Chapters 4 - 7

Welcome back, readers! In the past week, I’ve gotten through four new chapters of The English Patient and it seems that this length of the book has been almost completely backstory. I’m excited to share with you what has been revealed about the mysterious English patient, if I can even call him English…

“South Cairo 1930-1938”

This chapter takes us through almost a decade of the English patient’s life as he narrates it to Hana from his little garden room in the villa. At first, this chapter seemed to be much more plot-heavy than those that preceded it. It takes us year by year through the English patient’s journey to find Zerzura, a city rumored to exist somewhere in the deserts of Northeast Africa. But as the English patient describes his eight-year exploration, his personality begins to show through. His description of a sand storm really stood out to me:

“The sand leaps in spurts and swirls. Inch by inch the disturbance rises as the wind increases its force. It seems as though the whole surface of the desert was rising in obedience to some upthrusting force beneath (137).”

Despite these sandstorms being a great obstacle for the group of explorers, the English patient describes it as if it was a powerful symphony, admiring the beauty of nature through personification and imagery. The English patient’s voice contrasts with the other characters’ in its great attention to detail and passion for what has happened in the past. In his dying state, he chooses to escape through his memories rather than sit in the presence of the peaceful villa.

Identity

In the early years of his Journey, the English Patient and his team have lost their sense of having a country to call home:

“There were rivers of desert tribes, the most beautiful humans I’ve met in my life. We were German, English, Hungarian, African- all of us insignificant to them. Gradually we became nationless. I came to hate nations (138).”

This begins to explain why the English patient was unable to identify himself after the plane crash. After years of going from place to place with a diverse group of people, he has become focused on the individual, the “beautiful humans” rather than established groups. While other explorers pride themselves on naming their discoveries after themselves or their wives, he wishes to be nameless, expressing his desire for freedom.

“Katharine”

So who is Katharine? Well, she’s many things. She’s the wife of the English patient’s friend Clifton, an abusive lover, and the catalyst for the very plane crash that landed The English patient in the villa. The previous chapter ended with the English patient’s infatuation with Katharine reading poetry under the stars: “That night I fell in love with a voice. Only a voice. I wanted to hear nothing more (144).” The love for a voice later turns into the love for the whole person, as Katharine and the English patient have an affair. It gets ugly quick.

From the very beginning, these two have a mutual disdain for each other, while at the same time constantly needed the affection of the other person. Katharine hates his extreme politeness and long, wordy speeches: “...she hated him, her eyes remaining polite, her mind wanting to slap him. She always had the desire to slap him, and she realized even that was sexual (150).” The desire to hurt him turns into action, and Katharine becomes violent:

“The various colours of the bruise- bright russet leading to brown. The plate she walked across the room with, flinging its contents aside, and broke across his head, the blood rising up into the straw hair. The fork that entered the back of his shoulder, leaving his bite marks the doctor suspected were caused by a fox (153).”

This confused me at first. I liked the English patient. He was intelligent and observative. Why was he letting her do this to him? It only grows worse, as she becomes his only desire in life. He is distracted from the passions he developed over the past eight years. “He has been disassembled by her (155).” I soon realized that his unbridled passion for people and discovery was also a flaw in his character. His ability to easily obsess over things caused him to become dependent on her, and no amount of pain could make it not worth the trouble. 

“A Buried Plane”

Suspicion

In between flashbacks to the deserts of Africa, we see Caravaggio and Hana discussing the English patient. Caravaggio, who has become addicted to morphine during the time that
Hana has been using it for the English patient’s pain, theorizes that the patient isn’t actually English. He thinks that he is a Hungarian man named Almasy who worked with the Germans during the war. Although Almasy’s past lines up well with the patient’s, Hana wants to let it go as the war is over and her beloved patient is nearing his last days. But like always, Caravaggio is not satisfied with simple solutions and decides to whip up a “Brompton cocktail” (morphine and alcohol) that can get the patient in a vulnerable state. Hana, being loyal to the patient, warns him of this, and his reaction tells all:

“She watched his stillness as she spoke; it appeared that he was not listening carefully to what she was saying. Just his distant thinking. The way Duke Ellington looked and thought when he played ‘Solitude’ (169).”
When you are close to the end, you haven’t got much to lose, so why waste your time trying to defend yourself against true accusations?

What Lead to the Plane Crash?

Caravaggio successfully gets the patient to finally tell the full story: The patient and Katharine eventually ended their affair, but that didn’t keep Clifton from finding out. He attempts to crash his plane, with Katharine in it, into the patient as a murder-suicide. He fails, however, and ends up dying in the ruined plane while the patient is unscathed. The patient recovers Katharine from the crash. She is badly injured, and even then they are fighting:

“You were terrible to me. That’s when my husband suspected you. I still hate that about you- disappearing into deserts or bars. You left me in Groppi Park.
Because you didn’t want me as anything else.
Because you said your husband was going mad. Well, he went mad (173).”

He then leaves her body, only to retrieve it three years later, and bring it back to the plane that was buried in the sand. As he and the late Katharine begin flying, Ondaatje takes us in and out of the past and present, from Caravaggio listening to the story to the plane catching fire before the patient’s very eyes. The passage ends when the patient realizes that he is on fire.

“In Situ”

Focus has shifted, and we are now in the mind of Kirpal Singh (a.k.a. Kip) as he reflects on his training to be a sapper during the war. The chapter begins with a description of Kip: “Now, he was a black figure, the background radicalizing the darkness of his skin and his khaki uniform (181).” This sentence echoes a struggle that Kip has dealt with for years; being known as the sapper, the Indian, the Sikh. His peers tend to focus on his race rather than his personality, his abilities. However, not all the people he meets are like that. He finds comfort in his mentor, Lord Suffolk, who shows him kindness and respect:

“‘I trust you, Mr. Singh, you know that don’t you?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Singh adored him. As far as he was concerned, Lord Suffolk was the first real gentleman he had met in England’ (186).”

Suffolk not only mentors Kip as a sapper, but he also teaches him about the English culture, making him feel more at home in England. This makes it all the more devastating when he learns that Mr. Suffolk and his wife are killed by a bomb. Still, Kip’s new knowledge, nurtured by his mentor, aids him in neutralizing bombs planted by the Germans; bombs that cannot be disassembled in the traditional way. This makes Kip one of the most valuable people sappers England.

Thank you so much for reading! In my next post I will be discussing the end of the book, so stay tuned!