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The Film The English Patient The Novel The English Patient In the Skin of a Lion Relevant Links Right: Michael Ondaatje  Photo by: Isolde Oblbaum  http://www.digidot.com/sal9697/Michael_Ondaatje_photo.html

• Psychological reconstruction of the characters:
• Hana --sees herself as a curse
• Caravaggio--obsessed with revenge
• The English Patient
• "The Heart of the organ of fire"--the relationship between Almasy and Katherine

Where is the mutual attraction?
• Almasy --in lack of social grace, his reservation, his following her, his warning to the husband, and his writing into the book Histories, his story about being a slave to her
• Katherine--her story about the Queen and Gyges, her pictures, her slapping him
• the sand storm--his story about a nation battling against the wind
Passion: love-making on Christmas eve --"New Lovers . . . smash everything."
• Almasy --his story about being a slave to her
• Katherine--her story about the Queen and Gyges, her slapping him
• What has love to do with the war?  Human body and the land?
• ownership--K's shoulder, and the end of her neck
• betrayal
• Clifton's role
• The International Sand Club, the suicide of Madox, the "betrayal" of Almasy
• the last speech by Katherine --meaning that love, unlike war, transcend boundaries?

• Setting:

Places:
1. the Villa San Girolamo in Tuscany; a nunnery, a field hospital, and a besieged fortress 43; --the half-destroyed chapel p. 11 +  kitchen, oval-shaped library
2. South Cairo; the desert;
3. Kip: the English countryside; Lahore; Kip sleeps in a church
Time:
1. right after WWII 28-29; 1943 the first Canadian infantry p. 49;
2. South Cairo1930-1938: 1936 p. 142,
3. The novel's fluid narration: usually starting with the climax of an episode, or its disastrous ending and then do flashbacks to the episode.
• e.g. Caravaggio's experience of stealing ; p. 39
• Hana's first encounter with Kip 75 -- first from Hana's perspective, then Caravaggio's and then Kip's
• Kip's knowledge of Hardy's death p. 110. 112, 113;
• Katherine and Almasy
• Lord Suffolk and the Holy Trinity's death (before "In Situ")

The first part: Chaps I - III

• The second World War in different cultural contexts:
• Before and during the war: Africa: pp. 18=19 < ---> Desert tribes: pp. 19-17; 22-23
• Italy: after the war
• The characters' experience of the war:
• Hana: white lion p. 40; p. 51; p. 83-84
• Kip: Isaih, Queen of Sheba, p. 70; Virgin Mary p. 77
• Post-war reconstructions: through culture p. 33
• Hana and Caravaggio: each with their own sad history, from evading the other to communication  p. 39; p54
• Hana and the English patient
• Hana and her father 41; 84; 90
• reading/writing: Hana's p. 12, 93; p. 61, the English Patient's

The second part: Chaps IV - half of IX:  I. Love Relationships in the Context of War

• Katherine and Almasy: (1936 - 1942) pp. 142 -

1. Chaps IV - VI: their relationships re-told in fragments
(Chap V: first dream - polite distance - a gap - about what they hate - Almasy's wounds and being disassembled - wall pp. 155-56
Chap VI: the Buried Plane -- Caravaggio's intrusion p. 167)
Chap IX: re-told to Caravaggio
 
• Why do they fall in love with each other? --filled with violence and the fight for ownership
• Katherine's reading and "self-education": p. 144
• her dream -- her attraction to Almasy 150
• ownership: the two's dialogue p. 152, his question of Madox;p. 162
• mutual devouring: p. 170
• differences: 170
• cannot change him; conflict of will pp. 158, 172

 
• What's the significance of their relationships?
• the role of The Histories: Almasy's description, p. 119, his writing p. 172; Katherine's reading p. 232- 34


6. First ending: pp. 174-75; summary/interpretation of their relationships and Almasy's question pp. 236; 238
 

• Kip and Hana: 1945: mutual comfort, understanding with distance

1. Hana's recognition of Kip pp. 103-104; Kip annoyed
2. Kip in need of Hana pp. 113-115
3. the pouring of milk p. 123
4. keeping the distance 127; differences: different ideas about the river 129; celibacy (Platonic intimacy) p. 225-26
5. mutual understanding: 1) she can read him (his neutral look)  p. 178; Kip means Asia to her p. 209; Hana writes him into a book of poetry; 2) p. 270

II. Post-Colonial Identities

• International bastards --their identity and home-coming
• The English patient--1. his background p. 165; 2. back to the palace of winds
• Kip--
• his background pp. 200-201; his brother in jail
• his job, fighting the English wars 122-23; working for the English army "assumed English fathers, following their codes like a dutiful son." p. 217 educated pp. 184-
• his anonymity: p. 197-98; hated confrontation 200
• his cave-swinging, admiring Western arts; his dependance on the statues

III. Constructions of Spatial and Post-Colonial Identities

• Mapping & the desert -- the desert==like an old sea, water as the exile, water people, swimming in deserts, a place of pockets, 259
• (1) the desert: Palace of the wind, a place of pockets, e.g. cave of swimmers
• (2) the mapper's work -- 1. the explorers, nationless p. 138;

2. lovers of desert as a boundary-less space and words:
• pure zone between land and chart between distances and legend between nature and storyteller.  p. 246
• Madox 241-243 vs. Almasy (Odysseus); p. 257;
• Almasy's experience as being accused as a spy (just because of his affair and his foreign name) "I came to hate nations," says the English patient. "We are deformed by nation-states" [p. 138].
• What's against mapping:
1. desert: "The trompe l'oeil of time and water" (259) -
2. desire: "Only desire makes the story errant, flickering like a compass needle. . ." (248).
3. nomadism and thief: "This traffic in things, here glossed as nomadism and thievery, signifies not least an improper or indeed unlawful separation of things, of  properties, from their hegemonically proper contexts" (p. 233 "Minefield Readings: The Postcolonial English Patient.")

 
• (3). Colonialism's attempts to know and to own:the nations' battle for territorial ownership (19)
• Love and the war, desert and human body--all have to do with 1. ownership and boundaries, or the giving up of them

e.g. the cave scene
• everything is a gift p. 257
• pp. 257-59 Almasy's time-travelling as a jackal
• the pollen--demon lover?  260-61
 
• Possible postcolonial/allegorical readings: crossing the boundaries or staying within
 
• Caravaggio: from his fear of intimacy to his care for Hana and Kip.  e.g. 266; 289
• The English patient's reconstructions of the past relationships:
• before his stories: he is one without any identity 48
• first ending:  pp. 174-75  (passion: Fire -- "the heart is an organ of fire" (97)
• second ending: pp. 257-259 in question-answer forms.
• third ending: in 1942 pp. 259-261  from violence to acceptance.
"I believe in such cartography--to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books" [p. 261]
• Kip's indepedence: "they would never have dropped such a bomb on a white nation" [p. 286]
• 281-  ; 294 -
• Hana's --  p. 292-293; 295-96

I. Setting:(Photos)

• Toronto the Good and the Grey:
• In the words of Hugh Hood,

"I thought that the bridgets and ravines were the most important imaginative properties on the Toronto scene.  . . .
I still think that Toronto is a city where sooner or later you find yourself going down into a dark place in the ground."
• Bloor Street Viaduct, Victoria Park filtration complex

 
•  Time 1913-1940

(Ambrose's disappearance 1919;  1921 the hiring of searcher; 1924 Patrick as a searcher,
 
• The have's vs. the have-nots:  Rowland Harris vs. Alice and Nicholas Temelcoff, Ambrose Small vs. Clara, Alice and Patrick
• Rowland Harris p. 29 Commissioner of Public Works, sees the bridge as his first child 29
• Working class --logger (dynamiter, , bridge builder, tunneller, tanner (130-31; their sufferings)
• the Immigrant-workers:
• hardships: Patrick's father ( Hazen Lewis)saving the holstein, p. 11-14; river drives 16-17; bridge builders p. 25-27 (tarrers p. 27)
• different ways of claiming the country:
• 30 loggers p. 7; 10 skaters p. 21-22
• the bicyclist p. 27
• the dangerous beauty of their work -- Nicholas Temelcoff  34-35; his history, p. 43-
• Nicholas' immigration 45; free of the bridge 49

 

 
 
 

Daniel Stoyanoff his tale, p. 44

Nicholas --language as barrier 43; the talking picture
The Immigrants' learning the language 47
If they do not speak in English in public, they will be jailed.  133
 

• Patrick as a searcher
• bugs and moths: p. 9-10
• Patrick and his father p. 15; 18;

 
• Style: the use of painting and filmic techniques (e.g. camera perspective, jump-cuts, p. 11; zoom in and out p.14 )  e.g.  p. 34; chiascuro

 

General
• Michael Ondaatje: biography, Canadian & World Encyclo.
• Michael Ondaatje: from the Well Known Canadians Page
• Michael Ondaatje:  biblio & film trailer
• Michael Ondaatje:  bio and links

 

 

For further Studies

• Michael Ondaatje:  bio and biblio.from Emory
• Michael Ondaatje: An Overview from Brown U.

• Morning Star (local)
• TIME Magazine
• Washington Post
• USA Today
• Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
• San Francisco Chronicle
• San Francisco Examiner
• The Book-Lover's Guide to Cinema [5.0/.50]
• The BigScreen Cinema Guide - Reader Reviews
• and more . . .

Visual and Fun Sites:

• The English Patient : excerpts of the text matched with stills and audio files from the Miramax production.  Interesting visually.
• The Film's Promotion Photos

• Michael Ondaatje: An Overview  from G. Landow's Canadian Literature
• Michael Ondaatje by Willem Dafoe on The English Patient, Bomb, Winter 1997, pp.14-19
• The Salon Magazine interview with Michael Ondaatje
• Two versions of a Knight-Ridder interview. One in The Seattle Times, the other in The Salt Lake Tribune
• MICHAEL ONDAATJE INFORMATION
• An Index to The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje  by Lisa Mirabile
• The English Patient (the film) Site: Stills, Reviews, links, a well-designed and informative site.
•  The English Patient and Intertextuality: an interesting article on the promotion and different receptions of the film.
• Essay: Herodotus and The English Patient