Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The English Patient (SparkNotes Literature Guide)
    The English Patient (SparkNotes Literature Guide)
    The English Patient (SparkNotes Literature Guide)
    Ebook90 pages1 hour

    The English Patient (SparkNotes Literature Guide)

    By SparkNotes

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The English Patient (SparkNotes Literature Guide) by Michael Ondaatje
    Making the reading experience fun!

    Created by Harvard students for students everywhere, SparkNotes is a new breed of study guide: smarter, better, faster. Geared to what today's students need to know, SparkNotes provides: chapter-by-chapter analysis
    explanations of key themes, motifs, and symbols
    a review quiz and essay topics
    Lively and accessible, these guides are perfect for late-night studying and writing papers.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSparkNotes
    Release dateAug 12, 2014
    ISBN9781411475045
    The English Patient (SparkNotes Literature Guide)

    Read more from Spark Notes

    Related authors

    Related to The English Patient (SparkNotes Literature Guide)

    Related ebooks

    Book Notes For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Old Un’s Notes

      Jun 30, 2021

      * Have Oldie-readers who wear glasses ever thought where specs come from? The answer lies in a new book, Through the Looking Glasses: The Spectacular Life of Spectacles, by Travis Elborough. Elborough, himself bespectacled, traces the history of spec

      6 min read

    • Article

      THE Reading room

      Dec 2, 2020

      Trent Dalton’s ambitious tale combines a dreamy aura of magical realism with scenes rooted in the Australian landscape. At its heart is Molly Hook, the “poor little gravedigger girl”, age seven when the story opens in Darwin in 1935. Molly’s mum, Vio

      6 min read

    • Article

      On The Hobbit Trail

      Jun 28, 2023

      On The Hobbit Trail
      5 min read

    • Article

      TV, FILM & RADIO

      Feb 16, 2023

      TV, FILM & RADIO
      5 min read

    • Article

      Venice Peach

      Oct 2, 2023

      1. THE DRESSMAKER AND THE HIDDEN SOLDIER by Doug Gold (A&U) WWII thriller about Kiwi soldier and Greek dressmaker 2. SUMMER FAVOURITES by Vanya Insull (A&U) Recipes from @vj_cooks 3. TE REO KAPEKAPE: Māori Wit and Humour by Hona Black (Oratia) Having

      4 min read

    • Article

      THE Reading room

      Dec 2, 2020

      Trent Dalton’s ambitious tale combines a dreamy aura of magical realism with scenes rooted in the Australian landscape. At its heart is Molly Hook, the “poor little gravedigger girl”, age seven when the story opens in Darwin in 1935. Molly’s mum, Vio

      7 min read

    • Article

      A Warning To The Fortean

      Jul 14, 2022

      A Warning To The Fortean
      9 min read

    • Article

      A Gift

      Aug 14, 2019

      A Gift
      13 min read

    • Article

      Finding Facts In Fiction

      Mar 12, 2021

      Finding Facts In Fiction
      10 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Feb 23, 2022

      Great Read
      6 min read

    • Article

      New On The Shelf

      Jul 17, 2020

      Maximilian Fritz, editor and owner of small-town newspaper The Lowveld Mirror, receives a letter from Denmark. It’s from Freja Casperson, cousin of his boyhood friend Karl Udengaard. She tells him that Karl has committed suicide and that she lives in

      3 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Jun 6, 2023

      by Mia Couto, translated by David Brookshaw (World Editions, ISBN 9781912987375) worldeditions.org Fifteen-year-old Imani sits deep in the belly of a ship named Africa. Her fellow travellers include Ngungunyane, emperor of a pre-colonial African king

      4 min read

    • Article

      Orwell’s ISLAND

      Jul 17, 2020

      Orwell’s ISLAND
      5 min read

    • Article

      Anne Frank

      Jan 21, 2022

      Anne Frank
      4 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Nov 2, 2022

      Great Read
      7 min read

    • Article

      Dear Inga, Love Jack

      Jun 30, 2020

      Dear Inga, Love Jack
      20 min read

    • Article

      Magical Thinking

      Apr 30, 2023

      IMMORTALITY: A LOVE STORY, by Dana Schwartz (Piatkus) When a novel begins with a beheading, you know you’re in gothic territory. But since this book is the sequel to Anatomy, set in 1817 Edinburgh, and said decapitation is courtesy of Madame la Guill

      2 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Apr 19, 2023

      Great Read
      7 min read

    • Article

      HISTORY of WAR REVIEWS

      Jan 23, 2020

      HISTORY of WAR REVIEWS
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Spy Princess

      Aug 15, 2019

      The Spy Princess
      7 min read

    • Article

      Fürsten Foremost

      Feb 11, 2021

      Fürsten Foremost
      10 min read

    • Article

      Hero Worship

      Jun 12, 2024

      Hero Worship
      5 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Jan 29, 2023

      Great Read
      7 min read

    • Article

      For The Love Of The LAND

      Feb 24, 2021

      For The Love Of The LAND
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Nazi Actor Next Door

      Jun 1, 2022

      Deal in Kent has been nominated as ‘one of the best places to live’ in the United Kingdom for the third consecutive year, according to a survey in the Times. The town has transitioned from being a rather rough resort back in the 1950s – natives remem

      3 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Apr 16, 2020

      If the interview with Simon Jenkins in your March issue (A Welsh Tragedy?) is anything to go by, I suspect his recent Radio 4 documentary – controversially entitled Wales: A Twentieth-Century Tragedy? – was largely based on flimsy anecdotal evidence.

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Slave Who Braved All For Love

      May 4, 2020

      The Wikipedia entry says it all: ‘Florence Barbara Maria Szász, an orphan who became a slave, explored the Nile and died a lady.’ If Hollywood had been around in the 19th century, her life would have made a blockbuster. Very few people who visited th

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Old Un’s Notes

      Nov 17, 2021

      The Old Un’s Notes
      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The English Patient (SparkNotes Literature Guide)

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The English Patient (SparkNotes Literature Guide) - SparkNotes

      Cover of SparkNotes Guide to The English Patient by SparkNotes Editors

      The English Patient

      Michael Ondaatje

      © 2003, 2007 by Spark Publishing

      This Spark Publishing edition 2014 by SparkNotes LLC, an Affiliate of Barnes & Noble

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

      Sparknotes is a registered trademark of SparkNotes LLC

      Spark Publishing

      A Division of Barnes & Noble

      120 Fifth Avenue

      New York, NY 10011

      www.sparknotes.com /

      ISBN-13: 978-1-4114-7504-5

      Please submit changes or report errors to www.sparknotes.com/.

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      Contents

      Context

      Plot Overview

      Character List

      Analysis of Major Characters

      Themes, Motifs, and Symbols

      Chapter I

      Chapter II

      Chapter III

      Chapter IV

      Chapter V

      Chapter VI

      Chapter VII

      Chapter VIII

      Chapter IX

      Chapter X

      Important Quotations Explained

      Key Facts

      Study Questions and Essay Topics

      Review & Resources

      Context

      Michael Ondaatje, poet, filmmaker, and editor, was born in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in September 1943. He moved to England with his mother in 1954, and then relocated to Canada in 1962, receiving an undergraduate degree from the University of Toronto and a master's degree from Queen's University in Kingston. Originally a poet, Ondaatje's eventual career in fiction was boosted by the success of his book of poetry, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970), an account of the factual and fictional life of the famous outlaw, for which Ondaatje won a Governor General's award. He won the coveted award again in 1979 for a second book of poetry entitled There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do.

      In the 1980s, Ondaatje turned his attention to novels, publishing Running in the Family (1982) about his family's life in Ceylon, and In the Skin of the Lion (1987), which is set in 1930s Toronto. Ondaatje is perhaps best known, however, for The English Patient (1992), a novel set in World War II Italy. Ondaatje won a Booker Prize for the novel, and the 1996 film adaptation went on to win widespread critical acclaim and nine Academy Awards. Alongside his writing, Ondaatje has taught at York University in Toronto since 1971. He and his wife, Linda Spalding, make there home in Toronto, and together edit the literary journal Brick.

      The English Patient is a work of historical fiction set in the hills of Tuscany during World War II. It intersperses the factual and the imaginary into a tale of tragedy and passion. Structurally, the novel resists chronological order, alternating between present action in the Italian villa and flashbacks to memories of a mysterious desert romance that is gradually revealed. The imagery is characterized by Ondaatje's preoccupation with romantic exoticism and multiculturalism. Rather than offer a narrator telling a straightforward story, Ondaatje turns the romance into an unlikely mystery, revealing hidden facets of character and identity as the novel progresses. Ondaatje explores his characters by placing them in blank, secluded settings. Both the barren desert and the isolated Tuscan villa are insular and remote, enabling the author to study his characters intensely.

      Innovative in narrative structure and complicated by numerous points of view, The English Patient resists easy classification into any particular literary genre. Yet Ondaatje uses the novel to renew themes that have been explored throughout the ages: national identity, the connection between body and mind, and love that transcends place and time. Perhaps most significant is the fact that Ondaatje blends the forms of prose and poetry, evoking images and emotions with highly lyrical language. His words translate real experience into symbolic experience by appealing to memories that involve all of the reader's senses. As Ondaatje once said in a radio interview, he uses his prose to create a tactile landscape for his choreography. In The English Patient such a landscape augments the poetry and lyricism of the novel.

      Plot Overview

      In The English Patient, the past and the present are continually intertwined. The narrative structure intersperses descriptions of present action with thoughts and conversations that offer glimpses of past events and occurrences. Though there is no single narrator, the story is alternatively seen from the point of view of each of the main characters.

      The novel opens with Hana, a young nurse, gardening outside a villa in Italy in 1945. The European theater of the war has just ended with the Germans retreating up the Italian countryside. As the Germans retreated, they left hidden bombs and mines everywhere, so the landscape is particularly dangerous. Although the other nurses and patients have left the villa to escape to a safer place, Hana decides to stay in the villa with her patient.

      Hana does not know much about the man for whom she cares. Found in the wreckage of a plane crash, he been burned beyond recognition, his whole body black and even the slightest touch painful to him. He talks about the Bedouin tribe who found him in the wreckage, cared for his wounds, and eventually returned him to a British camp in 1944. He does not know who they were, but he feels grateful to them nonetheless. To pass the time, Hana reads to the English patient—she assumes he is English by his manner and speech—and also gardens, fixes up the villa, and plays hopscotch. Sometimes she picks up the patient's notebook, a copy of Herodotus's The Histories marked throughout with his own notes, figures, and observations, and reads to him or to herself.

      One day, a man with bandaged hands named Caravaggio arrives at the villa. He is an old family friend of Hana's father, Patrick, and had heard about her location while he was recovering in a hospital a few miles away. In Canada, where Caravaggio knew Hana years ago, he was a thief. He tells her how his skills were legitimized in

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1