1. Hamilton 1
Buffy Hamilton
ELAN 8410
Response Paper: The English Patient
February 4, 2004
“I wish for all this to be marked on my body
when I am dead. 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. We are not owned
or monogamous in our taste or experience. All
I desired was to walk upon such an earth that
had no maps.”
p. 261
“Words, Caravaggio. They have a power.”
p. 234

2. Hamilton 2
In my second reaction paper, I pondered the following questions spurred by the
aforementioned quotes:
So is this book really a metaphor about identity? Certainly we have many
characters reinventing themselves and reshaping themselves. Although they all
seem to somewhat try to disguise their former selves and even forget their former
selves in terms of their physical appearances and the way they choose to structure
or see the world, the identities of the characters seems to be constantly evolving
with many layers. In many ways, there is definitely a tension between the public
self and the private self for each character. How do we read each other? It
seems the “words” that “write” us and that people use to “read us” are not our
own.
After revisiting these questions after our last class meeting and contemplating my
experiences as first-time reader of The English Patient, I began wondering more about
how acts of reading contribute to our identity and construct a “communal” text of
ourselves. How do acts of reading “write” the “texts” of ourselves and help us “read”
the world? How do acts of reading “write” us as actual readers? What powers do words
have to construct readers and how they read the world? In what ways do we become
“communal histories” and “communal books” through acts of reading over time?
When I think of acts of reading as “communal”, I cannot help but think of Bakhtin and
his concept of “The living utterance, having taken a meaning and shape at a particular
historical moment in a socially specific environment, cannot fail to brush up against
thousands of living dialogic threads, woven by socio-ideological consciousness around
the given object of an utterance; it cannot fail to become an active participant in social
dialogue” (Bakhtin, p. 276). In other words, a reading of a text does not occur in a
vacuum, but our transactions with text simultaneously invoke multiple voices and
experiences. In a sense, reading is an act of participating in a community because you
bring your experiences, values, and beliefs to the text; consequently your transactions

3. Hamilton 3
with the text condition how you “write” or “construct” meaning of those experiences,
values, and beliefs. Those moments of intersection in an act of reading add another layer,
subtle though it may be, to your construction of the world and to the “communal”
dimension of “self” as well as your transactions with the text. Just as Hana used books
and words to cope with a world she could not longer tolerate and to construct a new one
in which she could make meaning, so do we use acts of reading allow us to enter a world
without walls and to open ourselves to reinvention and reconstruction, a text that is
constantly under revision.
Whenever I look back upon my first reading of The English Patient, I look do not
think of this reading was as an individual act, but rather my reading was a communal act.
My past, present, and future experiences as an individual reader and a reader in our
ELAN 8410 learning community all influenced my transactions with this novel. I cannot
think of reading this novel just as a solitary figure; instead, I think of Spencer’s
references to reading as “a sacred ritual;” Sharon’s concept of reading as a “temporal
experience;” Steven’s interest in our experiences as “re-readers;” Michelle’s concepts of
aesthetic experiences; Melanie’s reading of the first half of the novel as a “hyper linked”
sort of experience in which one line of text immediately sent you thinking of something
else you had read in the novel or a connection; Lee’s interest in the web of the characters;
and Mark’s interest in how this book might disrupt our conventional concepts of a novel
and its traditional linear structure. Your words, your social worlds, your connections and
questions, and your experiences somehow became incorporated into the “borderlands” of
my “self” and my experiences as a reader with this text. Again, this experience as a
reader echoes Iser’s assertion that “The continual interaction of perspectives throw new

4. Hamilton 4
light on all positions linguistically manifested in the text for each position is set in a fresh
context with the result that the reader’s attention is drawn to aspects hitherto not
apparent. Thus the structure of theme and horizon transforms every perspective segment
of the text into a two-way glass, in the sense that each segment appears against the others
and is therefore no only itself but also a reflection and an illuminator of those
others”(Iser, pp. 97-98). Had I read this text on my own, I am sure that my reading of
this text would have completely different and not as rich or meaningful.
Our dialogue, our learning experiences as a small group, and what each person
brought to the conversation all impacted how I thought about the text and created a sort
of “ongoing” revision and “rewriting” of the text for me. In this sense, this was definitely
a communal reading experience. My transactions with The English Patient were not just
about my own personal reading, but they were also about how my transactions with each
of you affected my “dialogue” with the text. Stanley Fish maintains, “…all objects are
made and not found, and that they are made by the interpretative strategies we set in
motion. The you is a communal you and not an isolated individual” (Fish, p. 331). This
reading went beyond the borders of myself. I felt the reading transcended each of us and
somehow evolved into larger experiences. For me, these experiences affirm Wolfgang
Iser’s belief that “….it is clear that if a literary text represents a reaction to the world, the
reaction must be to the world incorporated in the text; the forming of the aesthetic object
therefore coincides with the reader’s reactions to positions set up and transformed by the
structure of theme and horizon” (Iser, p. 98). Reading this novel not only was an act of
constructing a “communal text,” but these acts of reading involved composing a
communal history of my experiences with the text.

5. Hamilton 5
On a more text-to-reader level, I cannot help but think of how books “write” me and
construct a “communal text” of identity (communal book as a metaphor for identity) for
me. For Hana, words definitely conveyed a “power” to feed her and nurture her, just as
Katharine “…had always wanted words, she loved them, grew up on them. Words gave
her clarity, brought reason, shape” (238). From my first faint outline of memory as a
small child, words, spoken and written, have shaped my world and sense of purpose in
the world. What stories and songs did I read and hear repeatedly that impacted my
worldview? When I was ten, Little Women inspired me to declare that “being an author”
was my mission in life. My reputation for devouring books was known to family,
friends, and teachers. A Christmas “wish list” was never without a requisite list of books
that I hoped would line my bookshelves. If I was not found with my nose in a book, then
you would find me composing my own stories either by hand or later, with a typewriter
that definitely made me feel like a budding Louisa May Alcott! After reading The Lion,
The Witch, and the Wardrobe for the first time, I tried to go to Narnia by hopping in my
great-grandmother’s chiffarobe. Over twenty years later, I can still feel the sense of
disappointment that the walls did not magically open a door to Narnia; even now, I still
feel a faint flutter of the he urgent desire to literally go someplace a book had taken me
earlier. Words and books are inextricably intertwined with my sense of self.
In a recent television interview, renowned actor, poet, and painter Viggo Mortensen
commented that unlike many actors, he did not try to rid himself of a character; for him,
remnants of his experiences in a moviemaking experience and of that character somehow
became imbued and fused into his own psyche. This experience for Mortensen is much
like my experiences as a reader: I enter a book as one person, but I exit it a different

6. Hamilton 6
person even though I may not completely realize the changes and the “rewriting” of
myself at that point in time. When I begin to read a book, I often wonder what journey
lies ahead for me as a reader; this anticipation is usually one of curiosity, much like
Hana: “She entered the story knowing she would emerge from a feeling she had been
immersed in the lives of others, in plots that stretched back twenty years, her body full of
sentences and moments, as if awaking from sleep with a heaviness caused by
unremembered dreams” (12). I reflect with awe how books and reading have populated
my identity. The map of self is altered and the old labels and markings no longer apply.
Is it through reading acts of reading that we can fulfill the English Patient’s desire to
“walk upon an earth with no maps”, to create a world with dynamic boundaries and
meaningful place-names of self that are dynamic? Acts of reading are acts of
transformation whether we realize it or not. These transformations are not isolated, and
they occur in a context of a particular reading experience: “As text and reader thus merge
into a single situation, the division between subject and object no longer applies, and it
follows that meaning is no longer an object to be defined, but is an effect to be
experienced” (Iser, pp. 9-10). Have you ever found yourself in a book feeling as though
you were someplace real, as though you had crossed into some imaginary yet incredibly
real world, wondering what parts were fiction and what parts were reality or truth? How
is it that we as readers breathe life into those words on the page?
At this point, I believe that if we are to think of reading as an experience that adds
“communal” layers to ourselves, we incorporate those experiences into rich, dynamic
transactions with texts. Consequently, acts of reading become places of meaning making
and construction of worlds, “texts,” and living histories.

7. Hamilton 7
Bakhtin, M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination: Four essays by M.M. Bakhtin. Austin,
TX: University of Texas Press.
Fish, S. (1980). Is there a text in this class: The authority of interpretive communities.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Iser, W. (1978). The act of reading: A theory of aesthetic response. Baltimore, MD:
Johns Hopkins University Press.