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Good afternoon, we continue with our lecture on Michael Ondaatje’s The English patient.
So, in today's lecture we are going to see the highlights of that talk today, so one
is love and loss, so these are the key concepts that we will be discussing in today's class;
love and loss in the English patient. So, the theme of what it means to a love to be
fond of someone, to care for somebody and to lose that person. So, the idea of love
and loss, but it is not just the person that we are talking about here, it is also our
own identities, our countries, our own selves that we are talking about.
So, loving and losing self, our nations and people whom we have known once and cared for
once, but which all got - you wrote it got lost on the way. Identities, we have been
talking about the theme of identity in the English patient for quite a while, and identities
is actually the most important theme of the English patient because, all the characters
- whether, you remember the characters - all the principle characters of the English patient
whether its kip or count almasy, who is our hero, the English patient, or Hana - the major
characters - they are the people who are in search of their identities, whose identities
are extremely fluid.
They belong everywhere and nowhere, there is the issue, Katherine and her husband they
are English and somehow they cannot cope with the world outside and therefore, they are
the first to parish away. Assimilation, what it means to get assimilated in a troubled
world, in a world where there are nationalities, languages, races of such diversity that we
cannot even start counting. So, what does it mean to assimilate with people whom we
have never encountered before, as the English patient, as the count almasy, he does so effortlessly.
Of course, we have another major character that we talk about in the English patient
and that is Caravaggio, one of the most charismatic characters from the novel, the former thief,
the master thief, who is an expert in a stealing secretes and stealing materials during the
Second World War from account. Count almasy if you remember, he is a geologist, he is
an expert in map making - a cartographer. So, these are the people that we talk about,
and their identities form the basic theme of the English patient. Journey, almost every
character in the English patient takes a journey, or makes a journey, so whether it kip - and
kip is a Sikh from Punjab in India - he goes first to Scotland - England - he learns the
art of diffusing bombs during the Second World War, he is a young man and during the course
of the Second World War he travels across Europe, he travels across continents and ends
up at the villa where the other characters are resided.
So, how many of you remember the name of the villa where all these characters assemble,
Villa San Giralamo, it is in Italy, so we are talking about journey. So, kip takes a
journey from India to San Giralamo; count almasy, he belongs to everywhere and nowhere,
he is the original root less man, and well his identity that forms a basic theme of the
English patient. So, who is he? He is definitely not an English
man, the English patient is not English; Hana, she is a Canadian nurse and she starts from
Canada ends up a Europe, and now she is an Italy at Vilas San Giralamo. Caravaggio is
an international thief as by, and a person who can make or break the way into anybody’s
house, and he can break lockers, he can steal document, secrets, etcetera. And during the
Second World War he has been captured by the enemies and as a punishment they cut off both
his thumbs, so he is the thumb less man and after lose - a having lost - his thumbs, now
he cannot do what he is best at, that is stealing, that its craft. So, he has be punished in
such a way that he cannot practice his craft anymore, the Caravaggio.
This interesting characters all of them and of course, then the body as a theme, mean
you look at everybody’s body; body is something that Ondaatje is extremely interested in.
So, the English patients’ body, what count almasy looks like before he is born? Do you
remember this story, he falls in love with Katharine who is Geoffrey Clifton’s wife,
they are newlyweds, they have just arrived from England into this desert where the war
is in full force, but as fate would have it, Katharine falls in love with count almasy
and that lead subsequently to the do the catastrophe, the tragedy of these people.
So, while as keeping with Katherine in an old rotten aircraft, there is an accident
and Katherine of course dies, and count almasy he is left almost, he is just breathing, he
is nothing else left to him. So, his body is completely chard, he is absolutely burnt,
and Hana - the nurse - she nurses him, she takes care of him, he has traveled in his
burnt condition, the ((bethovan)) is that tribe, they take care of him, they move around
with him and they take him places, they treat him with respect for quite a while, because
they are impressed with his encyclopedic knowledge of deserts and artillery and weapons of all
kinds, but once his utility is finish for them, they just abandon him and that is how
he travels to san Giralamo - the villa where finds Hana.
So, in the English patience body is an extremely vital sight whatever happens in the novel;
Hana, Hana is also she is a beautiful girl, she is extremely young, but then she goes
to extreme measures to make herself look ordinary, to make herself look plain. So, she dresses
in an extremely unattractive way, she chops of her hair once very long lustrous and beautiful,
but she does not want them. And because she has seem so much of deaths, so much of ugliness,
and she feels that she has no right to remain pretty in a world which has gone completely
ugly. So, it is her body and she is often compare
to her thin, she is extremely thin, she does not take care of herself, she wears men shoes
and walks round the villa digging the earth and gardening and cultivating, she does everything
with her hand, so her hands have calluses. Now, she has cut her hair extremely short
almost like a boy, and because as a way she punishes herself by hard work, and by not
taking care of herself. She almost looses weight and she looks like a stick, she is
compare to a young boy - body looks like that of a young boys. Caravaggio his thumbs - the
chopping of his thumb - so this again a violation of his body, then we were talking about in
the novel last time, we also talked how important the idea of books, books has a metaphor, is
implicit in the English patient, the art of reading, the act of reading, it recurs throughout
the novel in various forms and capacities.
So, Hana in the beginning itself tries to connect with almasy who is almost dead, you
remember he is chard, he is totally burned, he loses all his hair were nothing is left
to him. So, Hana just in order to keep him alive she reads aloud to him, you know almost
the way a mother would do to a baby and she does it. So, because she know how much he
loves reading, how do we know that because the only thing he could manage to save in
that aircraft and air crash was his copy of histories by Herodotus. You remember the things
it will happening in his copies all own out old, but he still he is extremely attach to
his book, he always keeps the histories by Herodotus that is the name of the book.
So, this is the thing, this is the book and that is extremely dear to him, it cherishes
it, and whatever important has happened in his life line main notes in the copy of this
book. So, this is the procession that he does not want to let go off. And Hana knows that
how much he loves reading, how much he loves books, but he is unable to do that himself
because he cannot even lift his hands, he so badly damaged. So, she spends long time
nursing him and reading aloud to him Villa San Giralomo is a huge place, a damaged, yet
a fascinating place to live in, and it has a vast library with an immense collection
of books, so Hana keeps reading, taking books from that collection and reading out aloud
to him. So, I will read you at the passage, you know,
which is given right at the beginning of the novel, I am on page 12, she open the book
the pages were join together in a stiff wave, she felt like cruso, so who was cruso, the
references to robins and cruso, the iconic adventure man afraid, the man who got maroon
in island while sailing and he spent several years on that island along with one faithful
companion man Friday. She fell like cruso finding a drowned book that had washed up
and dried itself on the shore, the title of the book is A Narrative of 1757, what happen
in 1757? American war of independence. So, she reads that book aloud to him, illustrated
by, as in all of the best books there was the important page with the list of illustrations,
a line of steps for each of them Michael Ondaatje the at the clearly loves books and book readings
and he lovingly in great details describes the features of the book that his characters
read. So, at one point he tells us that how beautifully the book is illustrated, a book
that details the American war of independence and although it comes with the pictures, and
the pictures come with captions and small text quotations and everything is lovingly
describe by Michael Ondaatje. So, as in all of the best books there was
the important page with the list of illustrations align of text for each of them, so each book
each photograph has been described. She enter the story knowing she would emerge from it,
feeling she had been emerged in the lives of others in plots that is stressed back to
interiors, her body full of sentences and movements, as if awaking from sleep with a
heaviness caused by unremembered dreams. So, book reading noise compare to an act of
adventure, you almost feel like, you know almost feel akin with an adventurer like Robinson
cruso, and she feels as if she is drowning in the world of that book. So, both almasy
and Hana such devoted readers of books, but it is not just these two characters Katharine
as well, Katharine reads oraciasiouly end, and that is one of the reasons in one of the
first initially - reason for attraction between Katharine and almasy because, she reads voraciously.
And we are also told that, when almasy falls in love with her, it is when she reads aloud
a poem. When she resides upon and that is the point when he says that the voice was
so haunting and beautiful that he could in take it anymore, he just walks away and that
is the point where he fell in love with a voice.
So, in each of this instances of reading the characters use books to reflect or illustrate
their own life, and to connect to some another place or time. So, books are not just books,
books exist because they also act as a metaphor for the life’s of these characters, and
the characters can relate to whatever is happening to them, through the plots and actions and
characters which are present in these books. It is also Katharine reading of the story
from Herodotus, she reads the story of gyges, where the emperor in whites his friend to
witnesses wife, the queens beauty in its naked glory, and when that happens the queen is
so angry that she orders the friend to *** her husband. This is something that happens
parallel to the story to our story as well, so Michael Ondaatje very cleverly weaves such
narratives in his story in English patient which have direct bearing on the plot of his
novel. Books also use to pass on secrets and codes
during the war, remember, this is the time when the Second World War is in progress,
and there is a German spy who has memorized the entire text of definite Daphne Du Maurier’s
Rebecca. Rebecca if you remember, last night I dreamt, I went to mandalay again, famously
begins with the sentence. So, Rebecca is used as the code to transfer
messages during the war, so it is through, you know, such kind of interactions that we
get to understand that how multidimensional all the characters in the English patient
are. At this point I like to give you one assignment, see the English patient makes
references to a host of books, so what I want you to do is pick, I need to works of literature
perhaps, you can look at Robinson cruso or you can also look at Rudyard Kipling’s Kim
which is often mentioned and refer to in the book.
So, perhaps you can look at some, you know, such examples and see how the life’s of
the characters in the English patient, they reflect what is happening in the plot of these
novels that Ondaatje refers to. I will give you some of the examples that I refer to here,
one is Herodotus histories of course, then Robinson cruso you also have Shakespeare the
tempest, and Stendhal’s Parma Helmenpelives spear and James Fennimore coopers the last
of the Mohicans, Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and Daphne Du Maurer’s Rebecca and of course,
Rudyard Kipling’s Kim. So, you should also - I mean - pay attention
to mentioned to the reference to Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, after all Anna Karenina also
is a story of forbidden love. Again it is a story of adultery and passion between people
who are married to different people, the hero in his married to someone else and she falls
in love with someone and she leaves her husband and child for him, and the repercussions and
the kind of havoc that it brings in the lives of the characters. As I was say a telling
you books are an important means of underpinning relationships in the English patient, so this
is an assignment that you should be doing - turn to page 155.
Now, he lies in his room surrounded by the pale maps, he is without Katharine his humble
wished to burn down all social rules, all courtesy, her life with others no longer interest
in, he wants only her stocking beauty, her theater of expressions, he wants the minuet
and secrete reflection between them, the depth of feel minimal the foreignness intimate like
two pages of a closed book. Now, when we talk about two pages of a closed book, what am
talking about, not an open book like this, but close book. So, he want that kind of intimacy
nothing in between two pages of a closed book, nothing could come closer, almost like becoming
one and this is the kind of intimacy he seeks with Katharine, he does not want to share
her with anyone least of her husband Geoffrey Clifton.
So, books are used in order to convey deep seated passions of the characters, so books
are not just books, people do not just read books to while away time or for entertainment
that every book every act of reading has an implicit meaning. You should read book, a
book called the implied read by Wolfgang Iser, I will write it down, may be at this stage,
it may be too advance for you, but at a later stage whenever you have time and you want
to read something more in depth, on the act or art of reading Wolfgang Iser - German writer,
The implied reader.
And then also you can look at the way Rudyard Kipling’s Kim has been used, and this is
another instance of on that carefully selecting and referring to a book which has some bearing
on the lives of the characters in the novel. So, as you were talking about in Villa San
Giralamo, we have characters from all nationalities all parts of the world. We have the Indian
kip, we have the Hungarian, the European almasy, we have Caravaggio who belongs to everywhere
and nowhere, almost like almasy, we have the British Katherine, and we have the Canadian
Hana, Hana another root less person. So, we have Europeans, Asians, we have Canadians
all of them living together, coming together, in some kind of an old forgotten Villa. So,
almost the Villa become some microcause of or globalize times of our world, people of
all races and ethnicities and linguistic background they come together and try to make a life
for themselves. So, in other words, the setting becomes a
micro cause for the post war society where races and cultures and languages intermingle
and the boundary - so called boundaries. The boundaries which ark hero count almasy knows
so well they dissolve, say that kind of atmosphere, another important reference to what it means
to read books is made on page 94, there count almasy he instructs young hana how to read
Rudyard Kipling as she is reading lines from kim. He instructs her, read him slowly the
other you must read kipling slowly watch carefully where the commas fall. So, you can discover
the natural pauses he is a writer who use pen and ink, he looked up from the page a
lot I believe, he is stared through his window and listen to birds as most writers who are
alone do. Some do not know the names of birds, though
he did, your eyes to quick a North American think about the speed of his pen, what an
appalling barnacled old first paragraph it is otherwise. So, reading for pleasure, this
is perhaps Michael Ondaatje giving a tips on how to read when you read literature, or
may its likes Michael Ondaatje tell how to read the English patient.
So, read carefully, reads slowly, reading is a kind of a spiritual act, a spiritual
experience which should elevate you. So, reading has to be done carefully with lot of joy and
with lot of attention, pay attention to the commas to punctuations to the cadences the
sound of languages, the way the sentences are constructed, the way words are chosen,
all that constitutes the pleasure of reading. So, reading has to be given respect in case
a lesson for all of us right, that reading should be done carefully, and they know reading
which can compete with reading a hard copy of a book so that is what he talks about.
So, that was the English patience first lesson about reading, he did not interrupt again
that is all he had to tell Hana about the act of reading. If we happen to fall asleep
she would continue never looking up until she herself was 38, if we had miss the last
half hour of plot just one room would be dark in a story, he probably already knew he was
familiar with the map of this story, and there was banaras to the east and chalyavala in
the North of the Punjab. All these occurred before the sapper entered
their lives, she had turn from the ending of kim with his delicate and holy sentences
and now clean diction and picked up that patients notebook, the book he had somehow manage to
carry with him out of the 5 - which book are we talking about - histories the book is played
open almost twice its original thickness, there was thin paper from a bible torn out
and glued into the text. King David was old and his shrunken in years,
and they covered him with cloths but he receive no heat where upon his servant said, let there
be sort for the king young *** and let her cherishing and let her lie in this boosum
that our king may have heat. So, they sort for a fair damsel throughout all the course
of Israel and found a bushel and shanmight and the damsel cherish the king and minister
to him, but the king knew or not. So, perhaps this could be a reference to the
story of Hana and almasy might not, because here we are talking about a king who could
very well be almasy who needs to be nudged, to be cared for and the young *** the damsel
could be Hana. So, several stories running parallel to one and another and every story
having a baring over another the plot of the English patient.
And interestingly, when kip arise in the setting, he to arise as a facer character right out
of a Rudyard Kipling fiction, it just arise one fine day and with his exotic presence.
So, coming back to the plot - I mean - we have been talking a lot about the references
to books, so books as a matter for in the English patient.
So, the English patient as he lay there almost waiting for his end for his death in the Villa,
these are tender love story may be not exactly, you have been a kind of love as we understand
it in its popular connotations, but there is some kind of an affection that is kind
of a bond that it starts developing between the Hana and the English patient, and both
nurture each other, both in a way add to each other’s life's Hana who is totally whether
beaten. She is emotionally beaten, she is almost on
the edge of collapsing, she has seen too much of death and too much of tragedies, not just
during the war, deaths happening or tragedies happening to other people to the soldiers
who she nurses, but personally also she loses her father, she loses her unborn child, she
loses her fiancé, and she has seen, she has lived through too much of pain and losses
and somehow the English patients saintly presence and gives her a reason to live, a reason to
go on. You know world gone alright, so she feels
that before the English patient arrived in her life she felt that there was no need for
her to go on, she had cut of her hair, it was almost like she is turning into someone
else she had learned to repress all her needs, just her own her entire being was devoted
to taking care of the wounded soldiers. See, if you remember, she had given away all
her precessions except her shoe, except a pair of shoe which she likes too much, that
tiny shoes and she has taken to calling all the soldiers everybody who enters her life
buddy. So, that is how she treats life, with the sense of detachment, but an English patient
arrives on the scene, she feels that there is a reason to live.
After a long time she feels a purity of love inside her, so she refuses to move out when
other hospital staff and other doctors and nurses start leaving the Villa and going to,
say, for places because, the war was coming to an end, but she does not want to, she wants
to stay back and care for the English patient, I will read you out those lines. Where Caravaggio,
her old friend actually, he is her late father’s friend, and he urges her to give up the English
patient, he says that you do not know what you are getting into, you are becoming too
emotionally involve with this person, you do not even know much about, and this is how
it goes, why do you adore him so much, that is Caravaggio asking I love him, you do not
love him you adore him, so there is a difference between loving and adoring, adoring borders
on worship. So, a Caravaggio is just entered what you
see in this burnt body, you have tied yourself to a cobs for some reason, he is a saint I
think, so for him, sorry, for Hana the English patient, the burnt man, is a saint someone
to be worshipped - at despairing saint - are there such things or desire is to protect
them, he does not even care, I can love him at 20 year old who throws herself out of the
world to love a ghost Caravaggio is disbelieving, how is it possible, you are so young and while
throwing away your chances, Caravaggio paused you have to protect yourself from sadness,
sadness is very close to hate, so this is Caravaggio’s philosophy very profound - let
me tell you this. This is the thing I learnt, if you take in
someone else’s poison thinking you can cure them by sharing it, you will instead store
it within you, those men in the desert were smarter than you, they assumed he would be
useful, so they saved him, but when he was no longer useful they left him - leave me
alone. So, that is all she has got through say to
Caravaggio leave her alone and she is in love with English patient, not in the conventional
sort of a way, the way the word is generally understood, but she almost has the kind of
feel a divine bonding between herself and the dying man, and she does not want to leave
till he dies. So, foursome at the Italian villa, kip, Caravaggio, Hana and the English
patient, they tried to figure each other out. Again you know that is the beauty of the English
patient, they live in a fragmented villa, remember, it is a kind of place which has
been bombed so heavily. At some places the ceilings are missing, at some places even
walls are missing, you can walk into a room and you can look valley outside and it is
full of a furniture which is incomplete, parts of the furniture are missing, the books itself
themselves are so fragmented, there are pages and pages missing. So, lots of gaps and indeterminacies
throughout, in everything that surrounds them and that is what Michael Ondaatje tells us,
that these gaps and indeterminacies and fragmentations are also implicit in the characters that inhabit
the Villa. So, the characters mirror the world outside
they have boundaries, they do not have boundaries, they would like to dissolve boundaries, they
would like to make their identities more fluid but, is it possible in the world we live in,
they are incomplete beings, they have their thought comings and weaknesses, the villa
mirrors their state, villa itself looks like a work in progress or a work in disintegration.
So, whatever we want to look at it is there, the characters are fragmented reveal towards
through fragments of memory as we were talking about last time, that the construct of memory
is extremely unreliable, what is memory then you can have, as many definitions of memory
as possible but memory is never reliable, narrators can never be reliable therefore,
Michael Ondaatje gives us so many narrators all of them look at same incidents and give
us their own unique perspectives. So, that is what life is, it seems as Michael
Ondaatje is trying to tell us, the memories can reliable to an extent, but they are highly
unreliable as well, moments important and cherish moments they can be visited and revisited
by different people and some time by the same people and you remember some different things.
Characters in the English patient they are on a quest throughout, and they never find
a resolution, so there is no beginning or end.
So, they are somewhere in the middle of Europe, and their lives are also told towards somewhere
in the middle - I mean - we never know how it all began for almasy who was he? He is
a Hungarian of course, but we are not told his entire life story right, we are not told
Hana's entire life story, we are not told kip’s life story or Caravaggio’s either.
So, all stories begin somewhere in the middle and without a warning, some time we do not
even end. So, there is the structure of the novel and that is what Ondaatje is trying
to tell us that, that is what life actually is. The crumbling villa in a way also resembles
the Garden of Eden where everything is innocent, so innocence and loss of innocence. You know
another theme which is extremely predominant in the English patient, so at the time, we
the crumbling structure the bombed structure of the villa it, also symbolizes modernity’s
destructive influence on peoples and places and nature.
But at the same time, when these very desperate characters, they come together Ondaatje seems
to suggest that even in these crazy world even in this highly destructive world, there
can be some hope through faith and love and a desire to assimilate - I mean - it is never
completely possible to assimilate with people who do not belong to our culture, it is not
possible to a completely integrate, to get completely integrated with them.
But then we can always try and coming together, this coming together a four different kinds
of people from different languages, and nations, and cultures, and identities, and social background,
that somehow gives us an impression that this is what the world should be. But let us come
to kip’s character, we have not mean, we have been talking a lot about Katharine and
Hana and almasy, let us talk little about kip also. Now, kip is a Sikh from the Punjab
in India, and as I just told you that he is a soldier he took part in the Second World
War, he is the sapper, he is an expert in defusing bombs, and he has learnt his skill
from someone in his Scotland and taken part in the war, and now as the war comes to an
end he finds his way in Villa San Giralamo and becomes extremely involved in the life's
and love's of these people - these Canadians and European people - but initially he is
quite an innocent even after the war, but when he realizes how the world, how the war
ends, and how did it end with the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Japan.
The allied forces they completely destroyed those two cities and that is when kip realizes
that he does not really belong to this world, he does not really belong among this group
of western people and this is the point that he feels that he should go and strive to carve
his own identity for himself, an identity which he was willing to relinquish for a while
because he felt so welcomed among these people by Hana and Caravaggio, he even falls in love
with Hana perhaps this is his way of trying to assimilate with the so called other and
Hana reciprocate. She falls in love with him as well, but this
is something, this a kind of love which can never be realize and because of, perhaps Ondaatje
is trying to tell us that the cultural differences are so much and so deep that such kinds of
relationships are not possible. So, after the following the atomic bomb disasters of
Nagasaki and Hiroshima kip decides to leave the Villa and renters Indian culture and life
and eventually we are told that he settles down with a wife with a happy face who laughs
permanently and this is beautifully just opposed with Hana who has the serious face an extremely
serious face, she barely smiles, she has forgotten how to laugh, and he also cultivates a garden
around his house because, somehow that idea of the original garden - of Eden garden - stabilizing
innocence and love and happiness is contained here.
So, he lives in his garden, she lives somewhere else, but the garden whenever he looks out
in his garden in India, he is always reminded of the gardens that Hana cultivated in Villa
San Giralamo, so after kip’s departure, this is a also a story, then we were talking
about the key concepts, so love Hana and kip fall in love, but then they soon realize,
this is not going to be forever and kip leaves her.
So, that is what she feels that from now onwards I believe that the personal will forever be
at what with the public, I will read you out these particular lines from a page 290, she
writes a letter to Clara her friend, this is my first letter in years Clara, and I am
not use to the formality of them, I have spend the last few months living with three others,
and a talk has been slow causal, I am not use to talking in anyway, but that now, the
year is nineteen for what for a second a forget, but I know the month had the day, one day
after he heard the bombs for dropped in Japan. So, it feels like the end of the world, from
now on I believe the personal will forever be at war with the public, if we can rationalize
this, we can rationalize anything. What happens you know, the personal becoming impersonal,
becoming one with the political, personal becoming one with the public. So, there is
no disconnect between the two anymore, they will always impact each other, this is the
idea. So, you cannot live highly sanitize life thinking that what is happening around
us would not have any deep influence or impact on our life’s as long as we are doing well.
No, this is not possible that is what on this is that we have to learn to get involved,
otherwise there will always be wars, they will always be tragedy's and that surround
us. So, in this connection, I would like to draw your attention to another page where
we were talking about how important the idea of the body is, tomorrow I am going to discuss
the narrative structure of the English patient, but because today we were talking about the
bodies. So, go to page 153 and just see the way bodies
are discussed, they are talking about Katharine and her lover count almasy, a list of wounds,
the various colors of the brose bright recipe leading to brown, the plate she walked across
the room with flinging its contents aside and row across his head, the blood rising
up into straw hair the fork that enter the back of his shoulder leaving its bright marks,
the doctors suspected were caused by a fox. So, lovers fight - a lover’s quarrel - and
Katharine could get extremely violent and she once broke plate on his head and blood
trickling down and he has a list of wounds, so beautifully constructed sentences, a list
of wounds to prove his love for her. Another instance of the body, it is on page 74, sorry,
page yeah page 74 and her kip is described, he is the only one of them who has remained
in uniform immaculate buckle shine the sapper appears out of his tend, his turban symmetrically
layer the boots clean and banging into the wood or a stone floors of the house, on a
nine, he turns from a problem, he is working on and breaks into laughter, he seems unconsciously
in love with his body with his physicalness bending over to pick up a slice of bread,
his nuckles brush in the grass even tolling the rifle absent mindedly, they occur huge
mayes as he walks along the path of cypresses to meet the other sappers in the village.
So, bodies and what they note - what they denote - this is the very important thing
in the English patient. So, today's class this was the highlight love and loss, the
theme of love and loss in the English patient identities nations races languages and people
of all colors coming together and how identities are impacted, in the desire to assimilate
and how far is possible to assimilate ourselves in this world, journey that people take for
whatever reason and of course, the body as a contested site, the body as a desired site,
the body as a mark of identity. So, these are the things that form at the
core of the English patient, so we will be continuing with the idea of narrative how
the English patient is - the narrative in the English patient is constructed - or theorized
and that is for tomorrow, so thank you very much.