The English Patient Through Maria's Eyes

Perfection in a Place
She roams through the villa. There is something childlike in the way she explores the library, the sun reflecting off her hair as she finds herself in a new world. She can wander all day, gets lost in the freedom of it. The villa is a haven of lost souls. Four people talking in a room, their voices drifting out into the calm night, up into the stars, a perfect existence.
In this place she is free from the burdens of war. The burned man is not a victim of war. He is something to care for, to look after; a reason to live. I am free. She thinks this, running her hand through her hair as she looks through the window into the garden. The Indian is a dot in the distance playing with a bomb, it is a game. There is no danger in the villa, no fear of death. Those are the sentiments of war. Here, in this mini utopia, there is only peace.

Hana: Despairing Glue
In an abandoned villa that exists in the aftermath of a war, a burned man, a thief, and a sapper settle into their makeshift home. It is Hana who brings together this odd assortment of war ravaged souls. She is the only person of the four who has an intimate relationship with every one of the other three. The English patient, who she has cared for with a passion bordering on obsession since the death of her father is “her despairing saint, ”(3) and the reason she stays in the villa after her unit has moved on. Both Carravaggio, an uncle figure from Hana’s childhood, and Kip, who becomes Hana’s lover, find her in the villa and stay because of her. Ondaatje communicates the destructive tendencies of nature through Hana’s relationships. Caravaggio works to destroy Hana’s relationship with the English patient through his obsession with revealing the enemy, the German spy that hides behind a burned face. Kip turns his back on his relationship with Hana when the United States bombs Japan, suddenly believing what his brother had told him, that he was “a fool for trusting the English.” In opening his eyes to the irrational hate his brother’s national prejudice he is blind to the love that is standing right in front of him. As we can see from Hana’s relationships, not even the mini utopia of the villa is free from the “feuds of the world”(218).

Together Forever
“And so Hana moves and her face turns in a regret she lowers her hair. Her shoulder touches the edge of a cupboard and a glass dislodges. Kirpal’s left hand swoops down and catches the dropped fork an inch from the floor and gently passes it into the fingers of his daughter, a wrinkle at the edge of his eyes behind his spectacles.”

Their nations tear Hana and Kip apart. A bomb dropped a continent away to end a war wipes out their chance to laugh, love and grow old together. The pain of this destruction is still evident fifteen years later on Hana’s face and in the wrinkle at the edge of Kip’s eyes. But more powerful than the haunting pain of their severed relationship is the existence of a single strand of intimacy which connects them still. This strand withstands the destruction of prejudice and obliterates the boundaries of nations to forge a connection between two people living on opposite sides of the planet. In the coincidence of their worlds in this moment it is as if the two of them are back twirling in the library of the villa or curled up next to each other in Kip’s tent. The symmetry of their actions in these lines proves that even the most abominable blunderings of nations cannot affect the strand that unites two souls.

An Eraser of Nations
The desert steals identities. Not even Almasi, “one of the great desert explorers. . . who knew every water hole and had helped map the Sand Sea,” can prevent the desert from taking advantage of him. The first time the desert instigates a shift in Almasi’s identity is when it kills Katherine. When he is plucked out of the desert by an English outfit under suspicion of being “just another international bastard,” in anguish he realizes that he has left Katherine to be swallowed up in the desert, with no hope of rescue (251). It is at this moment that Almasi abandons his English identity to become a German spy. Three years later, the desert takes his identity once more, this time stealing the most vital physical manifestation of a man’s identity. When Almasi’s plane crashes, the desert takes his face and leaves him “naked beside the blazing aircraft” (6). This time, the desert’s intervention leaves Almasi back in the hands of the English. By treating his identity as a plaything, the desert destroys Almasi’s life, but what he desires most is rooted in the disregard for boundaries and nations that has caused him so much pain. Almasi wants “to walk upon such an earth that had no maps”(261). In the English Patient, the desert proves to be just such a place.

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Can there ever exist a world without nations? Would this world in fact be ideal or would it violate human nature? How can one criticize nations when the idea of a nation-less existence is virtually unfathomable? What aspect of nations make them so destructive? Is it the blind allegiances they create, or is it instead the sentiment of antagonism towards the people other nations that they promote? Are nations detrimental to the human condition because of their tendency to discourage individual thinking or rather because when people identify with a certain nationality they mold themselves to that nationality, losing a part of who they are?
Why do humans seek danger and pain? What is it that makes a man crazy enough to mess with a bomb that could explode at any minute? What is it that makes a man crazy enough to long for a dead woman? Is it love or stupidity or ignorance? If it is love, how can a man who feels it leave the work he loves and the woman he loves because of an event he could not see, feel, touch, hear or smell? Why are we so eager to discover the truth? Why can’t we settle with a world of blissful ignorance?