The English Patient

Throughout The English Patient, Ondaatje regularly utilizes flashbacks to connect characters' memories with their present states. Decades of war and violence have traumatized each character in a unique way, and oftentimes these flashbacks appear at random intervals in the middle of chapters—a symbolic representation of the unpredictable nature of shell-shock. For example, in Chapter 2, Caravaggio experiences an intense flashback when feeding the villa's dog, for it brings him back to the day that members of the German military mutilated his hands:

He crouched down to watch the dog drinking and he rebalanced himself too late, grabbing the table, upsetting the carafe of wine. Your name is David Caravaggio, right? They had handcuffed him to the thick legs of an oak table. At one point he rose with it in his embrace, blood pouring away from his left hand, and tried to run with it through the thin door and falling. The woman stopped, dropping the knife, refusing to do more.

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