(Download) "Almasy's Desire for Identity 'Erasure' in Michael Ondaatje's the English Patient (Critical Essay)" by Nebula ~ eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Almasy's Desire for Identity 'Erasure' in Michael Ondaatje's the English Patient (Critical Essay)
- Author : Nebula
- Release Date : January 01, 2008
- Genre: Reference,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 62 KB
Description
The English Patient consists of two texts. The first is the one which tells the story of Kip and the others, and the second is that of Almasy, Katharine and the Bedouins. Each of these texts has to suspend its 'other' in order to continue. In other words, the presence of one depends on the absence of the other. Hence, these texts are 'centres', each of which substitutes for the other. They exist in a state of 'differance'. These two texts join together to form a third or 'triple' text: The English Patient. They leak into each other, destabilising the first-text/second-text binary by removing the slash (/) in between. A 'triple' existence is brought to life. In The English Patient, the narrator as an authoritative presence and 'centre' of signification is absent since the English patient's identity is suppressed. He uses the third person to narrate his story. Jonathan Culler notes that "the self is broken down into component systems and is deprived of its status as source and master of meaning" (p.33). Hence, the narrator's identity is erased as a 'transcendental signified' to allow the 'play' of the 'centre'. Like the desert, the identity of the English patient is without fixed contours. The colour of his skin, a racial marker, is burnt away. He is Hungarian yet he is mistaken for an Englishman. "He had rambled on, driving them mad, traitor or ally, leaving them never quite sure who he was" (p.96). His identity is erased and he becomes the anonymous English patient. Consequently, he attains the freedom of transcending borders between nations, even transcending ethnicity and identity. Another example of how erasure causes free 'play' in the novel is the case of Kip. To him, bombs are a 'centre'. He unplugs his human feelings and focuses on deconstructing the bombs, an act that is similar to deconstructing the text of a novel. Only after the explosion of the nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki does he look for another 'centre'. In other words, after the ultimate erasure of the population, "[t]he death of a civilisation" (p.286), he loses his 'centre' and gains the freedom to 'play', to leave Italy and go back to India.
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