose his mind.  But Caravaggio suspects that the English Patient is a Hungarian named Almasy who spied for the Germans, putting in motion events from which the rest of them have suffered, and against Hana’s wishes, he decides to coerce the truth out of him with a mixture of morphine and alcohol.  With the morphine cocktail in him, the English Patient tells Caravaggio how George Clifton flew his plane with Katherine in it directly at the English Patient, attempting to kill all three of them, but killing only himself, wounding Katherine, and missing the English Patient entirely.  The English Patient tried to save Katherine, but she died, and when he tried to fly her body back to Cairo, he crashed and burned.  

In the present, Kip risks his life again and again, defusing ever more complicated, ever trickier bombs, and losing several of his beloved colleagues when the bombs they attempt to defuse detonate instead.  Then one evening, Caravaggio accidentally dislodges a bomb in the Villa’s library.  Kip slides and catches the bomb in midair, saving all their lives.

Ending Payoff:

His tongue loosened by morphine, the English Patient reveals that his name is, indeed, Almasy, and he describes his relationship to Katherine in more detail, including his efforts to save her after the plane crash.  When Caravaggio asks Almasy if he killed Katherine’s husband, Almasy replies that he had never imagined that possibility.  With that assurance, Caravaggio decides to reveal to Almasy the truth:  Katherine’s husband was a British spy, so Almasy’s affair with Katherine had been a matter of national concern.  Caravaggio worked as a spy tracking Almasy, losing him when he returned to the desert to get Katherine. 

In present time, Kip hears that Truman has dropped the atomic bombs on Japan, and he grabs a rifle and points it at Almasy, blaming the English and Western culture for annihilating an entire city of non-white civilians.  “Do it,” Almasy says, but Kip tosses the rifle aside and instead, gets on his motorcycle and leaves the villa.  He drives away on his motorbike. Years in the future, Kip thinks of Hana, and separated by time and space, they move through life with unconscious synchronicity, as if connected by an invisible thread. 

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