This document is Buffy Hamilton's response to reading The English Patient for her ELAN 8420 class. She reflects on how her purpose for reading, as an assigned text for class, affected her experience. She also discusses her expectations going into the novel based on reviews and descriptions of it being "multi-layered" and "poetic." Hamilton analyzes several poetic quotes she enjoyed from the novel and ponders themes of isolation, different cultures intersecting during WWII, and the characters being "displaced persons." She concludes by sharing a found poem she created from quotes and expresses interest in discussing the novel further with her classmates.

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Buffy Hamilton
ELAN 8420
Response 1: The English Patient
January 18, 2004
In reflecting on this first reading of The English Patient, I pondered
my reactions and responses to the actual reading as well as my
actions as a reader. In terms of purpose for reading this text, I was
well aware that this was an assigned reading and that I would be
expected to come with a prepared written response within a certain
time frame. I think that knowing I must be accountable in some way
definitely affects the way I read a particular text as opposed to a
situation where I am free to read a text at my own pace and am free
to come and go into at will.
I also think it is important to consider my expectations for a text. I
am always intrigued by the “blurbs” of a book’s jacket or cover, and I
always read them before diving into a new book. After reading the
comments on the inside of the cover, I noticed that nearly all the
excerpts of reviews referred to the novel as “multi-layered,” “lyrical,”
and “poetic.” I also remembered Dr. Faust’s comment on the first
night of class that some people found this book difficult because of the
constant shifting in the plot. Although I had never read this book nor
seen the movie, I did know that the movie had won a few Oscars, so

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one might assume the plot would be especially intriguing and “reading-
worthy.”
As a reader and classroom teacher, I am wondering how might our
expectations and purposes for reading affect our transactions and
responses, both aesthetic and efferent, to a text? For me, knowing
that I am obligated to publicly share a response with peers affects how
I will read a text. Knowing that this was a best-selling novel and one
that was translated into an Oscar-worthy film created high
expectations to have a pleasurable reading experience. In hindsight, I
also wonder in what ways my being female affects my reading of this
novel.
My favorite quality about this text is indeed its lyrical, poetic feel---
Ondaatje seamlessly weaves a multitude of similes and metaphors
throughout the first half of this text, creating an almost cinematic,
ethereal quality in spite of the horrors, both physical and mental, that
Hana and the English Patient endure. Some of my favorite “poetic”
lines include:
• “A novel is a mirror walking down the road” (91).
• “He listens to her, swallowing her words like water”(5).
• “He is her despairing saint”(3).
• “Moments before sleep are when she feels most alive, leaping across
fragments of the day, bringing each moment into the bed with her
like a child with schoolbooks and pencils” (35).
• “…and the destroyed bodies were fed back to the field hospitals like
mud passed back by tunnellers in the dark” (49).

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I found the constant shift in point of view and plot was actually
pleasing. While I might normally have found such an approach
disjointed, the technique worked for me---I felt as though I were
unraveling a mystery or slowly finding the pieces of a puzzling. It
was actually gratifying to have the “layers” of the characters
revealed, and I am curious to find out what will happen to next. I
am fighting the urge as we speak to read ahead!
In spite of this positive response, though, I’m not sure this is a
book I would re-read. It is painful for me to read about Hana’s self-
imposed isolation and attachment to the English patient as a way of
controlling the chaotic world that is around her, to simply shut out
everything that is just no longer something she can deal with and to
cope by cutting herself off from those part of the world. Perhaps
this in some ways is a difficult read for me because I tend to
internalize the mood of the protagonist(s) in a novel, especially if I
feel I identify with their emotions in some way. Although I certainly
have never endured anything as painful or traumatic as Ana, I have
often wished I could shut out the parts of the world I find distressing
and be in my own little “domain” just as Hana has. Two quotes that
impressed this quality of the need for control in order to survive and
cope are:

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• “She was secure in the miniature world she had built; the two
other men seemed distant planets, each in his own sphere of
memory and solitude” (47).
• “But she felt safe here, half adult and half child…she drew her
own few rules to herself” (14).
Another idea or “theme” I find intriguing is the intersection of
these cultures in space and time. I must confess that I am not very
familiar with the geography of deserts nor all the nitty gritty
particulars of World War II. I keep wondering what is the common
thread that weaves Hana, Caravaggio, Kip, and the English patient
together. I was truly surprised when the relationship developed
between Hana and Kip; I thought she was so grief stricken that she
would never feel anything again and that the patient was a
“surrogate” sort of love or lover for her. If she were to feel again
and surrender her heart to anyone, I would have expected it to be
Caravaggio. The unlikelihood of Hana and Kip being together is
further impressed upon me when Ondaatje writes, “If he could walk
across the room and touch her, he would be sane. But between
them lay a treacherous and complex journey. It was a very wide
world”(113). This quote is especially intriguing to me---what IS it
that makes this journey “complex” and “treacherous” for Kip?
Although they are from different cultures, the war has caused both of
them to become fixated on something rather grotesque in order to
survive. For Kip, he constantly thinks about the intricacies of

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clearing and defusing mines, of surviving, and for Hana, she is
fixated on caring for the English patient.
I am also wondering what has become of Katharine and if she will
be reunited with the English patient. What is her role in this story? I
also wonder how they will all emerge from their current existence; it
seems they all are scarred in some way by their experiences with the
war and that their hearts and psyches are forever altered. The
primary thread that seems to weave these four unlikely characters
together is the idea of them being “displaced persons.” Caravaggio
laments, “The trouble with all of us is we are where we shouldn’t be.
What are doing in Africa, in Italy? What is Kip doing dismantling
bombs in orchards, for God’s sake? What is he doing fighting English
wars?” (122). Is there any healing for any of these characters who
are disfigured both physically and emotionally?
For conclusion, I want to include a “found” poem I have created of
various quotes that I found intriguing but that did not quite seem to
fit in to my response. I am definitely interested in hearing what my
classmates have to say about this novel and how my transactions
with them this week will “rewrite” my initial reading from this
weekend! I am also wondering how seeing the video will affect my
initial responses; I would like to rent the DVD for viewing once we
have finished reading the text.

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Found Poem
The English Patient, Part 1
A despairing saint.
She had tried to damage her life so casually.
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.
A despairing saint.
This was the time in her life that she fell upon books as the
only door
out of her cell.
They became
half her world.
The day seems to have no order
until these times,
which are like a ledger for her,
her body full of stories and situations.
The deepest sorrow…where the only way to survive
is to excavate
everything.
Sadness is very close to hate. Let me tell you this.
If you take in someone else’s poison---thinking you can cure them by sharing it---
you will instead store it within you.
She never looks at herself in mirrors again.
She peered into her look, trying to recognize herself.
But here they were shedding their skins.
The could imitate nothing but
what they were.
There was no defence
but to look for the truth in others.