The english patient , book essay
Final Essay on The English Patient, book
essay on the WHOLE BOOK
Choose one of the following questions, and write a five-paragraph essay using the essay template The principles are the same. You may draw on class lectures to help you write your paper as well as the use of one scholarly article that relates specifically to your topic.
please follow the structure and all instructions given in uploaded file.
1. Ondaatje has said in an interview that the novel is about a process of healing. What is the nature of that process for each of the characters who gather in the Villa San Girolamo?
2. “Kip and I are international bastards.” How is the position of the exile explored and evaluated particularly in the light of the novel’s ending?
3. How does the landscape of the novel–the Villa San Girolamo, the country around it, and the boundary between the two–reflect the inner lives of its inhabitants? Why do you think that Ondaatje has chosen Tuscany as the setting for his story? What significance do other landscapes, like the desert and the English countryside, hold for the story and its characters?
4. The English patient says, “I believe in such cartography–to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books” [p. 261]. How does Ondaatje use maps and cartography as a metaphor for people and history? What does geography mean to the English patient and to Ondaatje’s other characters?
6. “I came to hate nations,” says the English patient. “We are deformed by nation-states” [p. 138]. How does the desert negate the idea of nations? What sort of supra-national unity is experienced by the Europeans drawn to the desert, and how does each of them respond to the beginning of war? What alternate view of geography and history does the desert offer?
7. Create your own thesis statement that focuses on Ondaatje’s use of either intertextuality or postmodernism in The English Patient.
