The Outcomes of War : A Study of the Character After the Crisis of War

World War II has brought suffering for all people; it has led people to have a nostalgic feeling. The war has many faces all of them are ugly, like death, separation, loneliness, violence, crime, betrayal, and disconnection and many other meanings. Michael Ondaatje in his novel The English Patient (1992) portrays a picture of the effect of World War II on four different characters; Hana a Canadian nurse, The English patient who is Hungarian, Caravaggio a Canadian-Italitan thief, and Kip an Indian sapper. They live together in one house, share their secrets and memories about World War II. Ondaatje brings them together to reveal their secrets and to heal their wounds of the war experience.

Italian villa, once an army hospital, Hana who is a young nurse continues to give aid to her final patient, Almasy. He is a man who does not remember who he is; his plane has crashed in the Libyan Desert, "someone who looked like a burned animal" 3 he is completely burned all over his body. Hana knows that he is going to die but she tries to give him as much comfort as possible.
To the villa comes a thief from Toronto and a young Sikh soldier in the British Army, a sapper whose business is to defuse bombs. The lives and experience of these four persons are going to intertwine to reach a final interpretation. They reveal their past secrets and wounds of war to each other in an attempt to save their future and heal their wounds. Through this revelation the author shows the effect of the war on them.
In The English Patient, Ondaatje shows all the ugly faces of war, war comes to mean: destruction, isolation, violence, disconnection, death, crime and remoteness. The setting of the novel clearly shows these meanings as it shifts from an Italian villa after the Second World War, to the Egyptian desert pre-war. The remote and ruined Italian villa (which is used as a hospital in the time of war) is an example of the healing process after war. Although everything in the villa has been destroyed, yet Hana insists on staying in it to take care of her patient. She cleans the place up, she plants a garden, she cleans the rooms, and Kip sweeps the place free of mines. They rebuild and restore, which is something the whole world must do after the war. 4 As to the second setting of the novel, when the English patient describes moments from the War, the novel goes back to the Egyptian desert in the 1930s up to just the beginning of World War II which was 1940. The desert serves as a background which puts the character against the forces of nature (heat and luck of water); it is a lifeless place so the challenge of characters in it: is to exist. Therefore, the setting has enabled the reader to clearly understand the evident surrounding and to construct appropriate images. 5 So the villa and the desert represent the destructive, isolated, and the violent faces of war, as well as representing the image of death.
The Canadian nurse Hana is the first to introduce her war experience to us.
During warfare many women entered the work force to fill the place left by men who are in the battlefield, therefore women's view on working have she has lost her father, and her lover (the father of her unborn child, who was a soldier that died near her) she has also lost her girlfriend a nurse who died while working. Although war deprives Hana of her loved ones, she keeps on living; she continues to give without thinking of a thing to take. "She was living like a vagrant, while elsewhere the English patient reposed in his bed like a king." (p.14) Thus, Hana has changed from being a child into an adult. Now she takes the role of a mother taking care of her child "she would care only for the burned patient. She would read to him and bathe him and give him his doses of morphine -her only communication was with him."(p.14) Hana presents the experiences of the mother who suffer during wartime taking care of her family and cautious about her loved ones who participate in war, and might get hurt or die. Hana endures the atrocities that the nurses have to face when caring of wounded soldiers. Furthermore, she represents the quick change of a character from young to adult.
Ondaatje uses the character of Hana to show redemption through acceptance: Hana's character development is one from debilitating grief and denial, to healing and acceptance. Throughout the novel she refuses to acknowledge the death of her father, even going so far as to tell the patient that he is alive in France. 6 Yet deep inside herself, she accepts his death and believes that she should go on with her life. By taking care of the English patient, Hana believes that she is saving herself from sadness.

The English patient chooses to hold this name (which is based on his
English accent) because he is unable to recall anything even his own name.
Under the effect of the morphine, he starts to have images, and reveals his past, by telling his story about who he is and how he ends burned falling from a plane on fire. The English patient is in fact László de Almásy, a Hungarian Kip's character, Ondaatje tries to give an example of how war deprives a person of an important aspect of life: that is (trust). Instead of faith and trust, suspension becomes the ground of Kip's being. 11 As soon as he hears the savage news of the Western attack on Japanese civilians, he is shocked. He realizes the falsehood of the images he had held up so high. He takes his gun and tries to shoot the English patient. Singh states that: "this aggressive act is a meaningful response, revealing Kip's new found ego." 12 Ondaatje creates a complex love relationship between Kip and Hana. Hana turns to the east to find peace, and Kip turns to the west thinking that it is the best.Their relationship crosses culture boundaries, but ends as soon as Kip hears the news of the American Atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki anymore; he isKirpal again, stating that they "never would have dropped such a bomb on a white nation" (p.286) So Kip is presented as a victim of the machines of the war that numb his mind and heart. The relationship between Kip and Hana is based on mutual needs. He needs Hana as a mother or sister, as well as a lover. While he understands Hana'sreasons of sorrow: "Heknows the depth of darkness in her, her lack of a child and of faith. Heis always coaxing her from the edge of her fields of sadness." 13 Accordingly, both Kipand Hana think that they are being needed by each other, as Ondaatje says about all thecharacters in the novel: "I think everyone thinks they're healing everybody else, in some way,but they're all wounded". 14 The English patient is a novel with an international concept, it marks a time of great changes in the world, and its main concern is on how war affects human beings and how they react toward it. Hana plays the role every womanplay in wartime; to her the war means loneliness and death, for she has lost her dear ones. War also means separation to her because she and Kip are separated because of war. Yet Hana grows more mature by gaining more power and confidence. She creates a family atmosphere in a place smells like death. In some way the effect of war is seen positive upon Hana for it shows her true powerful and thoughtful character. Kip is changed by the war, from a person who idealizes the west, to someone who realizes the injustice of war.
He realizes the significance of the Indian traditions, which he used to disgrace before. The English patient is a victim of war;who has lost everything even his own senses as he is burned from head to toe. The War has also changed Caravaggio forever cutting off his thumbs, he turns from a thief stealing the properties of people into a spy who steals and creates identities. Then he degrades into a vile person.