The English Patient (2)

1
The English Patient (2)

• Crossing and Setting Boundaries

2
Outline

• Plot Chaps 3 7

3
Plot Summary

• (chap 2 ends with Kips arrival)
• Chap 3 Sometime a Fire
• Kips ways of surviving the war,
• Hana communicating with Caravaggio (remembering
  Patrick) and Kip (e.g. two bomb episodes bring
  them closer to each other)
• Hana reading to EP EP remembers seeing Hana
  for the first time
• the four of them connected one way or another.

4
Plot Summary

• Chap 4 South Cairo 1930-1938
• EPs reminiscence of desert expedition Clifton
  and his wife join them in 1936 falling in love
  (voice ? dance? gave you my life)
• Chap 5 Katherine
• nightmare their relationship (calmness ?
  violence)
• her first ride with him (hates his assumption)
• what each of them hates Almasy's wounds and
  being disassembled - wall pp. 155-56

5
Plot Summary

• Chap 6 the Buried Plane
• EPs story continued Cairo evenings ? 1937
• Caravaggio's intrusion p. 163 on Almasy
• EP tells his story to C
• 1942 walks to the well and then the cave
• Hanas question
• Story resumed he ? I carry her with a tank
  of petrol
• 1939 Cs suicide-murder
• The cave ? the separation ? the cave ? 1942
  buried plane ? he

6
Different Types of Boundaries

• Boundary-drawing and breaking by wars, humans and
  by nature
• Spatial --desert and mapping pp. 18-19 mapping
  bombs p. 102
• Human constructions
• Bodily the war p. 83 EP 48 Caravaggio
  Katherine 175 Holy Trinity 177 morphine 161
• Interpersonal 104
• Temporal -- history

7
The International Bastards (p. 176)

• Before the war young, energetic, a-political
• Hana 29 tonsil 53 party singing
• Caravaggio
• EP 139- 143
• Kip

• During the warused by the warring nations 49-
  82-85
• C p. 33-5 used as a thief p. 54-
• EP 95 - 163 167
• K 104 110

After the war H like a nomad, a migrant, 14 C
59-
8
Love and Betrayals

• 97 betrayals in life // in war
• Histories 119
• Katherine and Almasy
• Why do they fall in love with each other?
• What kind of love is theirs?
• The other characters
• How do they try to heal themselves and each
  other?

9
Attraction, Obsessive Ownership and Hatred

• Attraction --
• Katherine's reading and studying Almasy p.
  144
• her dream -- her attraction to Almasy 150
• ownership
• the two's dialogue p. 152,
• A. just wants to be with her 155
• his question of Madoxp. 162
• Violence and mutual devouring
• wounds 152 p. 170
• Differences conflict of will
• Ks inner conflicts 154 cannot change each
  other pp. 157-58, 170, 172

10
Communication between Hana EP

• EPs recognition of her 95-
• EP as a despairing saint father complex
• Mutual dependence p. 5
• Reading half of her life, while the EP teaches
  her how to read pp. 93-95

11
Communication between Hana Caravaggio

• uncle and an emotional support
• Sharing memories of the past (about her father
  and her childhood)
• On their experience of the war pp. 82- 85
• Caravaggio concerned with Hana and Kip p. 117
  121

12
Communication between Hana Kip

• Her need of his support (103)
• His need of her shoulder (114-15)
• Intimacy and distance (125 27)

13
Their Interrelationships

• Kip and Almasy
• Their relationship a reversed version of that in
  Kim.
• "I think when I see him at the foot of my bed
  that Kip is my David" p. 116

14
Reading Historical Boundaries

• EP Histories by Herodotus 96
• Hana -- reading--like a Crusoe finding a drowned
  book, her body immersed in others' lives,
• Her writings in
• The Last of the Mohigans p. 61
• Kim 118-19

15
Views of History multiple, fragmentary

• E.g. Herodotus
• History of the desert 141
• Implied by Hanas writing, and Ondaatjes use of
  many histories and novels (intertext).