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The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje, lines/passages i think are…
The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje
characters
hana
young nurse who remained at the villa with the English patient after the rest of the nurses moved to a safer place, caring for the burned man almost obsessively to pass time.
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caravaggio
an emotionally-distant spy for the allies who has been caught and punished by losing both of his thumbs.
Caravaggio is the first one to discover the English patient's true identity and feels that the man is to blame for his mutilation
Caravaggio is romantically interested in Hana, but also understands that she is committed to caring for the burned man
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kip
a sapper for the British and the last to arrive at the villa. he forms friendships with the other three but in the end, his Indian heritage draws him away from the western ways of the rest of the villa's residents
although his relationship with Hana ends after he abruptly leaves the villa, Kip still thinks of her years later when he is married with children
Kip feels that the English patient represents the destruction and damage that the west brought to the war and is driven to point a gun at him at the end of the book
the english patient
the titular character who is being cared for in the abandoned villa by Hana after being badly burned in the desert. he is revealed near the end of the book to actually be Count Ladislaus de Almásy, a Hungarian map maker who spied for the Germans and searched for Zerzura, a lost oasis in northern Africa
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Caravaggio gives the English patient a combination of drugs and alcohol that makes him more lucid and he tells more revealing stories from his past
Geofrey Clifton: husband of Katharine, attempts a murder-suicide with Katharine and the Englishman in a plane
Katharine Clifton: has an affair with the English patient / is arguably a catalyst for the events of the story
Madox: the Englishman's best friend while in the desert. he sends his maps back to the geographical journal. he kills himself because he feels the church has "lost its religion", but the Englishman says that he "died because of nations"
setting
set in northern italian hills: Villa San Girolamo, an abandoned nunnery that is kept up by Hana
but! the story is not told in chronological order so there are also many events that take in place in...
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allusions
Count Ladislaus de Almásy [the English patient] was a real Hungarian desert explorer. the book features several true facts from his life, such as the search for Zerzura,a lost oasis
the English patient keeps a copy of Herodotus' The Histories with him and pastes in his own maps and notes, signifying his own "histories".
the patient also compares the affair with Katharine and subsequent death of her husband to the story of gyges and candaules' wife (from The Histories)
Rudyard Kipling's Kim is mentioned several times, as is Anna Karenina by Tolstoy
themes
identity
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some chapters begin in third person and some begin in first person-we don't find out who is speaking until some telling detail is revealed
nationality plays a big role in the characters' identities as well. Kip's final decision to leave the villa was due to his conflicting feelings about his allegiance to his homeland and the British
there's a motif of namelessness: unnamed places, characters, animals. adds to the ~intrigue~ and creates an interesting connection between what we call people and who they really are
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i am very sorry that this is so big. i had An Idea in the middle of making it and then this happened