The English Patient

by

Michael Ondaatje

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The English Patient/László Almásy Character Analysis

The protagonist and title character of The English Patient. The English patient is first introduced as Hana’s patient at an abandoned Italian villa during World War II. He has been badly burned and is suffering from amnesia. His only possession is a book, a worn and heavily annotated copy of The Histories by Herodotus, which Hana reads to him. While the English patient claims to not remember his name or nationality—it is only assumed that he is English—he seems to remember everything else, and he tells Hana all about his life as a desert explorer. The English patient has a deep love for the desert, which he sees a vast, impermanent place that is always changing and evolving. Moreover, he loves the desert because he sees it as a “nationless” place were divisions of nationality are “insignificant.” Like the desert, the English patient attempts to become “nationless” by spending years in the Gilf Kebir looking for Zerzura, a mythical city thought to have existed in the Sahara. During this time, the English patient has a love affair with Katharine, a married Englishwoman he meets while her husband, Geoffrey, is working as part of the English patient’s exploration time. Katharine and the English patient have a short but intense affair that ends tragically after Geoffrey’s botched murder-suicide attempt. Caravaggio, an old friend of Hana’s who comes to stay at the villa, discovers that the English patient is actually László Almásy, a Hungarian desert explorer and cartographer who helped guide German spies through the desert into Egypt during World War II. Almásy has been hiding his guilt, and his nationality, behind his amnesia. At the novel’s climax, Kip, an Indian sapper who is diffusing bombs at the villa, threatens to kill the English patient after atomic bombs are dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. As Kip believes the English patient to be from England, he sees him as a representation of the British and their efforts to colonize and oppress the people of the East. Kip ultimately does not kill him, and the English patient’s fate is never revealed. Through his relationship with Katharine, his character serves to illustrate the power of love to transcend anything, including marriage, war, and even death. The English patient also exemplifies the connection between storytelling and history, as he suggests that history cannot be fully understood or appreciated without personal stories.

The English Patient/László Almásy Quotes in The English Patient

The The English Patient quotes below are all either spoken by The English Patient/László Almásy or refer to The English Patient/László Almásy. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Love Theme Icon
).
Chapter III Quotes

“I have seen editions of The Histories with a sculpted portrait on the cover. Some statue found in a French museum. But I never imagine Herodotus this way. I see him more as one of those spare men of the desert who travel from oasis to oasis, trading legends as if it is the exchange of seeds, consuming everything without suspicion, piecing together a mirage. ‘This history of mine,’ Herodotus says, ‘has from the beginning sought out the supplementary to the main argument.’ What you find in him are cul-de-sacs within the sweep of history—[…]”

Related Characters: The English Patient/László Almásy (speaker), Hana
Related Symbols: The Desert  , Books
Page Number: 118-9
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter IV Quotes

By 1932, Bagnold was finished and Madox and the rest of us were everywhere. Looking for the lost army of Cambyses. Looking for Zerzura. 1932 and 1933 and 1934. Not seeing each other for months. Just the Bedouin and us, crisscrossing the Forty Days Road. There were rivers of desert tribes, the most beautiful humans I’ve met in my life. We were German, English, Hungarian, African— all of us insignificant to them. Gradually we became nationless. I came to hate nations. We are deformed by nation-states. Madox died because of nations.

Related Characters: The English Patient/László Almásy (speaker), Madox
Related Symbols: The Desert 
Page Number: 138
Explanation and Analysis:

The ends of the earth are never the points on a map that colonists push against, enlarging their sphere of influence. On one side servants and slaves and tides of power and correspondence with the Geographical Society. On the other the first step by a white man across a great river, the first sight (by a white eye) of a mountain that has been there forever.

Related Characters: The English Patient/László Almásy, Hana
Related Symbols: The Desert 
Page Number: 141
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter V Quotes

She picks up a cushion and places it onto her lap as a shield against him. “If you make love to me I won’t lie about it. If I make love to you I won’t lie about it.”

She moves the cushion against her heart, as if she would suffocate that part of herself which has broken free.

“What do you hate most?” he asks.

“A lie. And you?”

“Ownership,” he says. “When you leave me, forget me.”

Her fist swings towards him and hits hard into the bone just below his eye. She dresses and leaves.

Related Characters: The English Patient/László Almásy (speaker), Katharine Clifton (speaker), Geoffrey Clifton
Page Number: 152
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter VI Quotes

“Let me tell you a story,” Caravaggio says to Hana. ‘There was a Hungarian named Almásy, who worked for the Germans during the war. He flew a bit with the Afrika Korps, but he was more valuable than that. In the 1930s he had been one of the great desert explorers. He knew every water hole and had helped map the Sand Sea. He knew all about the desert. He knew all about dialects. Does this sound familiar? Between the two wars he was always on expeditions out of Cairo. One was to search for Zerzura— the lost oasis. Then when war broke out he joined the Germans. In 1941 he became a guide for spies, taking them across the desert into Cairo. What I want to tell you is, I think the English patient is not English.”

Related Characters: Caravaggio (speaker), The English Patient/László Almásy, Hana
Page Number: 163
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter IX Quotes

She had always wanted words, she loved them, grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape. Whereas I thought words bent emotions like sticks in water. She returned to her husband.

Related Characters: The English Patient/László Almásy (speaker), Katharine Clifton
Page Number: 238
Explanation and Analysis:

We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. 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.

Related Characters: The English Patient/László Almásy (speaker), Caravaggio, Katharine Clifton
Page Number: 261
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter X Quotes

I grew up with traditions from my country, but later, more often, from your country. Your fragile white island that with customs and manners and books and prefects and reason somehow converted the rest of the world. You stood for precise behaviour. I knew if I lifted a teacup with the wrong finger I’d be banished. If I tied the wrong kind of knot in a tie I was out. Was it just ships that gave you such power? Was it, as my brother said, because you had the histories and printing presses?

Related Characters: Kip/Kirpal Singh (speaker), The English Patient/László Almásy, Kip’s Brother
Page Number: 283
Explanation and Analysis:

My brother told me. Never turn your back on Europe. The deal makers. The contract makers. The map drawers. Never trust Europeans, he said. Never shake hands with them. But we, oh, we were easily impressed— by speeches and medals and your ceremonies. What have I been doing these last few years? Cutting away, defusing, limbs of evil. For what? For this to happen?

Related Characters: Kip/Kirpal Singh (speaker), The English Patient/László Almásy, Kip’s Brother
Related Symbols: Bombs
Page Number: 284-5
Explanation and Analysis:

He was riding deeper into thick rain. Because he had loved the face on the ceiling he had loved the words. As he had believed in the burned man and the meadows of civilisation he tended. Isaiah and Jeremiah and Solomon were in the burned man’s bedside book, his holy book, whatever he had loved glued into his own. He had passed his book to the sapper, and the sapper had said we have a Holy Book too.

Related Characters: The English Patient/László Almásy, Kip/Kirpal Singh
Related Symbols: Books
Page Number: 294
Explanation and Analysis:
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The English Patient/László Almásy Quotes in The English Patient

The The English Patient quotes below are all either spoken by The English Patient/László Almásy or refer to The English Patient/László Almásy. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Love Theme Icon
).
Chapter III Quotes

“I have seen editions of The Histories with a sculpted portrait on the cover. Some statue found in a French museum. But I never imagine Herodotus this way. I see him more as one of those spare men of the desert who travel from oasis to oasis, trading legends as if it is the exchange of seeds, consuming everything without suspicion, piecing together a mirage. ‘This history of mine,’ Herodotus says, ‘has from the beginning sought out the supplementary to the main argument.’ What you find in him are cul-de-sacs within the sweep of history—[…]”

Related Characters: The English Patient/László Almásy (speaker), Hana
Related Symbols: The Desert  , Books
Page Number: 118-9
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter IV Quotes

By 1932, Bagnold was finished and Madox and the rest of us were everywhere. Looking for the lost army of Cambyses. Looking for Zerzura. 1932 and 1933 and 1934. Not seeing each other for months. Just the Bedouin and us, crisscrossing the Forty Days Road. There were rivers of desert tribes, the most beautiful humans I’ve met in my life. We were German, English, Hungarian, African— all of us insignificant to them. Gradually we became nationless. I came to hate nations. We are deformed by nation-states. Madox died because of nations.

Related Characters: The English Patient/László Almásy (speaker), Madox
Related Symbols: The Desert 
Page Number: 138
Explanation and Analysis:

The ends of the earth are never the points on a map that colonists push against, enlarging their sphere of influence. On one side servants and slaves and tides of power and correspondence with the Geographical Society. On the other the first step by a white man across a great river, the first sight (by a white eye) of a mountain that has been there forever.

Related Characters: The English Patient/László Almásy, Hana
Related Symbols: The Desert 
Page Number: 141
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter V Quotes

She picks up a cushion and places it onto her lap as a shield against him. “If you make love to me I won’t lie about it. If I make love to you I won’t lie about it.”

She moves the cushion against her heart, as if she would suffocate that part of herself which has broken free.

“What do you hate most?” he asks.

“A lie. And you?”

“Ownership,” he says. “When you leave me, forget me.”

Her fist swings towards him and hits hard into the bone just below his eye. She dresses and leaves.

Related Characters: The English Patient/László Almásy (speaker), Katharine Clifton (speaker), Geoffrey Clifton
Page Number: 152
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter VI Quotes

“Let me tell you a story,” Caravaggio says to Hana. ‘There was a Hungarian named Almásy, who worked for the Germans during the war. He flew a bit with the Afrika Korps, but he was more valuable than that. In the 1930s he had been one of the great desert explorers. He knew every water hole and had helped map the Sand Sea. He knew all about the desert. He knew all about dialects. Does this sound familiar? Between the two wars he was always on expeditions out of Cairo. One was to search for Zerzura— the lost oasis. Then when war broke out he joined the Germans. In 1941 he became a guide for spies, taking them across the desert into Cairo. What I want to tell you is, I think the English patient is not English.”

Related Characters: Caravaggio (speaker), The English Patient/László Almásy, Hana
Page Number: 163
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter IX Quotes

She had always wanted words, she loved them, grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape. Whereas I thought words bent emotions like sticks in water. She returned to her husband.

Related Characters: The English Patient/László Almásy (speaker), Katharine Clifton
Page Number: 238
Explanation and Analysis:

We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. 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.

Related Characters: The English Patient/László Almásy (speaker), Caravaggio, Katharine Clifton
Page Number: 261
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter X Quotes

I grew up with traditions from my country, but later, more often, from your country. Your fragile white island that with customs and manners and books and prefects and reason somehow converted the rest of the world. You stood for precise behaviour. I knew if I lifted a teacup with the wrong finger I’d be banished. If I tied the wrong kind of knot in a tie I was out. Was it just ships that gave you such power? Was it, as my brother said, because you had the histories and printing presses?

Related Characters: Kip/Kirpal Singh (speaker), The English Patient/László Almásy, Kip’s Brother
Page Number: 283
Explanation and Analysis:

My brother told me. Never turn your back on Europe. The deal makers. The contract makers. The map drawers. Never trust Europeans, he said. Never shake hands with them. But we, oh, we were easily impressed— by speeches and medals and your ceremonies. What have I been doing these last few years? Cutting away, defusing, limbs of evil. For what? For this to happen?

Related Characters: Kip/Kirpal Singh (speaker), The English Patient/László Almásy, Kip’s Brother
Related Symbols: Bombs
Page Number: 284-5
Explanation and Analysis:

He was riding deeper into thick rain. Because he had loved the face on the ceiling he had loved the words. As he had believed in the burned man and the meadows of civilisation he tended. Isaiah and Jeremiah and Solomon were in the burned man’s bedside book, his holy book, whatever he had loved glued into his own. He had passed his book to the sapper, and the sapper had said we have a Holy Book too.

Related Characters: The English Patient/László Almásy, Kip/Kirpal Singh
Related Symbols: Books
Page Number: 294
Explanation and Analysis: