Prose as Poetry in The English Patient :: English Patient Essays

Prose as meter in The English Patient "Never again will a single story be told as though it is single wholeness." lav Berger. The English Patient consists of the stories of its four characters told either by themselves or by Ondaatje. Two stories, the accounts of Kips military service and the many-layered secrets of the patient, argon developed while Hanas and Caravaggios stories are less involved. However, none of these stories could stand alone. The clash of cultures and changing relationships between the characters go forth the texture for the novel. They create a complex web in which everyone becomes entangled. Ondaatje uses an passing complex structure and poetic language to further the interweaving of the characters lives. According to one critic, "The authors four stories are not a story that gathers momentum from come out to finish. They are the widening and fading circles on a pond into which history has plunged like a cast stone." (Eder 203) . "The overall structure of the book is measure and allusive, advancing, rounding back on itself, coming to endings that are not necessarily resolutions, and which may be connected to other starting points." (Draper 204). The novel begins en medias reis with the burned English patient already installed in an upper room of the villa. It is near the end of the war. The other doctors and nurses have left leaving only the patient and his nurse. He can only give short, vague descriptions of exploring the Liberian desert. When Kip and Caravaggio enter Ondaatje interlaces flashbacks to give the reader glimpses of their pasts. The novel has third person, except often characters revert to the first person to tell their own story. The to the lowest degree is learned about Hanas past. Most of what is known about her childhood in Toronto is given by Caravaggio. As the novel progresses the English patients flashbacks become longer, more than detailed and coherent. The farther in to the novel the farther into the past he recalls. Ondaatje moves toward the misfortune obliquely, avoiding standard conventions of plot and narrative voice. The English patients story is the oldest narrative material, the mall around which the rest of the book builds. His story lies at the center of the book, yet as the patient himself lies at the center of the villa. " The dialog is pften not square enough to carry the deep emotions of the characters, so Ondaatje often relies on intierior monologue.