Books  vs.  Bombs:    

Reading  Objects  in  Michael  Ondaatje’s  The  English  Patient    

Katharine  Schwab  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An  Honors  Thesis  in  English  Literature  

Stanford  University  

May  15,  2015  

 

Advisor  

Professor  Saikat  Majumdar  

 

Second  Reader  

Dr.  Alice  Staveley  

 

 

 

       

Table  of  Contents  

 

Introduction:  Toward  a  Theory  of  Things…………………………………………………………...…1  

Chapter  One:  Books……………………………………………………………………………………………10  

  Embodied  Reading:  Recuperating  Subjectivity  Through  Books  

The  Fragmented  Book:  Historical  Reconstruction  and  Contradiction  

Losing  Faith:  The  Book  and  the  Violence  of  Colonialism  

Chapter  Two:  Bombs………………………………………………………………………………………….28  

English  Fathers:  War  and  the  Western  Weapon  

Intimate  Defusing:  The  Psycho-­‐Sensuality  of  the  Bomb  

Ideological  Epiphany:  The  Bomb  as  Colonizer  

Conclusion:  Toward  a  Relational  Identity……………………………………………..……………..46  

Works  Cited…………………………………………………………………………………………….…………48  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       

Acknowledgements  

 

It  has  been  a  year  and  a  half  since  I  first  read  The  English  Patient,  which  

stunned  me  with  its  depth  and  reaffirmed  my  deep  belief  in  the  power  of  language  

to  move  us.  Thank  you  to  Andrew  Lanham,  who  first  put  this  book  in  my  hands  and  

helped  me  realize  how  much  I  could  excavate  from  it.  Thank  you  to  Saikat  

Majumdar,  who  changed  the  way  I  think  over  the  past  year.  Thank  you  to  the  

effervescent  Alice  Staveley,  who  supported  me  throughout  this  process  with  gleeful  

passion  and  the  utmost  grace.  Thank  you  to  Elizabeth  Wilder,  whose  insightful  edits  

and  encouragements  have  made  this  thesis  possible.  Thank  you  to  the  professors  

and  mentors  I’ve  collected  over  the  past  four  years,  who  challenged  me  deeply,  

dared  me  to  explore  my  mind,  and  helped  me  imagine  what  my  world  can  be.  Thank  

you  to  my  fellow  thesis  warriors,  for  maintaining  a  sense  of  humor—always.  Thank  

you  to  my  friends  for  their  understanding  and  support.  Thank  you  to  my  family  for  

their  unending  love  and  thoughtful  conversation,  and  to  my  mother  especially,  for  

instilling  in  me  a  love  of  books  and  for  her  willingness  to  edit  my  essays  from  the  

very  beginning.    

Last  of  all,  thank  you  to  Mathew  Kuruvinakunnel,  who  was  my  Kip.

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Introduction:  Toward  a  Theory  of  Things  

 “These  days,  history  can  unabashedly  begin  with  things  and  with  the  senses  by  which  we  apprehend  them.”  

-­‐-­‐  Bill  Brown,  “Thing  Theory”    

In  a  description  halfway  through  his  1992  novel  The  English  Patient,  Michael  

Ondaatje  puts  books  and  bombs  in  the  same  room.  “Bombs  were  attached  to  taps,  to  

the  spines  of  books,  they  were  drilled  into  fruit  trees,”  Ondaatje  writes  (80).  It’s  a  

loaded  image:  two  vastly  different  objects  that  normally  reside  in  different  contexts  

and  have  different  connotations  appear  side  by  side  in  his  prose.  By  forcing  books  

and  bombs  together,  Ondaatje  begs  his  reader  to  ask:  Why  put  such  opposing  

objects  in  the  same  space?  How  do  these  two  objects  activate  each  other?  And  

finally,  how  do  these  objects  structure  the  identities  of  Ondaatje’s  damaged  

characters?  In  this  thesis,  I  will  address  these  questions  of  objects  and  identity.    

As  theorist  Bill  Brown  proclaims  in  his  seminal  2001  treatise  “Thing  Theory,”  

history  can  be  re-­‐evaluated  by  using  the  material  world—and  embodied  

experience—as  the  lens  for  critical  inquiry.  Rather  than  continuing  the  humanities’  

continual  probing  of  subjective  experience  though  abstract,  textual  analysis,  Brown  

advocates  for  a  framework  that  uses  objects  to  interrogate  the  boundary  between  

objective  and  subjective,  sensuality  and  mentality,  matter  and  mind.  He  complicates  

the  separation  between  the  subject-­‐object  binary  by  explaining  that  the  world  is  full  

of  ‘quasi-­‐objects’  and  ‘quasi-­‐subjects.’1  Brown  quotes  French  philosopher  and  

                                                                                                               1  Brown  borrows  this  argument  from  Bruno  Latour,  who  uses  Michel  Serres’  terms  ‘quasi-­‐objects’  and  ‘quasi-­‐subjects.’  

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anthropologist  Bruno  Latour,  who  writes,  “things  do  not  exist  without  being  full  of  

people”  (quoted  in  Brown,  12).  Objects,  man-­‐made  and  otherwise,  take  on  an  agency  

of  their  own  when  they  interact  with  people  because  they  structure  physical,  

cultural,  and  emotional  spaces.  We  are  more  intimate  with  our  objects  than  we  are  

with  most  people  –  our  beds  cradle  us  at  night,  our  cars  extend  our  legs,  and  our  

computers  hold  our  deepest  secrets.  If  Brown  reads  history  through  the  lens  of  thing  

theory,  then  with  this  thesis  I  propose  literature  can  be  analyzed  similarly.  These  

days,  literature,  too,  can  unabashedly  begin  with  things.    

This  proposition  poses  an  immediate  problem.  Reading  as  a  practice  is  

embodied  in  physical  space,  but  resides  primarily  within  the  mind.  The  only  object  a  

reader  can  encounter  within  literature  is  the  book  (or  e-­‐reader)  that  they  hold  in  

their  hands.  However,  Brown’s  directive  points  me  to  think  about  the  space  that  

objects  within  narrative  occupy,  despite  their  status  of  being  once  removed  from  the  

reader’s  embodied  experience.  While  we  may  not  experience  a  narrative  sensually,  

the  characters  within  that  narrative  do.  In  The  English  Patient,  Michael  Ondaatje  

imbues  the  objects  he  writes  about  with  physicality  and  emotionality  attuned  to  the  

sensual  experience  of  his  characters.  Reading  objects  as  texts  within  The  English  

Patient  shows  how  the  lens  of  thing  theory  can  shed  valuable  and  necessary  light  on  

the  subjective  realities  of  characters  in  a  fictional  setting,  just  as  Brown  establishes  

objects  as  a  frame  through  which  to  view  history.      

The  English  Patient  follows  Hana,  a  Canadian  World  War  II  nurse  who  cares  

for  a  mysteriously  burned  man  in  a  ruined  Italian  villa.  Kirpal  Singh  or  Kip,  a  Sikh  

sapper  with  British  allegiances  and  Caravaggio,  a  Canadian  thief  whose  thumbs  

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were  cut  off  by  the  Germans,  join  them  in  the  villa.  As  flashbacks  slowly  reveal  the  

patient’s  past,  Hana  rehabilitates  her  traumatized  identity  and  Kip  defuses  bombs.  I  

argue  that  the  villa,  under  its  ruinous  trappings,  is  the  stage  for  a  dance  between  

sensual,  ideological  objects  and  Ondaatje’s  characters.  In  this  thesis,  I  will  focus  on  

books  and  bombs,  which  are  both  present  as  key  motifs  throughout  the  novel.    

Douglas  Mao’s  book  Solid  Objects  provides  a  foundation  in  literary  theory  for  

this  type  of  analysis.  Mao  writes:  

This   feeling  of  regard   for   the  physical  object  as  object  –  as  not-­‐self,  as  not-­‐subject,  as  most  helpless  and  will-­‐less  of  entities,  but  also   as   fragment   of   Being,   as   solidity,   as   otherness   in   its  most  resilient  opacity  –  seems  a  peculiarly   twentieth-­‐century  malady  or  revelation.  (4)  

 His  conception  of  literature’s  fascination  with  objects,  especially  in  the  twentieth  

century,  highlights  objects  as  charged  with  meaning,  both  in  their  commodity  status  

within  postindustrial  capitalism  as  well  as  illuminators  of  subjective  experience.  He  

also  conceives  of  the  object  as  autonomous,  having  its  own  existence  and  in  turn  its  

own  agency  in  the  context  of  constructing  cultural  systems  and  of  shaping  identity.  

Mao  calls  the  object  “extrasubjective,”  but  emphasizes  that  while  the  subject  

dominates  the  object  in  discourse,  there  is  a  dialectical  relationship  between  the  two  

entities  (10).  Using  art  to  rethink  and  challenge  this  relationship  isn’t  new:  “As  poets  

and  pictorial  artists  have  always  known,  the  thing  is  the  greatest  mystery,  and  the  

source  of  all  other  mysteries”  (van  Binsbergen  32).    

Mao’s  understanding  of  the  object  as  both  commodity  and  emblem  and  

therefore  a  potent  force  in  both  societal  trends  and  personal  development  echoes  

anthropological  studies  of  objects.  In  the  discipline  commonly  called  material  

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studies,  anthropologists  study  objects  and  material  culture  from  various  societies  in  

order  to  glean  insights  into  social  practices  and  commonly  held  values,  an  approach  

that  informs  my  study  of  the  object  in  literature.  Scholar  Victor  Turner  modifies  

Mao’s  theory  of  objects  as  commodity-­‐emblems  by  theorizing  two  distinct  “poles”  by  

which  an  object  can  be  evaluated:  the  ideological  and  the  sensory.  Anthropologist  

Nicole  Boivin  explains  that  Turner’s  conception  of  the  ideological  pole  refers  to  how  

an  object  operates  on  a  societal  level  and  reflects  norms  and  moral  codes.  

Contrarily,  the  “natural  and  physiological  phenomena  and  processes”  of  an  object  

occupy  the  sensory  pole  (Boivin  39).  I  use  these  two  poles  to  structure  my  analysis  

of  books  and  bombs  in  The  English  Patient,  where  Ondaatje’s  representation  of  

objects  intertwines  both  anthropological  modes  of  being.  However,  Boivin  hesitates  

to  place  too  great  an  emphasis  on  objects  as  the  vehicles  for  ideas  without  paying  

equal  due  to  their  physicality.  She  offers  phenomenology  as  a  “corrective  to  the  

often  overwhelming  focus  on  abstract  symbolic  systems,  language,  and  

representation”  (92).    By  focusing  on  the  processes  of  perception,  phenomenologists  

provide  a  useful  theoretical  frame  to  counter  the  tendency  for  scholars  to  focus  on  

object’s  representational  qualities.  In  this  thesis,  I  am  careful  to  attend  to  both  

aspects  of  the  object,  and  will  show  how  the  object  is  both  sensual  and  ideological,  

existing  within  a  network  of  meaning  that  includes  physical  and  psychological  space.    

French  theorist  Maurice  Merleau-­‐Ponty’s  Phenomenology  of  Perception  is  key  

to  understanding  the  relationship  between  bodies,  things,  and  the  minds  that  

interpret  them.  Rather  than  establishing  “poles”  of  interpretation  like  Mao,  Turner,  

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and  Boivin,  Merleau-­‐Ponty  attempts  to  erase  the  distinction  between  minds  and  

matter:  

The   thing   is   inseparable   from   a   person   perceiving   it,   and   can  never   be   actually   in   itself   because   its   articulations   are   those   of  our  very  existence,  and  because  it  stands  at  the  other  end  of  our  gaze  or  at  the  terminus  of  a  sensory  exploration  which  invests  it  with   humanity.   To   this   extent,   every   perception   is   a  communication  or  a  communion,  the  taking  up  or  completion  by  us   of   some   extraneous   intention   or,   on   the   other   hand,   the  complete  expression  outside  ourselves  of  our  perceptual  powers  and   coition,   so   to   speak,   of   our   body   with   things.   (373,   his  emphasis)  

 Merleau-­‐Ponty’s  theory  of  perception  advocates  for  a  merging  between  body  and  

thing  because  objects  only  exist  to  us  through  our  sensory  perceptions  of  them.  By  

emphasizing  the  body’s  key  role  in  perception,  he  claims,  “the  body  [is]  the  only  way  

of  being  conscious  of  the  world,  that  subject  and  object  [are]  one”  (Boivin  66).  His  

theory  of  phenomenology  establishes  key  philosophical  backing  for  my  

investigation  into  the  relationship  between  things,  senses,  and  characters’  identities  

in  The  English  Patient.    

  While  Merleau-­‐Ponty’s  perspective  provides  valuable  insight  into  the  

“communion”  between  subject  and  object  through  the  senses,  an  anthropological  

study  by  Janet  Hoskins  puts  the  thing’s  significance  in  context  with  personal  

identity.  Hoskins  finds  that  some  objects  in  Eastern  Indonesia  serve  as  vessels  for  “a  

collective  representation  of  the  past”  and  others  are  “biographical  objects  that  

become  entangled  in  people’s  lives,  and  in  the  process  become  vehicles  of  selfhood”  

(Boivin  116).  Her  study  provides  real  world  precedent  for  my  assertion  that  objects  

in  The  English  Patient  function  as  spaces  for  characters’  negotiation  of  identity.  

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According  to  Hoskins,  the  object  takes  on  an  emotional  significance  as  well,  

becoming  a  highly  personal  collage  of  sensory  information,  memory,  and  identity.    

Daniel  Miller  writes,  “the  whole  system  of  things,  with  their  internal  order,  make  us  

the  people  we  are”  (53).  I  argue  that  these  theories  of  subject-­‐object  relations  

function  similarly  in  literature,  where  a  writer  can  use  objects  as  a  short  cut  to  

establishing  a  character’s  identity.    

  Books  and  bombs,  while  different,  contain  certain  key  similarities.  Both  are  

tied  to  Enlightenment  and  post-­‐Enlightenment  ideologies  that  enabled  Western  

civilization  to  dominate  the  rest  of  the  world  economically,  militarily,  and  culturally  

in  the  20th  century—particularly  in  Britain.  With  weapons  in  one  hand  and  books  in  

the  other,  the  British  conquered  a  vast  colonial  empire  throughout  the  Americas,  

Africa,  Asia  and  Australia,  and  then  colonized  it  with  written  and  spoken  language.    

Western  philosophers  praised  the  merits  of  individual  subjectivity  and  rationality  

over  communal  living  and  emotionality,  and  Western  statesmen  reinforced  their  

ideas  with  weapons  developed  under  the  pressure  of  progress.  Theorist  Ngugi  wa  

Thiong’o  writes  about  the  combined  approach  of  violence  and  ideology  in  his  book  

Decolonising  the  Mind:  The  Politics  of  Language  in  African  Literature.  He  describes  

this  kind  of  colonialism  as  a  combination  of  “the  physical  violence  of  the  battlefield…  

followed  by  the  psychological  violence  of  the  classroom.  But  where  the  former  was  

visibly  brutal,  the  latter  was  visibly  gentle”  (9).  Ngugi’s  reference  to  the  classroom  

as  a  site  of  psychological  trauma  for  colonized  peoples  echoes  his  assertion  that  

“language  was  the  means  of  the  spiritual  subjugation”  (9).  Books  and  bombs,  while  

apparently  different,  both  work  in  favor  of  the  colonialist.  The  characters  and  their  

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objects  are  located  within  the  network  of  global  power,  which  informs  my  definition  

of  ideology.  More  than  simply  a  society’s  value  system,  ideology  encompasses  the  

means  through  which  a  person  understands  and  interacts  with  herself,  her  society,  

and  the  world  at  large.  Implicit  in  this  definition  of  ideology  is  the  fact  that  ideology  

must  always  be  contextualized  within  global  power  hierarchies,  and  that  similarly,  

each  individual’s  pursuit  of  self-­‐understanding  and  identity  operates  within  the  

same  structures.2    

Most  scholarship  of  The  English  Patient  focuses  on  the  novel’s  engagement  

with  colonial  history,  geography,  and  the  body  as  a  space  for  negotiating  hybrid  

identities,  and  sometimes  attempts  to  situate  the  characters  within  ideological  

spheres  of  influence.  Christopher  McVey  argues  that  the  body  is  “a  conduit  into  the  

past  and  the  means  through  which  that  past  might  be  reclaimed,”  an  argument  that  

echoes  across  much  Ondaatje  criticism  (141).  Critics  like  Stephanie  M.  Hilger  attend  

to  how  the  novel  blurs  national  boundaries  and  places  the  individual’s  recuperation  

of  identity  within  the  context  of  a  broad  historical  narrative.    In  his  book  Michael  

Ondaatje,  Douglas  Barber  helps  situate  Ondaatje  within  literary  history  by  

describing  him  as  a  modernist  poet  with  a  symbolic  bent,  a  postmodern  novelist  in  

the  tradition  of  indeterminacy,  and  a  postcolonial  thinker  who  adds  a  dimension  of  

                                                                                                               2  My  definition  of  ideology  is  informed  throughout  this  thesis  by  Louis  Althusser’s  essay,  “Ideology  and  Ideological  State  Apparatuses.”  Althusser  defines  ideology  as  “the  system  of  the  ideas  and  representations  which  dominate  the  mind  of  a  man  or  a  social  group”  (84).  Ideology  is  both  “an  imaginary  assemblage”  as  well  as  a  force  driving  “the  concrete  history  of  concrete  material  individuals  materially  producing  their  existence”  (85).  Althusser’s  definition  foregrounds  the  role  of  ideology  in  material  culture,  claiming  that  ideology  manifests  through  social  practices  and  rituals.  The  subject,  “acting  in  all  consciousness  according  to  his  belief”  carries  ideology  in  everyday  life,  thus  reproducing  the  means  of  production.    (93).    

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political  and  social  action  to  his  work  in  an  attempt  to  give  voice  to  historical  

marginality  (6).  Objects  do  play  a  role  in  some  criticism  of  The  English  Patient,  but  

remain  peripheral  or  figure  into  criticism  about  ownership  in  the  novel.  Significant  

among  these  is  Jon  Saklofske,  whose  article,  “The  Motif  of  the  Collector  and  

Implications  of  Historical  Appropriation  in  Ondaatje’s  Novels,”  reflects  on  objects  by  

treating  the  patient  and  Hana  as  collectors,  and  Ondaatje  as  a  “writer-­‐collector”  who  

recycles  history  through  creative  intervention  (76).  Also  notable  is  critic  Elizabeth  

Kella,  who  writes  that  the  novel  “sets  forth  a  critique  of  human  essence  that  brings  

into  focus  the  material  forces  which  shape  allegiances  and  create  or  destroy  

communities”  (84).  Her  argument,  focused  on  the  connection  between  community  

and  identity,  astutely  notes  the  force  of  materiality  in  The  English  Patient  as  well  as  

objects’  relevance  in  the  formation  of  self.  However,  Kella  claims  that  the  characters  

create  a  community  at  the  villa  that  is  “stripped  of  the  claptrap  of  national  

ideologies,”  which  “allows  them  to  achieve  a  new,  purer  form  of  identity”  that  she  

calls  “essential  selves”  (92).  She  contradicts  herself  by  acknowledging  the  vitality  of  

objects  at  the  villa—which  I  will  show  are  ideologically  charged—while  claiming  

that  the  villa  is  a  clean  slate  for  the  characters  to  rebuild  themselves  after  “crises  in  

their  cultural  identities”  (92).  Situating  my  analysis  within  a  thing  theory  

framework,  I  argue  that  Ondaatje  treats  books  and  bombs  as  both  sensual  and  

ideologically  positioned  objects  that  are  instrumental  in  identity  formation  and  

reconstruction.  

  In  my  first  chapter,  I  focus  on  the  book,  beginning  with  its  ideological  

positioning  as  a  carrier  of  Western  conceptions  of  selfhood.  I  explore  three  central  

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characters’  relationships  with  books,  highlighting  how  their  Western  or  non-­‐

Western  identities  both  inform  and  complicate  their  interactions  with  the  book-­‐

object.  For  Canadian  nurse  Hana,  the  book  is  a  space  for  recuperation  and  self-­‐

building  after  trauma;  for  the  patient,  a  cartographer  who  loves  the  desert  but  

whose  allegiances  are  fundamentally  colonial,  the  book  is  a  space  to  re-­‐write  

history;  for  Sikh  sapper  Kip,  the  book  is  an  untrustworthy  vessel  of  violence.  In  his  

treatment  of  the  book-­‐object  as  a  means  to  explore  his  characters’  identity,  Ondaatje  

supports  many  of  the  key  philosophers  and  anthropologists  I  have  outlined  above,  

imbuing  the  book-­‐object  with  agency  and  ideology.    

  In  my  second  chapter,  I  will  focus  my  analysis  on  bombs,  which  occupy  a  

similar  space  to  the  book  in  terms  of  their  symbolic  importance  and  recurrence  as  a  

motif.  This  chapter  begins  with  analysis  of  weapons  technology  within  Western  

history  and  then  moves  to  Ondaatje’s  portrayal  of  weapons—both  guns  and  

bombs—and  how  he  positions  them  in  relation  to  cultures,  bodies,  and  spaces.  The  

rest  of  the  chapter  investigates  the  connection  between  the  bomb  and  Kip’s  complex  

postcolonial  identity,  while  exploring  the  dynamic  and  ultimately  incompatible  

relationship  between  Hana  and  Kip.  When  the  atomic  bombs  explode  in  Japan,  the  

extreme  violence  becomes  an  epiphanic  moment  for  Kip,  shocking  him  out  of  

passive  allegiance  to  the  English  and  uncovering  the  bomb’s  connection  to  colonial  

trauma.    

  Let  us  turn  to  books.    

       

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Chapter  One:  Books    “A  book,  a  map  of  knots,  a   fuze  board,  and  a  room  of  four  people  in  an  abandoned  villa  lit  only  with  candlelight  and  now  and  then  light  from  a  storm...”     -­‐  Michael  Ondaatje,  The  English  Patient      

As  a  material  object,  the  book  consists  of  a  stack  of  paper,  inked  words,  a  

cover,  and  a  binding  mechanism.  But  as  John  Milton  wrote  in  1644,  “books  are  not  

absolutely  dead  things,  but  do  contain  a  potency  of  life  in  them  to  be  as  active  as  that  

soul  was  whose  progeny  they  are”  (quoted  in  Cummings,  93).  While  the  material  

characteristics  of  a  book  dictate  physical  modes  of  the  reader’s  experience,  the  book  

has  an  abstraction  at  its  core:  “the  words  and  the  meanings  collected  within  it”  

(Cummings  93).  Beyond  the  cover  lies  the  imprint  of  a  human  mind,  focused  by  

intent  and  empowered  by  the  agency  of  articulation.  The  presence  of  the  implied  

author  turns  the  object  into  a  totem  of  human  thought  and  voice,  almost  

anthropomorphic  in  its  significance.  A  book:  paper,  inked  words,  cover,  binding,  and  

humanity,  wrapped  up  neatly  into  a  single  parcel.  However,  it  is  the  relationship  

between  the  book  and  its  reader  that  makes  books  the  ultimate  social  object:  while  

“all  objects  are  social  agents”  in  a  limited  sense,  the  book  explicitly  acts  as  the  

material  mediator  between  the  reader  and  the  author—and  can  act  as  a  spiritual  

mediator  as  well  (Dant  13).  Scholar  Andrew  Piper  argues  for  the  centrality  of  St.  

Augustine  in  the  history  of  reading  because  reading  was  the  conduit  for  Augustine’s  

personal  conversion.  Augustine,  Piper  writes,  established  the  practice  of  reading—

and  the  book  itself—as  “the  foundation  of  Western  humanistic  learning  for  the  next  

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fifteen  hundred  years”  (3).  It  is  an  object  that  relies  upon  a  subject  to  activate  it,  on  a  

physical  communion  between  living  human  mind  and  once  living  paper.  

 However,  the  book  object  is  also  fraught  with  tension.    In  its  current  form,  

the  book  depends  on  technologies  of  reproduction  and  the  fundamental  

Enlightenment  concept  of  a  single  subjectivity  manifested  in  the  authorial  voice.  The  

book  depends  upon  subjective  authority  of  a  privileged  voice,  a  problematic  

undercurrent  that  runs  throughout  the  history  of  Western  modernity.  The  book  is  

not  only  symbolic  of  authorial  agency;  in  non-­‐Western  contexts  it  is  also  a  

repressive  object  that  is  exclusionary  for  some  as  much  as  it  is  inclusionary  for  

others.  Because  the  book  is  tied  to  fundamentally  Western  conceptions  of  humanity,  

I  argue  that  the  book  is  a  particularly  ideological  object.  I  will  use  the  book  object  as  

the  lens  to  explore  the  implications  of  this  tension  for  characters  in  Ondaatje’s  The  

English  Patient,  where  books  are  a  primary  motif  and  often  provide  the  frame  for  

rehabilitating  and  renegotiating  identity.    

In  The  English  Patient,  the  ideological  tension  between  East  and  West  

manifests  in  various  characters’  relationships  with  books.  Books,  as  vehicles  of  voice  

and  subjectivity,  are  apt  spaces  for  the  negotiation  of  identity,  if  we  define  identity  

as  the  practice  of  allying  oneself  to  particular  ideological  allegiances  at  the  expense  

of  others.  Within  The  English  Patient,  characters  understand  their  identity  in  the  

world  by  balancing  memories  of  their  homelands—which  operate  within  a  global  

hierarchy  of  power—with  the  traumatic  experiences  of  love  and  war.  I  will  focus  on  

three  characters:  Hana,  a  traumatized  Canadian  nurse  who  abandons  her  post  and  

takes  refuge  in  a  ruined  Italian  villa  at  the  close  of  World  War  II;  her  patient,  of  

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uncertain  nationality  who  has  suffered  extensive  burns  after  a  plane  crash;  and  

Kirpal  Singh,  colloquially  known  as  Kip,  a  Sikh  sapper  who  comes  to  stay  in  the  villa  

while  he  clears  the  Italian  countryside  of  active  bombs.    Each  character  has  a  

different  awareness  of  global  power  structures,  which  impacts  how  much  they  

depend  upon  the  book  object  as  a  vessel  for  identity  and  sense  of  self.    

Critic  Carrie  Dawson  argues  that  Hana,  Caravaggio,  and  Kip  recuperate  the  

unsteady,  disintegrated  nature  of  their  own  identities  by  attempting  to  reconcile  the  

English  patient’s  fragmented  narrative.  If  they  understand  the  identity  of  this  

fragmented,  burned  man,  they  hope  to  recuperate  an  idealized  vision  of  a  whole,  

singular  self.    This  process  takes  place  through  the  body  of  the  English  patient—

through  a  combination  of  morphine  and  other  healing  techniques,  Hana,  Caravaggio,  

and  Kip  attempt  to  untangle  the  patient’s  history  and  recover  a  sense  of  unity  within  

their  own  identities.  Dawson,  along  with  critics  Christopher  McVey  and  Stephanie  M.  

Hilger,  place  great  importance  on  the  body  as  the  primary  conduit  for  reclaiming  

and  re-­‐writing  both  history  and  identity.  While  the  relationship  between  the  body  

and  identity  is  one  of  Ondaatje’s  central  metaphors,  I  propose  that  each  character’s  

relationship  to  the  physical  world  is  even  more  fundamental  to  an  understanding  of  

the  novel—a  topic  many  critics  glance  over  briefly  but  don’t  thoroughly  interrogate.    

Because  the  book  is  one  such  essential  motif  that  Ondaatje  uses  to  explore  the  

characters’  negotiation  of  their  pasts  and  their  present,  I  have  chosen  to  use  it  as  the  

lens  through  which  I  will  dissect  Hana,  the  patient,  and  Kip’s  ideological  placement  

within  the  novel’s  world.      

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Trauma  theory,  phenomenology,  cultural  psychology,  and  thing  theory  all  

inform  my  analyses  of  these  characters’  relationships  with  books.  After  the  trauma  

of  war,  Hana  loses  a  sense  of  agency  and  attempts  to  distance  herself  psychologically  

from  her  body  and  the  world.  She  begins  a  healing  process  that  entails  using  books  

as  places  to  reassert  her  lost  agency.  The  book  is  a  recuperative  object  for  the  

patient  as  well.  He  uses  his  copy  of  Herodotus’s  The  Histories  to  rewrite  history  and  

re-­‐invent  his  position  within  Western  narratives.  However,  the  patient’s  role  as  a  

cartographer  begins  to  complicate  the  book-­‐object’s  position  as  a  space  of  self-­‐

invention  and  agency  because  he  knows  the  book  is  a  tool  in  the  perpetuation  of  

colonial  power.  Kip’s  inability  to  trust  books  because  they  contain  the  ideological  

justifications  for  colonial  violence  and  war  further  reveals  the  book’s  violent  

underbelly.  Ondaatje’s  use  of  the  book  as  a  motif  throughout  the  novel  shows  that  

the  book  is  an  oppressive  and  ideological  object,  both  a  passive  symbol  and  an  active  

perpetrator  of  Western  narratives,  systems  of  power,  and  conceptions  of  the  self  

that  don’t  necessarily  align  outside  a  Western  context.    

 

Embodied  Reading:  Recuperating  Subjectivity  Through  Books  

As  a  nurse  in  World  War  II,  Hana’s  nursing  responsibilities  necessitate  that  

the  dying  men  around  her  dictate  the  pace  of  her  existence.  She  is  “surrounded  day  

and  night  by  [soldiers’]  wounds,”  forced  to  place  the  needs  of  the  dying  above  her  

own  bodily  needs  (Ondaatje  51).  Her  attempts  to  feed  unwilling  and  unable  patients  

despite  her  own  hunger  are  a  “furious  exhaustion,”  the  phrase  filled  with  her  latent  

anger  and  helplessness  at  her  situation  (53).  After  three  full  days  without  a  moment  

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of  rest,  Hana  curls  up  next  to  the  mattresses  of  dead  men.  Her  relationship  to  the  

dying  is  contractual  and  brief,  and  when  her  hair  accidently  touches  the  blood  of  a  

wound,  she  cuts  it  because  “she  would  have  nothing  to  link  her,  to  lock  her,  to  death”  

(52).  Ondaatje’s  use  of  the  word  “lock”  recalls  the  practice  of  women  cutting  locks  of  

hair  for  their  lovers  to  take  into  battle  as  good  luck  charms  and  signs  of  affection.  

Hana’s  rejection  of  this  tradition—she  cuts  off  her  hair  because  it  gets  in  the  way—

reinforces  the  harsh,  utilitarian  position  she  takes  to  nursing.  Her  refusal  to  look  in  

mirrors,  which  are  signifiers  for  self-­‐identification  and  recognition,  becomes  

emblematic  of  her  subordination  of  self  to  work,  of  her  mental  health  to  the  bodily  

needs  of  the  dying.    

Because  she  is  unable  to  physically  remove  her  body  from  interacting  with  

the  dying,  Hana  calls  all  her  patients  Buddy  in  order  to  create  psychological  distance  

between  herself  and  the  men.  Through  her  loss  of  agency  over  her  body,  Hana  

becomes  distant  from  herself,  her  mind  hardening  around  “buried  sentences”  like  “I  

will  survive  this.  I  won’t  fall  apart  at  this”  (50).  However,  through  this  process  Hana  

becomes  distant  from  her  own  body,  causing  a  split  in  her  sense  of  self.  When  she  

finds  out  her  father  has  died,  Ondaatje  likens  Hana’s  psychological  detonation  to  the  

way  “a  man  dismantling  a  mine  broke  the  second  his  geography  exploded,”  using  the  

mass  fragmentation  of  land  and  bodies  to  create  a  visceral  image  of  Hana’s  mental  

breakage  (44).  Even  the  novel’s  title  for  this  section  of  the  story  is  called  “In  Near  

Ruins,”  emphasizing  Hana’s  psychological  disintegration.  Hana’s  trauma  is  also  

physical:  during  the  war,  Hana  gives  herself  an  abortion,  physically  destroying  the  

life  that  her  body  has  created.    This  self-­‐induced  violence  is  simultaneously  an  act  of  

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agency,  where  Hana  asserts  her  will  over  her  body’s  unwanted  pregnancy,  and  an  

act  of  distancing,  because  the  act  further  establishes  the  traumatic  split  between  her  

mind  and  body.  “After  that  I  stepped  so  far  back  no  one  could  get  near  me,”  she  says,  

her  language  emphasizing  how  an  effort  at  physical  distancing  is  used  to  describe  

her  psychological  distancing  as  well  (91).  When  she  catches  a  glimpse  of  herself  in  a  

mirror  just  after  making  the  decision  to  stay  in  the  villa  with  the  English  patient,  

Hana  doesn’t  recognize  the  mirror’s  representation  of  her  body.  By  addressing  

herself  as  Buddy,  the  same  name  she  used  for  all  the  dying  soldiers  in  her  care,  Hana  

reveals  the  extent  to  which  her  identity  has  become  split,  trauma  taking  away  the  

basic  human  ability  to  recognize  one’s  own  body—a  sign  that  mind  and  body  are  

detached.  Literary  theorist  Gabriele  Schwab  writes,  “trauma  kills  the  pulsing  of  

desire,  the  embodied  self,”  drawing  attention  to  the  relationship  between  trauma  

and  embodiment  (95).    Schwab’s  theory  resonates  with  Hana’s  experience  in  The  

English  Patient,  where  the  trauma  of  war  creates  a  sense  of  detachment,  the  self  and  

body  splitting  apart.    Hana  is  so  traumatized  by  the  time  that  she  decides  to  stay  

with  the  patient  in  the  villa  that  the  patient  accurately  diagnoses  her  as  “more  

patient  than  nurse”  (Ondaatje  102).    

  The  decision  to  stay  at  the  villa  and  take  care  of  the  patient  is  the  act  of  

agency  that  finally  allows  Hana  to  reassert  control  over  her  life  and  begin  her  

healing  process.  Trauma  theorist  Cathy  Caruth  explains  recuperation  from  trauma  

as  a  process  of  reintegration,  in  which  the  fragments  of  the  “radically  altered,”  

traumatized  self  are  able  to  merge  (Caruth  quoted  in  Anderson,  34).    Caruth’s  

framework  of  reintegrating  fragments  illuminates  the  process  Hana  takes  toward  

    Schwab  16  

recuperation—by  slowly  fitting  the  pieces  of  her  life  back  together.    Once  at  the  villa,  

Hana  is  able  to  rediscover  the  connection  between  her  mind  and  her  body  through  

sensory  and  physical  experiences  with  objects.  Simple,  everyday  objects  like  “her  

hammock  and  her  shoes  and  her  frock”  help  her  rebuild  a  “miniature  world,”  a  

physical  space  with  objects  she  can  own  and  assert  agency  over  (Ondaatje  49).  

These  objects  become  the  stepping-­‐stones  toward  a  new  reality  where  Hana  can  

claim  ownership  first  over  things,  then  over  herself.  The  materiality  of  her  objects  is  

more  important  than  their  utility  in  her  life:  “sometimes  she  collects  several  

blankets  and  lies  under  them,  enjoying  them  more  for  their  weight  than  for  the  

warmth  they  bring”  (50).  The  physical  weight  of  the  blankets  is  a  reminder  of  her  

corporeality.  Hana’s  focus  on  the  sensory  experience  of  weight  is  an  attempt  to  

realign  the  fragments  of  her  psyche  by  reacquainting  herself  with  the  reassurances  

of  perception—if  she  can  feel  the  blankets  resting  on  top  of  her,  she  can  be  confident  

of  their  existence  and  the  existence  of  her  own  body.  Cultural  psychologist  Ciaran  

Benson’s  claim  that  “sense  of  self  is  fundamentally  conditioned  by…embodiment  

and  physicality”  is  visible  in  this  desire  for  re-­‐embodiment  (23).  In  recuperating  her  

sense  of  selfhood,  Hana  focuses  on  the  process  of  embodiment,  reacquainting  

herself  with  being  in  the  world  through  an  awareness  of  her  body’s  sensory  

capacities.  Rather  than  working  to  physically  and  psychologically  distance  herself  

from  the  violence  of  war,  Hana  finds  comfort  in  the  reliability  of  objects.  Ondaatje  

describes  her  relationship  to  the  world  in  terms  of  her  body,  a  strategy  reminiscent  

of  Merleau-­‐Ponty’s  phenomenology:  “the  relations  between  things  or  aspects  of  

things  [have]  always  our  body  as  their  vehicle”  (373).  As  a  result,  Hana’s  

    Schwab  17  

relationship  with  books  –  objects  that  end  up  being  tremendously  significant  in  her  

recuperation  from  trauma  –  begins  with  their  physical  attributes  and  sensory  

properties  rather  than  with  their  content:  

  For  more  than  five  minutes  she  had  been  looking  at  the  porousness  of  the   paper,   the   crease   at   the   corner   of   page   17   which   someone   had  folded  over  as  a  mark.  She  brushed  her  hand  over  its  skin…she  would  ceremoniously   pour   herself   a   small   beaker   and   carry   it   back   to   the  night   table   just   outside   the   three-­‐quarter-­‐closed   door   and   sip   away  further   into   whatever   book   she   was   reading.   (Ondaatje   7,   emphasis  mine)  

 

Later  in  the  novel,  Ondaatje  again  describes  Hana’s  sensory  experience  in  the  villa’s  

library:    

She  had  come  to  love  these  books  dressed  in  their  Italian  spines,  the  frontispieces,   the   tipped-­‐in   colour   illustrations   with   a   covering   of  tissue,  the  smell  of  them,  even  the  sound  of  the  crack  if  you  opened  them  too   fast,   as   if   breaking   some   minute   unseen   series   of   bones.   (234,  emphasis  mine)  

 

In  these  two  descriptions,  all  five  senses  are  activated:  the  sight  of  the  paper,  the  

touch  of  its  “skin,”  the  taste  as  she  “sips”  the  book,  the  smell  of  them,  and  the  sound  

of  opening  an  old  book  too  quickly.    The  approach  to  the  book  is  intrinsically  

sensory.  Thing  theorist  Bill  Brown  explains  that  the  thing’s  “sensuous…  

metaphysical  presence”  defines  its  emblematic  status  (5).    A  book  is  not  just  a  book  

–  it  functions  as  a  physical  support  system  for  the  traumatized  consciousness.  When  

Hana  first  sees  Caravaggio,  she  “[needs]  this  table,  this  half-­‐finished  book  in  order  to  

collect  herself”;  the  book  becomes  as  physically  present  and  supportive  as  a  table  

(Ondaatje  33).  The  books  rehabilitate  Hana  just  as  she  uses  them  to  rebuild  the  

    Schwab  18  

house,  the  bombed  state  of  the  villa  itself  acting  as  a  metaphor  for  the  fragmented  

psyche.  Hana  nails  several  books  together  to  rebuild  several  of  the  villa’s  fire-­‐

charred  stairs.  She  trusts  their  supportive  quality  as  objects,  their  pages  literally  

supporting  her  as  she  climbs  out  of  the  darkness  of  trauma.    

  While  the  physical  book  begins  as  a  location  of  recuperation,  the  narrative  

within  serves  as  a  safe  place  where  Hana  can  reacquaint  herself  with  human  and  

natural  worlds.  Ondaatje  expresses  this  through  a  “language  of  location”:  Hana  

doesn’t  read  books,  she  enters  them,  falls  into  them,  becomes  immersed  in  them  

(Benson  5).  They  become  doorways  to  landscapes  and  people,  exotic  and  otherwise.  

In  this  way,  the  book  becomes  an  object  that  is  able  to  “co-­‐constitute  consciousness  

and  to  move  conscious  persons  beyond  the  boundaries  of  their  own  bodies  into  an  

external  world  shared  with  others,”  becoming  a  “vehicle  for  self-­‐expansion”  

(Antonio  Damasio  quoted  in  Benson,  168).  Hana’s  relationship  with  books  is  so  

expansive  that  they  become  “half  her  world”  as  well  as  the  crucial  means  by  which  

she  heals  herself  and  the  English  patient,  to  whom  she  reads  every  night  after  giving  

him  a  dose  of  morphine  (Ondaatje  7).  The  patient  later  reveals  that  “the  only  way  

[he]  could  get  her  to  communicate  was  to  ask  her  to  read  to  [him]”  because  she  

“would  not  talk  about  (her  trauma).  She  was  distant  from  everybody”  (269).  The  

physical  sensation  of  reading  aloud  merges  Hana’s  voice  with  the  author’s,  giving  

her  the  ability  to  embody  the  authorial  voice’s  narrative  agency.    Her  reading  is  an  

active  experience,  the  words  becoming  the  sustenance  she  imbibes  for  strength  and  

the  drug  that  heals  her  trauma.    

    Schwab  19  

  Hana’s  experience  with  books  reflects  a  distinctly  Western  concept  of  

selfhood  through  authorship.  As  Hana  works  through  her  trauma  and  continues  to  

recuperate  herself  through  her  experiences  both  with  books’  materiality  and  the  act  

of  reading,  she  begins  to  assert  further  agency  over  the  books  she  reads  by  writing  

pieces  of  her  own  story  in  their  margins.    In  Western  literary  and  philosophical  

ideas  of  self-­‐making,  the  self  is  the  intense,  singular  place  of  subjectivity  and  often  

articulates  itself  through  the  written  word.  Philosopher  Charles  Taylor  explains  the  

agency  of  authorship  in  terms  of  the  artist,  the  individual  genius  who  wrings  

meaning  out  of  the  objective  world  through  the  power  of  subjectivity.  In  doing  so,  

the  artist  emerges  as  an  author  of  objectivity  as  well  as  her  own  subjectivity,  

becoming  “in  some  way  the  paradigm  case  of  the  human  being,  as  agent  of  original  

self-­‐definition”  (Taylor  quoted  in  Benson,  82).  Similarly,  Hana’s  means  of  authorship  

in  The  English  Patient  progresses  from  embodying  the  authorial  voice  through  

reading,  then  writing  in  the  margins  of  Kim,  The  Last  of  the  Mohicans,  and  other  

books  that  she  disguises  amongst  their  unmarked  kin  in  the  villa’s  library,  and  

finally  to  writing  a  letter  to  Clara,  her  deceased  father’s  lover.  The  letter,  which  she  

writes  at  the  end  of  the  novel,  is  Hana’s  first  gesture  of  written  communication  that  

extends  beyond  marginalia.  It  signifies  her  acceptance  of  her  father’s  death,  which  

contributed  dramatically  to  her  trauma,  as  well  as  her  ability  to  bring  her  writing—a  

metaphor  for  her  sense  of  self—into  communion  with  others.  At  the  end  of  the  

novel,  Ondaatje  reveals  Hana  to  have  recuperated  from  her  trauma  through  agency  

gained  with  the  support  of  books:  “She  tucked  the  book  with  the  brown  cover  under  

her  right  arm…what  she  was  now  was  what  she  herself  had  decided  to  become”  

    Schwab  20  

(Ondaatje  234).  Now,  he  claims,  she  can  recognize  herself  in  a  mirror—even  if  she  is  

the  only  one  who  can.  Ultimately,  Hana’s  internal  split  is  healed  at  the  expense  of  a  

new,  externalized  distance.  She  remains  mysterious  even  to  Ondaatje’,  who  claims  

“she  is  a  woman  I  don’t  know  well  enough  to  hold  in  my  wing,  if  writers  have  wings”  

(320).      

   

The  Fragmented  Book:  Historical  Reconstruction  and  Contradiction  

While  books  for  Hana  become  spaces  to  imbue  the  traumatized  self  with  

agency,  the  patient  uses  his  copy  of  Herodotus’s  Histories  to  write  himself  into  

history.  His  relationship  with  The  Histories—  described  as  a  “cradle,”  a  place  of  

invention,  a  conglomeration  of  his  thoughts  and  experiences  and  vast  knowledge—

is  based  on  his  rejection  of  the  markers  of  Western  identity,  which  include  nation-­‐

states  and  names,  and  his  desire  to  personally  participate  in  historical  

documentation.    However,  underneath  The  Histories’  pages  lurks  the  patient’s  

darker  desire  to  absolve  himself  from  the  violence  of  his  occupation:  he  is  a  

cartographer  for  the  Geographic  Society.  The  Histories  becomes  the  site  of  the  

tension  between  Western  and  non-­‐Western  identities  and  histories,  revealing  the  

book-­‐object  as  a  location  of  empowering  self-­‐definition  and  colonial  violence.    

The  patient  believes  that  he  can  separate  his  identity  from  his  relationship  to  

history  and  to  national  ties:  “I  wanted  to  erase  my  name  and  the  place  I  had  come  

from,”  he  claims  (148).  He  rejects  his  national  identity  because  he  believes  borders  

are  unnatural.  Countries  drawing  lines  in  the  sand  seems  like  a  fragmentary  

construct  in  opposition  to  the  desert,  which  “could  not  be  claimed  or  owned…never  

    Schwab  21  

held  down  by  stones”  (147-­‐148).  As  a  metaphorical  body  that  is  whole,  natural,  and  

unable  to  be  mapped  in  its  entirety,  the  desert  resists  the  artificial  boundaries  

between  nations.  The  empty  and  open  geography  of  the  desert  enables  the  patient  

to  recreate  himself  in  its  image,  empowering  him  to  leave  his  name  behind  and  place  

himself  both  psychologically  and  physically  in  the  desert’s  openness.    The  desert  

allows  him  to  reform  his  identity  based  on  his  own  organic  desires  rather  than  the  

contexts  of  history:  “the  place  they  had  chosen  to  come  to,  to  be  their  best  selves…he  

was  alone,  his  own  invention”  (126).  Along  with  his  need  for  self-­‐invention  outside  a  

European  context,  the  patient  desires  to  re-­‐write  history  so  that  it  aligns  with  his  

subjective  experience  in  the  desert.  The  patient  claims  that  books  are  where  

“history  enters  us,”  but  books  are  also  where  we  can  enter  history  (19).  Thus,  his  act  

of  retelling  history  resides  in  his  copy  of  The  Histories,  where  the  patient  pastes  in  

pages  from  other  books,  scribbles  observations,  and  writes  episodes  from  his  own  

story:    

When  he  discovered   the   truth   to  what  had   seemed  a   lie,  he  brought  out  his  glue  pot  and  pasted  in  a  map  or  news  clipping  or  used  a  blank  space  in  the  book  to  sketch  men  in  skirts  with  faded  unknown  animals  alongside  them  (261).        

The  last  case  directly  references  history  that  exists  outside  of  Western  narratives,  

the  stories  of  the  desert  that  cannot  be  traditionally  told  using  the  rationality  of  

modern  history.  But  the  revised,  re-­‐written  book  is  able  to  incorporate  the  patient’s  

encounter  with  histories  that  lie  outside  the  range  of  Western  knowledge  practice  

through  marginalia,  linguistic  representation  ceding  to  drawings  and  handwritten  

encounters.  The  Histories,  rather  than  offering  a  static  version  of  history  to  the  

    Schwab  22  

patient,  is  the  location  of  a  dialogue  between  Herodotus’s  history  of  the  desert  and  

the  patient’s  own  observations.  In  this  way  the  physical  object  of  The  Histories  acts  

as  a  totem  of  non-­‐Western  narrative  and  a  map  of  the  patient’s  experience  rather  

than  a  purveyor  of  objective  fact.  

While  his  copy  of  The  Histories  seems  to  be  the  “cradle”  of  the  patient’s  

identity,  the  book  leaves  out  his  name:  “There  is  still  no  clue  to  who  he  actually  is,  

nameless,  without  rank  or  battalion  or  squadron”  (102-­‐103).  And  who  is  he,  

anyway?  Over  the  course  of  the  novel,  Ondaatje  leads  the  reader  to  understand  that  

the  patient  is  not  English  but  the  Hungarian  count  Ladislaus  de  Almásy,  a  

cartographer  who  mapped  Africa  for  the  British  before  World  War  II,  when  he  

switched  allegiances  and  began  spying  for  the  Nazis.  The  connection  between  

Almásy  and  the  patient  is  consistently  ambiguous:  the  patient  will  sometimes  refer  

to  Almásy  in  the  third  person  and  never  affirms  the  other  characters’  suspicions  

about  his  identity,  “leaving  them  never  quite  sure  who  he  was”  (102).  Regardless  of  

his  national  heritage,  the  patient’s  rejection  of  Westernized,  subject-­‐oriented  

identity  combined  with  his  disfigured,  unidentifiable  body  brings  him  closer  to  the  

kind  of  identity  lack  he  desires.  However,  this  rejection  is  hollow  because  of  his  

preoccupation  with  maps  and  his  desire  for  “a  fully  named  world”  (23).  When  the  

patient  gets  lost  in  the  desert,  all  he  needs  is  “the  name  of  a  small  ridge,  a  local  

custom,  a  cell  of  this  historical  animal,  and  the  map  of  the  world  would  slide  into  

place”  (20).  Thus,  while  his  desire  to  abandon  national  ties  for  more  natural,  

geography-­‐governed  allegiances  is  more  akin  to  the  history  left  out  of  the  Western  

tradition,  the  patient’s  position  as  a  cartographer  and  his  ability  to  retain  knowledge  

    Schwab  23  

paradoxically  puts  him  in  the  tradition  of  the  Western  colonial.  His  beloved  

Herodotus,  who  writes  “the  supplementary  to  the  main  argument,”  the  “cul-­‐de-­‐sacs  

within  the  sweep  of  history,”  takes  the  form  of  “a  sculpted  portrait”  on  some  

editions  of  The  Histories  (126).  Despite  the  patient’s  imagining  that  Herodotus  is  

“one  of  those  spare  men  of  the  desert  who  travel  from  oasis  to  oasis,”  he  is  

historically  considered  the  Western  world’s  Father  of  History  (126).    While  

Ondaatje’s  narrative  allows  attempts  at  reconciliation,  such  as  when  the  patient  puts  

Arabic  and  European  texts  side  by  side  to  further  his  research,  this  tension  between  

desert  traveler  and  Western  colonial  with  funding  from  the  Geographical  Society  in  

London  cannot  be  unresolved.  Thus,  self-­‐invention  through  the  desert  only  begets  

the  mirage—a  natural  phenomenon  of  light  distortion  that  becomes  a  metaphor  for  

the  displaced,  transient  self.  Furthermore,  the  patient’s  paradoxical  ability  to  

embrace  the  desert  while  maintaining  his  colonial  position  undercuts  his  idealized  

conception  of  history.    

The  Histories,  while  acting  as  the  cradle  of  self-­‐invention  outside  of  a  

European  context,  simultaneously  situates  the  patient—and  the  book-­‐object  itself—

within  a  Western  colonial  tradition  of  oppression  and  violence.  As  a  cartographer  

and  an  active  participant  in  mapping  the  African  continent  for  the  British  

Geographical  Society,  the  patient  is  directly  involved  in  the  creation  of  empirical  

textual  documents  that  form  the  underpinning  of  British  imperial  control.  His  

attitude  toward  the  hypocrisy  of  his  position  is  one  of  ignorance.    In  meetings  of  the  

Geographical  Society,  “all  human  and  financial  behavior  lies  on  the  far  side  of  the  

issue  being  discussed—which  is  the  earth’s  surface  and  its  ‘interesting  geographical  

    Schwab  24  

problems’”  (142).  The  preoccupation  with  studying  the  Earth’s  surface  from  a  

scientific  perspective  masks  an  inconvenient  truth—that  the  ignored  “human  and  

financial  behavior”  underwrites  a  system  of  colonial  violence.  But  rather  than  

accepting  the  political  implications  of  his  actions,  the  patient  chooses  to  blame  other  

explorers  who  are  preoccupied  with  naming:    

…some   wanted   their   mark   there…Fenelon-­‐Barnes   wanted   the  fossil   trees   he   discovered   to   bear   his   name.   He   even   wanted   a  tribe  to  take  his  name,  and  spent  a  year  on  the  negotiations.  Then  Bauchan  outdid  him,  having  a  type  of  sand  dune  named  after  him.  But   I  wanted   to   erase  my  name  and   the  place   I   had   come   from.  (148)      

The  scientific  naming  of  fossil  trees  or  sand  dunes  is  vastly  different  from  naming  a  

tribe  of  native  people,  but  the  passage  considers  them  all  valid  colonial  actions.    

Explorer  Fenelon-­‐Barnes  believes  that  one  can  name  a  tribe  through  political  

negotiations—an  act  of  language.  These  acts  of  naming  are  ultimately  linguistic  acts  

of  power  that  establish  control  over  both  the  land  and  its  native  people,  the  name  

itself  a  symbol  of  geographic  and  political  authority.  The  explorer’s  “first  sight  (by  a  

white  eye)  of  a  mountain  that  has  been  there  forever”  is  a  bodily  colonialism  that  

reveals  a  Eurocentric  mindset  dependent  on  both  physical  and  linguistic  control  

over  the  natural  world  (151).  Ondaatje  explains  this  colonial  paradigm  in  terms  of  

“servants  and  slaves  and  tides  of  power  and  correspondence  with  the  Geographical  

Society”  (150).  Power  over  people  is  intrinsically  linked  to  modes  of  communication  

(negotiations,  correspondence),  and  to  language  in  particular.  The  explorer  sees,  

names,  and  claims  the  mountain:  language,  now  implicated  in  the  colonial  act,  

contains  the  vestiges  of  power,  both  ideological  and  physical.    

    Schwab  25  

 

Losing  Faith:  The  Book  and  the  Violence  of  Colonialism  

Because  imperial  powers  used  language  as  a  tool  of  invasion  and  

maintenance  of  power,  books  are  similarly  incriminated.  Critic  Carrie  Dawson  

argues  that  Hana’s  ability  to  use  text  as  a  recuperative  space  and  her  confusion  

between  texts  and  bodies  is  based  on  a  false  binary.  Dawson  calls  Hana’s  literary  

imaginings  “a  fanciful  and  defensive  act  which  is  premised  on  an  untenable  

opposition  between  textuality  and  violence”  (61).  Dawson  points  out  that  text,  as  a  

representative  force,  has  a  violent  component  as  well.  Inscribing  text  upon  a  body  is  

part  of  this  violence,  as  is  the  violence  done  to  reality  by  representation.  (Dawson  

61)  While  Hana  and  the  patient  view  books  as  objects  that  facilitate  healing,  self-­‐

invention,  and  agency  over  history,  Ondaatje  complicates  his  effusive  descriptions  of  

books  by  embedding  them  with  violent  implications.  Even  the  patient,  when  he  

writes  a  book  about  the  desert,  dedicates  it  to  a  king,  explicitly  linking  his  work  as  a  

cartographer  to  the  living  body  of  imperialism.  In  The  English  Patient,  the  Germans  

use  Daphne  du  Maurier’s  novel  Rebecca  as  a  codebook  during  World  War  II.  In  her  

article  “The  War  and  the  Book:  The  Diarist,  the  Cartographer,  and  The  English  

Patient,”  Alice  Brittan  argues  that  the  book  functions  as  an  object  of  violence  

because  of  its  ties  to  cryptography,  imperialism,  and  war.  “On  the  perimeter  of  what  

the  book  holds,”  she  writes,”  we  glimpse  the  faint  historical  shimmer  of  the  modern  

European  nation,  the  double  desire  for  political  containment  and  aggressive  

expansion”  (201).  Brittan  references  books’  dual  role  as  a  means  to  express  a  

    Schwab  26  

singular,  dominant  ideology—one  based  on  reason,  individuality,  and  subjectivity—

and  to  spread  that  ideology,  by  force  if  necessary.      

  Brittan’s  emphasis  on  books’  dual  nature  is  complicated  in  the  character  of  

Kirpal  Singh  or  Kip,  an  Indian  sapper  who  passively  accepts  his  status  as  a  second-­‐

class  citizen  in  a  European  world  for  most  of  the  novel.  For  Kip,  books  are  objects  

fraught  with  tension  because  they  contain  the  British  codes  of  conduct  that  he  

cherishes  while  simultaneously  reminding  him  of  his  exclusion  from  British  

culture—he  is  a  subject  but  not  a  citizen.  When  Kip  is  waiting  to  interview  for  a  

position  as  a  sapper  in  the  British  army,  he  looks  at  a  series  of  books  on  a  bookshelf  

only  to  be  stared  at  by  his  future  employer’s  secretary:  “He  felt  as  guilty  as  if  he  had  

put  the  book  in  his  pocket.  She  had  probably  never  seen  a  turban  before”  (Ondaatje  

200).    Because  books  paradoxically  provide  Kip  with  access  to  British  culture  while  

simultaneously  reminding  him  of  his  marginalization,  he  finds  them  untrustworthy:  

Kip  “[does]  not  yet  have  a  faith  in  books”  (117).  This  lack  of  faith  in  the  written  book  

is  a  fundamental  difference  between  Kip  and  Hana/the  patient,  who  both  trust  the  

book  as  a  physical  object  and  as  a  symbolic  force.  Hana  depends  on  books  so  much  

that  she  rebuilds  herself  around  them;  the  patient  similarly  uses  books  to  

renegotiate  his  place  in  history  and  his  European  identity.  Kip,  as  a  Sikh,  does  not  

have  access  to  the  same  innate  trust  for  the  written  word  as  his  companions  in  the  

villa.  His  militant  brother  has  taught  him  that  books  contain  European  narratives,  

ideologies,  and  justifications  for  violence.  When  he  is  perusing  part  of  his  bomb  

disposal  kit,  Kip  begins  reading  a  manual  that  attempts  to  explain,  “when  is  an  

explosion  reasonably  permissible?”  (224).  Kip  wonders,  “who  wrote  such  things?”—

    Schwab  27  

the  only  logical  answer  is  the  British  (224).  The  moment  exposes  the  violent  

potential  of  the  English  language  in  an  imperial  context,  where  words  are  used  to  

justify  the  taking  of  human  lives.  Kip’s  conclusion  is  to  hold  writing  and  books  at  

arms  length,  “as  if  language,  humanity,  would  confuse  him,  get,  like  blood,  into  the  

machine  he  had  to  understand”  (290).  Language,  for  Kip,  has  blood  on  its  hands.    

  Kip’s  distrust  is  proven  valid  after  the  atomic  bomb  is  dropped  at  the  end  of  

World  War  Two.  For  him,  the  violence  of  the  bombs  is  almost  secondary  to  the  

violence  done  by  “customs  and  manners  and  books  and  prefects  and  reason”  that  

“somehow  converted  the  rest  of  the  world…Was  it  just  ships  that  gave  you  such  

power?  Was  it,  as  my  brother  said,  because  you  had  the  histories  and  printing  

presses?”  (301)  The  dissemination  of  information  in  the  form  of  books  contributes  

significantly  to  the  novel’s  most  violent  event,  becoming  the  reason  that  Kip  feels  so  

betrayed  by  his  British  masters  and  helping  him  decide  to  return  to  India.    

  Through  his  various  characters’  relationships  with  books,  Ondaatje  shows  

that  the  book  as  an  object  is  dependent  on  the  ideological  perspective  of  its  reader-­‐

subject.  Books  can  simultaneously  impart  greater  agency  for  a  single  subjectivity  

and  take  it  away;  the  object  then  is  fraught  with  the  tension  of  ideological  power  

structures.  In  my  next  chapter,  I  will  explore  how  bombs—an  object  whose  violent  

purpose  hides  a  complex  psychological  force—are  just  as  ideological  as  books.  

 

 

 

 

    Schwab  28  

Chapter  Two:  Bombs  

 

War  is  beautiful  because—thanks  to  its  gas  masks,  its  terrifying  megaphones,  its  flame  throwers,   and   light   tanks—it   establishes   man’s   dominion   over   the   subjugated  machine.  War  is  beautiful  because  it  inaugurates  the  dreamed-­‐of  metallization  of  the  human  body.    

-­‐ Filippo  Tommaso  Marinetti,  The  Futurist  Manifesto,  on  an  aesthetic  of  war    

 

The  industrial  revolution  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  

planted  the  seeds  of  what  Mikael  Hard  and  Andrew  Jamison  call  the  “if  only”  

syndrome:  “the  eternal  technical  fixation  that  is  deeply  embedded  in  our  underlying  

conceptions  of  reality”  (5).  As  machines  replaced  human  labor  and  became  integral  

to  production  processes,  technology  became  “the  determinant  of  social  and  

economic  development,”  the  means  to  measure  a  culture’s  dominance  in  the  world  

(Hard  &  Jamison  6).  The  hegemony  of  the  machine  fed  a  grand-­‐narrative  that  

progress,  especially  in  science  and  technology,  was  a  positive  force  that  would  

improve  living  conditions  and  extend  man’s  dominion  over  the  natural  world;  Hard  

&  Jamison  describe  the  idea  of  progress  as  the  industrial  revolution’s    “most  

important  product”  (25).    

The  logic  of  the  progress  imperative  in  turn  supported  a  Western  superiority  

complex  because  Western,  industrialized  societies  saw  themselves  as  more  

advanced  than  non-­‐Western  cultures.    The  West’s  technologies  became  “key  

components  of  the  civilizing-­‐mission  ideology  that  both  justified  Europe’s  global  

hegemony  and  vitally  influenced  the  ways  in  which  European  power  was  exercised,”  

whether  that  power  was  exercised  through  military  force  or  cultural  imperialism  

    Schwab  29  

(Adas  4).    This  technological  superiority  was  used  as  justification  for  colonial  

dominance;  Herbert  Marcuse  argues  that  the  machine  itself  is  “the  most  effective  

political  instrument  in  any  society  whose  basic  organization  is  that  of  the  machine  

process”  (5).  Drawing  on  Althusser’s  argument  that  ideology  is  the  means  by  which  

production  is  reproduced  within  society,  Marcuse  claims  that  technology  is  “the  

very  embodiment  of  Reason,”  and  as  such  reveals  that  industrialized  society  is  

“more  ideological  than  its  predecessor”  (10-­‐11).  The  mechanized  perpetrators  of  

colonial  violence—the  guns  and  bombs  of  European  design—became  more  than  

simply  agents  of  destruction.  They  became  symbolic  of  the  “achievements,  atrocities  

and  attitudes  of  European  and  American  modernity,”  epitomizing  both  the  violence  

of  colonialism  and  cultural  supremacy  committed  against  non-­‐Western  peoples  

(Cirincione  17).    

The  idea  that  improvements  in  science  and  technology  were  always  

beneficial  came  under  fire  during  World  War  I,  when  advanced  killing  machines  

resulted  in  the  loss  of  a  generation;  by  World  War  II,  scientists  and  engineers  were  

an  integral  part  of  the  war  effort  to  an  extent  never  seen  before  (Hard  &  Jamison  

251).  Weapons  represented  untold  death  and  destruction,  but  also  embodied  the  

power  of  Western  technology,  the  grand  narrative  of  progress  taken  to  its  logical  

extreme.  Langdon  Winner  argues  in  his  essay  “Do  artifacts  have  politics?”  that  

material  culture  embodies  systems  of  power  and  authority,  and  that  machines  in  

particular  are  built  to  uphold  political  structures.  “The  physical  arrangements  of  

industrial  production,  warfare,  communications,  and  the  like  have  fundamentally  

changed  the  exercise  of  power  and  the  experience  of  citizenship,”  he  writes  (122).  

    Schwab  30  

Winner’s  emphasis  on  the  human  quotient  is  particularly  relevant  to  my  study  of  

The  English  Patient,  where  the  war  machine  is  connected  not  only  to  broad  themes  

of  colonial  violence,  but  also  is  tightly  linked  to  a  character’s  identity.    In  The  English  

Patient,  the  symbolic  resonance  of  the  bomb  is  particularly  potent  because  Kip’s  

bodily  affinity  for  weapons  and  other  machines  enables  him  to  use  the  bomb  as  a  

space  to  negotiate  his  colonial  identity.    Similar  to  how  Hana  and  the  patient  rely  on  

the  physical  attributes  of  books  and  their  emotional  connection  with  them  to  

recuperate  their  traumatized  identities,  Kip  has  an  eerily  close,  even  human,  

relationship  with  his  gun  and  the  bombs  he  defuses,  despite  these  objects’  violent,  

mechanical  properties.  However,  bombs  exist  within  cultural  hierarchies,  as  Kip  

realizes  when  the  Americans  end  World  War  II  by  dropping  atomic  bombs  on  Japan.    

The  cataclysmic  event  awakens  colonial  trauma  within  Kip’s  consciousness,  

resulting  in  a  racial  understanding  of  the  bomb  itself.  The  bomb  then  becomes  both  

a  symbol  and  perpetrator  of  ideologically  charged  violence.    

 

English  Fathers:  War  and  the  Western  Weapon  

Just  as  Hana  uses  books  from  the  library  to  rebuild  the  ruined  villa,  war  

machines  like  fallen  planes  and  tanks  are  repurposed  in  the  desert.  The  Bedouin  

know  “how  to  pick  their  way  through  such  shipwrecks,”  making  tools  and  utensils  

from  the  metal  of  crashed  planes,  turning  “a  small  bolt  from  a  cockpit”  into  jewelry  

(Ondaatje  5).    The  repurposing  of  Western  machines  also  occurs  in  India,  where  cars  

“were  carried  across  a  village  into  a  sewing  machine  or  water  pump”  (200).  Kip  

doesn’t  find  this  thriftiness  in  England,  where  instead  he  sees  “a  surfeit  of  parts  that  

    Schwab  31  

would  keep  the  continent  of  India  going  for  two  hundred  years”  (201).  Ondaatje’s  

descriptions  of  repurposed  objects  are  tied  to  colonial  history.  The  colonizer  has  the  

industrial  power  and  thus  the  luxury  to  discard  fragments  of  machines,  but  

colonized  peoples  like  the  Bedouin  or  the  Indians  are  accustomed  to  using  the  

scraps  of  more  powerful  cultures  to  make  their  sewing  machines  and  water  pumps.  

A  culture’s  reuse  of  objects  indicates  a  hierarchy  of  power  and  links  material  culture  

to  its  ideological  context.      

Bombs  and  guns,  beyond  being  objects  of  violence,  embody  cultural  

idiosyncrasy  and  history.  Italian  fuses  from  Naples  are  put  in  vertically  while  bombs  

from  Rome  follow  the  German  design.  The  metal  bodies  of  bombs  have  cultural  

markers,  structured  by  the  “personality  that  had  laid  the  city  of  threads  and  then  

poured  wet  concrete  over  it”  (105).  It  is  because  of  these  cultural  idiosyncrasies  that  

the  blindfolded  patient  can  identify  guns  for  the  Bedouin,  who  ask  him  to  “translate  

the  guns”  as  if  they  were  articulated  through  a  different  language  (22).  The  

Bedouin’s  store  of  guns  come  from  different  countries  and  times  and  the  patient  can  

recognize  them  just  by  “[brushing]  the  contours  of  the  stock  and  magazine  or  

[fingering]  the  sight”  (22).  Their  names  are  important.  Just  like  the  patient’s  guns  

have  cultural  identities  and  names,  the  bombs  of  World  War  II  are  also  identified  by  

name,  depending  on  their  size:  “A  2,000-­‐pound  bomb  was  called  a  ‘Hermann’  or  an  

‘Esau.’  A  4,000-­‐pound  bomb  was  called  a  ‘Satan’”  (195).    The  names  all  have  cultural  

connotations  and  references:  ‘Hermann’  is  a  German  name;  ‘Esau’  is  a  son  of  Isaac  in  

the  Bible;  and  ‘Satan’  refers  to  the  devil.  These  names  are  both  human  and  mythic  

    Schwab  32  

and  contain  moral  connotations,  indicating  an  attempt  to  make  the  grave  violence  of  

the  bombs’  presence  more  graspable  to  the  human  mind.    

Lord  Suffolk,  Kip’s  mentor,  orients  his  pupil  within  the  Western  tradition,  

complicating  Kip’s  status  as  a  non-­‐Western  character.  Throughout  most  of  the  novel,  

Kip  remains  seemingly  unmindful  of  the  post-­‐colonial  split  in  his  identity.  

Caravaggio  accuses  him  and  the  patient  of  being  “international  bastards  –  born  in  

one  place  and  choosing  to  live  elsewhere…though  Kip  doesn’t  recognize  that  yet”  

(188-­‐9).  Kip  remains  a  passive  recipient  of  his  identity.  Upon  arriving  in  England,  

“within  a  week  his  real  name,  Kirpal  Singh,  had  been  forgotten.  “He  hadn’t  minded  

this,”  a  statement  that  reveals  Kip’s  ambivalence  towards  the  Western  tendency  

toward  imbuing  names  with  meaning  or  power,  a  theme  Ondaatje  explores  in  depth  

throughout  the  novel  (94).  Instead,  Kip  accommodates  an  English  identity  into  his  

Sikh  roots  by  “[assuming]  English  fathers,  following  their  codes  like  a  dutiful  son,”  as  

he  does  with  Lord  Suffolk  (229).  For  Hana,  who  is  devastated  by  her  displacement  

from  her  home  country,  Kip  appears  to  be  “one  of  the  charmed,  who  has  grown  up  

an  outsider  and  so  can  switch  allegiances,”  avoiding  the  problems  of  a  displaced  or  

split  identity  (289).  However,  despite  his  apparent  ambivalence  and  integration  into  

English  culture,  Kip  has  a  heightened  awareness  of  “being  the  anonymous  member  

of  another  race,  a  part  of  the  invisible  world”  (209).  After  Lord  Suffolk  dies,  Kip  is  

“expected  to  be  the  replacing  vision”  because  “he  contained,  more  than  any  other  

sapper,  the  knowledge  of  Lord  Suffolk”  (208).  However,  Kip  refuses  a  leadership  

role,  preferring  to  maintain  his  invisibility  in  the  “anonymous  machine  of  the  army”  

and  remain  on  the  outside  (208).  Even  at  the  villa,  he  pitches  his  tent  on  its  borders  

    Schwab  33  

as  opposed  to  staying  inside  with  the  Westerners.  The  villa  is  not  a  place  of  

nationless-­‐ness  for  Kip,  or  a  place  to  rehabilitate  and  probe  a  displaced  identity  as  it  

is  for  Hana.  Instead,  the  villa  is  a  place  of  violence,  and  he  is  there  to  do  a  job.  

 

Intimate  Defusing:  The  Psycho-­‐Sensuality  of  the  Bomb  

Ondaatje  uses  the  word  “choreography”  many  times  to  describe  Kip’s  

relationship  to  objects  in  the  world.  Choreography,  commonly  associated  with  the  

practice  of  putting  together  a  dance,  implies  the  movement  of  a  body  in  relation  to  

the  space  and  objects  around  it.  In  The  English  Patient,  there  are  choreographies  of  

things  and  their  hidden  innards,  choreographies  of  rooms  and  landscapes,  and  

choreographies  of  power.    By  using  the  same  word  to  describe  both  the  body’s  

relationship  to  objects  and  the  psyche’s  relationship  to  tides  of  power  and  ideology,  

Ondaatje  compares  body  and  object  to  mind  and  ideology.  When  Kip  is  defusing  a  

bomb,  on  a  surface  level  his  body  is  navigating  the  mechanical  object  in  front  of  him.  

But  on  a  deeper  level,  Kip  is  “pulled  into  a  psychological  vortex”  (105).  For  Kip,  this  

is  his  “only  human  and  personal  contact…this  enemy  who  had  made  the  bomb  and  

departing  brushing  his  tracks  with  a  branch  behind  him”  (111).  This  is  how  Lord  

Suffolk,  Kip’s  mentor,  teaches  him  to  understand  the  bomb—by  reading  it.  “People  

think  a  bomb  is  a  mechanical  object,”  Suffolk  tells  him.  “But  you  have  to  consider  

that  somebody  made  it”  (205).  In  this  sense  the  bomb  becomes  a  vitally  human  

object  that,  just  like  the  book,  embodies  the  ideology  of  its  maker—the  ideology  

manifested  in  machines  and  supported  by  modern  Western  culture’s  drive  toward  

progress.    

    Schwab  34  

As  the  Germans  retreat,  they  stash  bombs  in  musical  instruments,  in  the  

spines  of  books,  in  fruit  trees.  Embedding  weapons  in  ordinary  objects  destabilizes  

the  conception  of  where  the  war  exists,  turning  ordinary  rooms  into  potential  

battlefields.  The  sappers,  the  bomb  defusers,  “became  permanently  suspicious  of  

any  object  placed  casually  in  a  room”  (293).  This  fundamental  distrust  toward  

objects  becomes  a  defining  feature  of  the  job  and  a  central  difference  between  Hana  

and  Kip.  Hana  leans  on  objects,  especially  books,  using  them  for  support;  Kip  

innately  distrusts  them,  assuming  they  contain  bombs.    

While  Kip  distrusts  the  world  around  him  initially,  he  deeply  trusts  his  body,  

relying  on  sensory  information  to  confirm  the  safety  of  his  surroundings.    Hana  

describes  him  as  seeming  “unconsciously  in  love  with  his  body,  with  his  

physicalness,  bending  over  to  pick  up  a  slice  of  bread,  his  knuckles  brushing  the  

grass,  even  twirling  his  rifle  absent-­‐mindedly  like  a  huge  mace”  (79).  By  comparing  

Kip’s  rifle  to  a  mace,  a  powerful  weapon  commonly  associated  with  the  medieval  

era,  Ondaatje  locates  the  rifle  within  the  lineage  of  Western  weaponry.  In  Kip’s  

hands,  the  violence  of  the  gun  carries  the  complications  of  Western  colonial  rule,  but  

Kip  doesn’t  experience  the  weapon  on  an  abstract,  historical  level.  He  connects  with  

the  weapon  through  his  hands,  through  physical  contact,  and  as  a  result  his  hands  

become  one  of  his  most  powerful  tools.  Just  as  Hana  has  a  sensual,  immersive  

relationship  with  her  books,  Kip  experiences  bombs  through  physical  interaction.  

Defusing  a  bomb  means  placing  his  head  against  it  to  hear  the  ticking  inside;  it  

requires  feeling  its  weight.  Critic  Elizabeth  Kella  writes,  “Kirpal  puts  his  faith  in  

physical  sensation  as  a  method  of  knowing,”  underlining  Kip’s  fundamentally  

    Schwab  35  

phenomenological  approach  to  his  job  and  to  his  mode  of  being  in  the  world  (105).  

His  senses  are  the  entryway  to  the  mind  of  his  opponent—who  is  not  the  machine  

itself  but  the  mind  that  made  it.  Understanding  the  enemy  comes  through  

immersion,  a  different  kind  of  reading:  Kip  must  “[travel]  the  path  of  the  bomb  fuze  

again,  alongside  the  mind  that  had  choreographed  this,  touching  all  the  key  points,  

seeing  the  X  ray  of  it”  (Ondaatje  108).  Kip’s  ability  to  see  inside  bombs  also  applies  

to  any  room  he  enters.  He  is  “unable  to  look  at  a  room  or  field  without  seeing  the  

possibilities  of  weapons  there,”  his  three-­‐dimensional  gaze  penetrating  

commonplace  objects  with  ease  (80).  He  “moves  always  in  relation  to  things,”  aware  

of  how  the  external  world  defines  and  constrains  his  body    (230).  However,  violence  

underlies  many  of  his  sensory  experiences.  The  residue  of  violence  even  touches  his  

eating  practices  because  he  uses  a  bayonet  to  stab  holes  in  cans  of  condensed  milk;  

he  “[peels]  the  onions  with  the  same  knife  he  [uses]  to  strip  rubber  from  a  fuze  

wire”    (92).  He  sees  the  world  through  his  rifle’s  telescope,  catching  glimpses  of  holy  

faces  painted  on  the  walls  of  churches  he  sleeps  in  as  his  unit  moves  up  through  

Italy.  He  sees  a  venerated  statue  of  Mary  from  the  other  end  of  a  gun  as  his  unit  

passes  through  the  Italian  town  of  Gabicce.    

Kip  believes  that  his  Sikh  heritage  is  what  gives  him  this  affinity  for  

machines:  “he  had  come  from  a  country  where  mathematics  and  mechanics  were  

natural  traits”  (200).  His  relationship  to  guns,  bombs  and  other  mechanized  objects  

is  one  of  cultural  heritage,  history  and  personality,  all  of  which  have  taught  him  

about  his  character,  the  vague  truths  of  his  personality.  He  explains  to  Hana  that  

“Sikhs…were  brilliant  at  technology,”  even  describing  it  as  a  “mystical  

    Schwab  36  

closeness…with  machines”  (289).  His  affinity  for  machines  is  revealed  through  his  

physical  closeness  with  them  and  his  ability  to  embody  their  moving  parts.  His  

familiarity  and  comfort  with  his  gun  makes  it  seem  “as  if  the  weapon  had  been  sewn  

along  his  shoulders  and  arms  and  into  his  small  brown  wrists,”  his  body  literally  

adopting  the  metal  as  part  of  itself  (94).  Defusing  a  bomb  becomes  an  intimate  

physical  encounter,  “his  thighs  [bracing]  the  metal  casing,  much  the  way  he  had  seen  

soldiers  holding  women”  (222).  This  intimacy  extends  into  Ondaatje’s  descriptions  

of  Kip  himself.  Just  as  the  rifle  seems  as  if  it  is  sewn  into  his  wrist,  Kip’s  mind  is  

likened  to  radar  sweeping  a  room:  “As  if  his  mind,  even  when  unused,  is  radar,  his  

eyes  locating  the  choreography  of  inanimate  objects  for  the  quarter-­‐mile  around  

him,  which  is  the  killing  radius  of  small  arms”  (93).  The  pumping  of  his  heart  is  a  

piston.    

In  an  attempt  to  humanize  the  destructive  objects  with  which  he  works,  the  

sapper  describes  the  bombs  he  defuses  as  living  or  dead,  putting  bombs  in  the  same  

category  as  organic  species.  Their  ticking  is  like  a  heartbeat:  “Those  small  

mechanical  semaphores  were  like  a  heart  murmur  or  a  stroke  within  a  man  crossing  

the  street  innocently  in  front  of  you”  (223).  When  Kip  looks  at  a  bomb,  he  sees  a  

mind  attempting  to  play  tricks  on  him  rather  than  a  series  of  chemical  and  

mechanical  reactions.  By  personifying  the  bomb,  Kip  translates  the  mechanical  into  

the  human,  complicating  the  object’s  status  as  a  violent  agent.  Rather  than  

attempting  to  defuse  the  terrifyingly  infallible  machine,  Kip  looks  for  the  human  

error.  He  calls  this  the  bomb’s  joke,  the  word’s  lighthearted  connotations  supporting  

his  need  to  de-­‐emphasize  what  might  happen  if  he  doesn’t  get  the  joke—the  bomb  

    Schwab  37  

could  explode,  and  he  could  die.  In  situ  with  the  bomb,  Kip  is  facing  a  living  enemy  –  

they  are  “two  suspicious  creatures  in  an  enclosed  space”  (223).  Ondaatje  compares  

his  defusing  techniques  to  surgery,  the  wires  he  cuts  more  like  veins  than  copper  

covered  in  rubber.  The  snap  of  clipping  a  wire  is  like  “the  break  of  a  small  rabbit  

bone”  (109).  When  he  defuses  the  Esau  bomb,  Kip  engages  in  a  dance  with  the  

mechanical  creature,  “his  body  draped  around  the  body  of  the  Esau”  in  order  to  fully  

feel  and  thus  understand  it  (222).  By  experiencing  bombs  as  living  creatures,  Kip  

affords  these  enemy  objects  agency  and  intentionality.    

While  the  bomb  symbolizes  the  politics  of  technological  progress,  the  

weapon  also  transcends  ideology  because  the  violent  reality  of  its  purpose  does  not  

differentiate  between  protagonist  and  antagonist.  Unlike  the  violent  ideological  

undertones  of  books,  bombs  are  overtly  violent  and  cannot  be  encompassed  by  

language.  Kip  recognizes  the  unspeakable  nature  of  bombs:  “he  never  speaks  about  

the  danger  that  comes  with  his  kind  of  searching”  (78).  Language  cannot  express  the  

mechanical  complications  of  a  bomb  and  so  Kip  doesn’t  attempt  the  explanation.  

When  asked,  he  “[shrugs],  not  modestly,  but  as  if  it  was  too  complicated  to  explain”  

(113).  The  disembodied  nature  of  language  is  antithetical  to  the  fundamentally  

physical  presence  of  the  weapon.  This  is  one  of  the  central  communication  problems  

between  Hana  and  Kip—while  for  Hana,  language  is  primary,  for  Kip,  language  

operates  outside  the  physical  sphere  where  he  resides,  and  “the  sapper’s  body  

allows  nothing  to  enter  him  that  comes  from  another  world”  (133).  He  has  a  

fundamental  distrust  for  anything  outside  his  body  because  “in  the  years  of  war  he  

has  learned  that  the  only  thing  safe  is  himself”  (230).  Because  language  and  

    Schwab  38  

machines  are  incompatible,  Kip  cannot  have  what  he  calls  the  “human  world”  inside  

him  when  he  works.  But  Hana’s  body  is  a  different  story:  even  though  “between  

them  lay  a  treacherous  and  complex  journey”  he  maintains,  “if  he  could  walk  across  

the  room  and  touch  her  he  would  be  sane”  (119).    

Hana  and  Kip’s  relationship  is  a  central  plot  line  that  informs  Ondaatje’s  

treatment  of  books  and  bombs.  Ondaatje  rarely  depicts  Hana  and  Kip  in  romantic  

scenes  together,  with  the  majority  of  their  relationship  explored  through  poetic  

exposition.  Their  first  intimate  interaction  occurs  when  Kip  is  in  the  act  of  defusing  a  

bomb  and  makes  a  mistake;  he  needs  “a  third  hand”  to  hold  two  live  wires  so  he  can  

disable  them  (107).  Hana  takes  the  wires  from  him  and  as  he  defuses  the  device,  he  

erases  her  presence,  focusing  entirely  on  the  work  at  hand.  However,  once  the  bomb  

is  dead,  Kip  finds  he  “[needs]  to  touch  something  human,”  and  Hana  tells  him  that  

she  thought  she  was  going  to  die,  and  “we  should  have  lain  down  together,  you  in  

my  arms,  before  we  died”  (109).  Brought  together  by  the  bomb,  they  brave  death  

through  touch,  expressing  a  desire  for  each  other’s  bodies.  Then  they  lay  together  on  

the  grass  and  fall  asleep;  when  Kip  wakes  up,  he  is  annoyed  with  Hana  because  “she  

had  made  him  owe  her  something”;  human  contact  has  jarred  him,  and  he  claims,  

“the  successful  defusing  of  a  bomb  ended  novels”  (111).  The  statement,  ironic  

because  the  novel  ends  with  bombs  exploding  rather  than  bombs  being  disabled,  

suggests  a  fundamental  misunderstanding  of  love,  despite  Kip’s  assurance  of  his  

body.  Kip  resists  Hana’s  body  despite  his  desire,  for  “how  could  he  trust  even  this  

circle  of  elastic  on  the  sleeve  of  the  girl’s  frock”  (112).  However,  the  next  scene  

shows  him  relinquishing  his  distrust  and  his  reliance  on  machines  by  cutting  the  

    Schwab  39  

wire  to  the  patient’s  hearing  aid  and  moving  toward  Hana,  where  the  chapter  cuts  

off  and  leaves  the  reader  to  imagine  their  first  tryst.  And  yet,  Ondaatje  complicates  

their  relationship  by  explaining,  “they  are  only  a  step  past  the  comfort  she  has  given  

others  in  the  temporary  hospitals,”  that  “how  much  she  is  in  love  with  him  or  he  

with  her  we  don’t  know”  (133-­‐4).  Even  Hana  realizes  “he  never  allowed  himself  to  

be  beholden  to  her,  or  her  to  him”  (135).  They  sleep  next  to  each  other,  but  distance  

remains  between  them  despite  their  physical  closeness  (133).    

  A  second  significant  scene  between  them  occurs  in  the  library  after  Kip  has  

finished  clearing  it  of  mines.  Kip  surprises  Hana  when  she  is  reading  and  they  

wrestle  on  the  floor  of  the  library,  Hana’s  books  looking  down  on  them.  These  are  

the  worlds  they  share:  the  site  of  a  mine  and  a  library.  And  yet,  her  Canadian  

landscape  is  very  different  from  his  land  of  five  rivers,  and  her  love  of  books  is  

counterintuitive  to  he  who  loves  machines.  Despite  the  vastness  of  their  relationship  

within  the  text,  they  only  spend  a  month  together  and  maintain  “a  formal  celibacy,”  

never  consummating  their  feelings  (237).  The  choice  emphasizes  the  continued  

distance  between  them,  their  differences  embedded  in  the  image  of  the  river.  Hana  

desires  “a  river  they  could  swim  in,”  a  landscape  of  rebirth  where  she  imagines  they  

could  create  their  own  space  (136).  Kip  associates  rivers  with  the  bridges  he  built  

and  then  pulled  down  during  his  time  as  an  engineer  in  the  army—rivers  aren’t  

blank  spaces  for  him,  but  instead  colored  by  the  blood  of  his  fellow  soldiers  as  the  

enemy  shot  at  them  through  the  water.  Hana  has  “her  own  rivers,”  but  Kip  knows  

that  they  cannot  swim  together  (137).  There  is  a  racial  charge  to  their  interactions  

as  well,  with  Hana  almost  fetishizing  the  brownness  of  Kip’s  body.  She  “imagines  all  

    Schwab  40  

of  Asia  through  the  gestures  of  this  one  man,”  imagining  his  body  as  the  entire  

continent  (229).  However,  when  he  speaks  of  the  issues  within  Asia,  she  “turns  

away  from  him”  and  “goes  in  to  sit  with  the  Englishman,”  as  if  simultaneously  

protecting  herself  from  “the  feuds  of  the  world”  and  maintaining  her  own  Western  

allegiances  (230).  From  their  backgrounds  to  their  ideological  loyalties,  Hana  and  

Kip  have  incompatible  worldviews,  for  they  both  exist  in  a  world  where  he  is  an  

Other,  where  she  has  ideological  access  to  books  and  he  remains  in  the  violent  

world  of  bombs.  Their  bodies  remain  separate  “continents”;  they  are  never  able  to  

create  a  “whole  civilization”  from  their  lovemaking,  for  ultimately  the  “very  wide  

world”  is  too  wide  (237,  119).      

 

Ideological  Epiphany:  The  Bomb  as  Colonizer  

While  most  of  the  bombs  in  The  English  Patient  are  noteworthy  for  their  size,  

strength,  and  effect  they  have  on  Kip,  two  bombs  in  particular  are  the  catalysts  for  a  

painful  but  clarifying  awakening  of  colonial  trauma.  In  a  narrative  moment  when  

history  crosses  over  into  fiction,  the  Americans  drop  nuclear  bombs  on  Hiroshima  

and  Nagasaki.  In  the  novel,  the  bombings  force  the  blurring  between  the  English  and  

Indian  aspects  of  Kip’s  identity  into  a  binary.  In  his  anger,  he  points  his  rifle  at  the  

patient,  who  suddenly  represents  the  colonizer.  “American,  French,  I  don’t  care,”  he  

tells  the  patient.  “When  you  start  bombing  the  brown  races  of  the  world,  you’re  an  

Englishman”  (304).    The  distinction  between  the  English  and  other  Europeans  and  

their  descendants  collapses  because  of  Kip’s  personal  victimization  by  the  English.  

He  forces  the  world  into  a  binary  between  white  and  brown,  between  the  colonizer  

    Schwab  41  

and  the  colonized,  the  perpetrator  and  the  victim.  He  knows  “they  would  never  have  

dropped  such  a  bomb  on  a  white  nation”  (304).  In  his  essay  “The  Whiteness  of  the  

Bomb,”  Ken  Cooper  writes,  “The  bomb  appalls  me,  as  the  whale  did  Ishmael,  because  

the  properties  of  idealized  whiteness  are  inseparable  from  its  power”  (80-­‐81).  The  

nuclear  bomb  represents  the  “very  embodiment  of  Western  technical  mastery”;  

wrapped  into  its  status  at  the  forefront  of  global  consciousness  during  the  Atomic  

Age  was  the  understanding  that  only  a  white  finger  would  press  the  button  (Cooper  

90).    Cooper  argues  that  the  “ground  zero”  of  the  first  bombs’  detonations  was  a  

“figurative  origin  to  orient  [the  ideological  system’s]  hierarchical  structure”  (95).  In  

The  English  Patient,  Kip  becomes  fascinated  with  the  location  of  this  ground  zero,  

imagining  a  city-­‐sized  bomb  flooding  the  streets  of  Asia  with  fire.  Ground  zero  is  the  

visceral  embodiment  of  modern,  Western  rationality  taken  to  its  most  destructive,  

horrific  end,  the  logical  conclusion  to  technological  progress.  The  nuclear  bomb’s  

horrific  violence  comes  to  represent  this  “tremor  of  Western  wisdom”:  the  extent  to  

which  one  civilization  will  go  in  order  to  protect  their  ideological  place  in  the  world,  

regardless  of  human  cost  (Ondaatje  304,  302).  In  terms  of  macro-­‐level  Althusserian  

ideology,  the  use  of  violence  to  enforce  ideology  means  that  ideology  itself  has  

failed.    Within  the  context  of  World  War  II,  the  bombing  of  Hiroshima  and  Nagasaki  

become  emblematic  of  how  the  technological  progress  imperative  was  disastrous  

for  humanity.  For  Kip,  this  failure  manifests  in  a  feeling  of  alienation  and  disgust  at  

the  Western  aspects  of  his  identity.  In  a  moment  of  understanding  and  tragic  

recognition,  Kip  shuts  off  from  the  Western  world  because  “he  feels  he  can  no  longer  

    Schwab  42  

let  anything  approach  him”  (305).  The  trauma  of  history  suddenly  expresses  itself,  

resulting  in  Kip’s  feeling  of  dehumanization.    

As  Paul  Williams  writes  in  Race,  Ethnicity  and  Nuclear  War:  Representations  

of  Nuclear  Weapons  and  Post-­‐Apocalyptic  Worlds,  “nuclear  weapons  are  white  

weapons,”  and  “are  used  to  buttress  a  racial  order  that  privileges  whiteness”  (2).  He  

argues  that  representations  of  the  nuclear  bomb  in  literature,  film  and  other  cultural  

texts  have  been  a  loaded  location  where  identities  are  negotiated  and  articulated.  

The  bombs  America  dropped  on  Hiroshima  and  Nagasaki  intimate  the  pervasive  

nature  of  white  power  over  subjugated  peoples  across  the  world,  but  also  function  

on  a  micro  scale,  affecting  the  identities  of  individuals.  Cooper  describes  the  atomic  

bomb  as  “a  specifically  Caucasian  deity,”  using  the  weapon  as  a  place  to  interrogate  

white  male  identity  (98).  In  The  English  Patient,  Ondaatje  describes  Kip  is  in  terms  

of  his  Sikh  religious  identity,  despite  the  European  gods  he  worships.    During  his  

travels  through  Italy,  Kip  “[brushes]  the  beards  of  Noah  and  Abraham  and  the  

variety  of  demons  until  he  [reaches]  the  great  face,”  using  his  rifle’s  telescope  to  get  

closer  to  painted  representations  of  the  West’s  holy  men  (Ondaatje  83).  For  Kip,  the  

sacred  extends  beyond  his  Sikh  beliefs  and  his  fascination  with  Western  holy  

figures—he  is  a  “warrior  saint”  who  has  a  “mystical  closeness”  with  machines  (229-­‐

30,  289).  But  Kip’s  magic  does  not  extend  to  the  atomic  bombs,  which  seem  to  him  

less  like  the  mechanized  bodies  to  which  he  is  accustomed  and  more  like  elemental  

forces,  releasing  a  “hurricane  of  heat  withering  bodies  as  it  meets  them”  (302).  The  

white  man’s  bomb  leads  to  “those  speeches  of  civilization  from  kings  and  queens  

and  presidents”  in  far  off  lands,  “wars  like  cricket,”  abstractions  removed  from  the  

    Schwab  43  

fiery  streets  of  Asia  (303,  301).  He  recoils  not  only  from  the  violence,  but  also  from  

the  perceived  casualness  with  which  it  is  perpetrated,  as  if  the  white  man  is  playing  

God.    

Kip’s  disgust  at  his  English  mentors  and  horror  at  his  complicity  in  Western  

modes  of  thinking  echoes  writer  and  thinker  Arundhati  Roy’s  reaction  to  India’s  

creation  of  a  nuclear  bomb  in  1998.  While  the  contexts  of  the  two  events  are  

historically  distant,  both  Kip  and  Roy  register  a  deep  shock  at  the  affect  nuclear  

weapons  have  on  their  psyches.  In  her  essay  “The  End  of  Imagination,”  Roy  blames  

“The  Men  who  made  it  happen…the  United  States  of  America”  for  introducing  the  

bomb  to  the  world  (11).  Kip  literally  has  a  physical  relationship  with  bombs,  and  

Roy  uses  a  similar  metaphor  to  impress  the  importance  of  the  moment  on  her  

reader.  “The  bomb  isn’t  in  your  backyard,”  she  writes,  “It’s  in  your  body”  (12).  For  

Kip,  the  bomb  is  an  extension  of  his  body  and  the  merging  of  the  two  enables  his  

sacred  connection  with  machines,  but  Roy  conceives  of  the  bomb  as  a  penetration  

into  the  body  of  India—a  colonial  invasion.  The  bomb  is  “the  ultimate  colonizer.  

Whiter  than  any  white  man  who  ever  lived.  The  very  heart  of  whiteness”  (Roy  11-­‐

12).  She  states  that  one  of  India’s  reasons  for  making  the  bomb  is  to  expose  Western  

hypocrisy,  but  she  counters  with  the  fact  that  the  bomb  only  exposes  the  West’s  

arrogance—“they  have  more  money,  more  food,  and  bigger  bombs,”  all  equally  

important  status  symbols  in  a  modern  world  (25).    If  India  now  sets  itself  in  

competition  with  the  West  rather  than  taking  the  moral  high  ground  of  not  making  a  

nuclear  weapon,  it  will  lose,  Roy  claims.  The  real  reason  for  India  to  create  a  bomb,  

she  posits,  is  that  the  weapon  offers  “a  national  cause,”  a  “search  for  selfhood”  (27).  

    Schwab  44  

For  Roy,  the  creation  of  an  atomic  bomb  is  fundamentally  due  to  anxiety  about  

Indian  national  identity,  forged  within  borders  drawn  by  the  British.  Roy’s  

conception  of  the  bomb  as  a  means  of  constructing  identity  resonates  with  Kip’s  

experience  of  the  bomb.  When  the  atomic  bombs  are  dropped  on  Japan,  Kip  realizes  

the  submerged  duality  of  his  identity—rather  than  acting  as  a  crutch  for  identity,  the  

bombs  serve  to  elucidate  his  misperceptions  about  the  West.    

After  trusting  Lord  Suffolk  and  the  patient,  fighting  for  the  English,  and  

diffusing  bombs  for  the  English,  Kip  realizes  that  he  no  longer  wants  to  be  English.  

He  cannot  rehabilitate  or  even  realize  the  split  in  his  identity  while  working  as  a  

sapper  because  internally  he  had  subjugated  his  Sikh  identity  in  favor  of  an  English  

one.  In  order  to  begin  a  process  of  uncovering  his  identity  as  a  Sikh,  he  reclaims  his  

name,  declaring  that  “his  name  is  Kirpal  Singh  and  he  does  not  know  what  he  is  

doing  here”  (Ondaatje  305).  For  Kip  (though  it  is  now  more  appropriate  to  call  him  

Kirpal  Singh),  his  physical  location  suddenly  becomes  vital  to  reestablishing  who  he  

is.    Because  it  will  take  him  awhile  to  get  back  to  India,  Kirpal  retreats  first  to  

machines,  specifically  to  the  motorbike  he  arrived  on.  In  contrast  to  the  death  he  

imagines  from  the  bombings,  he  kicks  “the  motorbike  to  life  and  [sits]  on  it  while  it  

half  [bucks],  alive  under  him”  (307).  The  life  of  the  machine  becomes  a  shelter  from  

the  outside  world,  speeding  Kirpal  away  from  Hana  and  the  destroyed  villa.  

However,  he  “feels  he  carries  the  body  of  the  Englishman  with  him  in  this  flight,”  

maintaining  a  connection  to  the  past  despite  his  desire  to  disassociate  from  it  (312).  

In  his  final  moments  in  the  narrative,  he  is  driving  across  a  bridge,  the  motorbike  

loses  its  grip,  and  both  fall  into  the  river.  The  next  time  the  reader  encounters  

    Schwab  45  

Kirpal,  he  is  back  in  India—his  descent  into  the  river  is  a  cultural  baptism,  a  

spectacular  failure  of  the  machine  under  the  crushing  weight  of  the  human  psyche.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    Schwab  46  

Conclusion:  Toward  a  Relational  Identity  

 

Echoing  Bill  Brown’s  assertion  that  history  can  now  begin  with  things,  I  have  

shown  that  thing  theory  is  a  productive  way  of  thinking  about  Michael  Ondaatje’s  

novel  The  English  Patient.  Within  the  world  of  The  English  Patient,  objects  are  

particularly  relevant  to  characters’  identity  construction  because  of  their  sensory  

properties  and  ideological  significances.  Books,  objects  that  embody  Western  

conceptions  of  subjectivity  and  agency,  simultaneously  enact  and  represent  colonial  

violence.  Bombs,  as  objects  of  seemingly  ubiquitous  destructive  force,  can  also  act  as  

vessels  for  human  contact,  epiphany,  and  identity.  As  a  result,  objects  become  the  

spaces  of  negotiation  for  characters  whose  identities  have  been  pressured  by  

wartime  trauma,  history,  and  colonialism.  In  The  English  Patient,  objects  become  

more  than  just  a  motif—they  become  a  way  of  structuring  character  development  

and  locating  characters  within  ideological  frameworks.  Books  and  bombs,  when  

placed  side  by  side,  activate  such  ideological  tensions:  what  is  empowering  to  some  

is  violent  to  others.  This  exchange  extends  to  the  object’s  relationship  to  identity,  

giving  new  weight  to  the  effect  of  environment  on  selfhood.    

The  English  Patient’s  ending  foregrounds  the  importance  of  objects  to  the  

narrative.  In  an  epilogue-­‐like  section  set  years  in  the  future,  Kirpal  Singh  sits  at  

dinner  with  his  family.  The  novel’s  last  paragraph  witnesses  a  moment  of  cross-­‐

temporal  and  cross-­‐spatial  movement,  where  Hana  knocks  a  glass  from  her  

cupboard  in  Canada  while  Kirpal’s  daughter  simultaneously  drops  her  fork—but  

Kirpal  catches  the  fork  in  midair  while  Hana’s  glass  presumably  shatters  on  the  

    Schwab  47  

floor.  The  alignment  of  the  moment  gestures  toward  the  section’s  portrayal  of  Hana  

and  Kirpal’s  continued  connection  as  almost  magical:  “he  sees  her  always,  her  face  

and  body…this  is  a  limited  gift  he  has  somehow  been  given,  as  if  a  camera’s  film  

reveals  her,  but  only  her,  in  silence”  (319).  Their  connection,  channeled  through  the  

glass  and  the  fork,  contains  Ondaatje’s  signature  emotionally  charged  poetry.  It  

could  be  read  as  a  moment  of  hope  or  of  dissonance,  but  ultimately  either  reading  is  

insufficient.  Instead,  The  English  Patient’s  non-­‐rational,  ambiguous,  emotional  

ending  is  another  way  of  disrupting  Western  ideology’s  focus  on  conclusive,  linear,  

empirical  modes  of  thinking.  Ondaatje,  himself  a  product  of  postcolonial  structures,  

undermines  the  need  for  resolution  with  a  moment  that  is  at  once  uplifting  and  

disruptive.  By  gesturing  to  an  otherworldly  connection  between  Kip  and  Hana  that  

transcends  national  and  cultural  boundaries,  Ondaatje  seems  to  end  The  English  

Patient  with  hope.  But  hidden  inside  is  a  postcolonial  critique  of  identity  that  offers  

an  alternative  model  to  the  Enlightenment  liberal  subject.  He  gives  us  a  vision  of  

embodied  subjectivity  that  is  fundamentally  relational,  that  depends  heavily  on  the  

negotiation  between  internal  and  external  worlds.  Identity  then  rests  

simultaneously  inside  and  outside  the  self,  defined  by  the  mental  game  that  exists  

between  ideology  and  identity.      

 

 

 

 

 

    Schwab  48  

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