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

Prose as metrical composition in The English Patient "Never again will a single story be told as though it is whole atomic number 53." bum 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, atomic number 18 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 can the texture for the novel. They create a complex web in which everyone becomes entangled. Ondaatje uses an exceedingly 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 imbibe to finish. They are the widening and fading circles on a pond into which register has plunged lik e a cast stone." (Eder 203). "The overall structure of the book is aviator and allusive, advancing, rounding back on itself, coming to endings that are not needfully 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 style 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, only 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(prenominal) det ailed and coherent. The farther into the novel the farther into the past he recalls. Ondaatje moves toward the mischance obliquely, avoiding standard conventions of plot and narrative voice. The English patients story is the oldest narrative material, the center on around which the rest of the book builds. His story lies at the center of the book, effective as the patient himself lies at the center of the villa. " The dialog is pften not straight enough to carry the deep emotions of the characters, so Ondaatje often relies on intierior monologue.