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Chapter III. Sometime a Fire
Explanation and Analysis—Surprise Control:
In the early chapters of The English Patient, an Indian sapper named Kip arrives at the villa and meets Caravaggio, who immediately feels superior to Kip because Kip—with his darker skin and turban—is noticeably non-White. Caravaggio does not trust Kip to diffuse the bombs at the villa, nor does he trust him in general. Caravaggio's racist instincts (likely a product of the White-centric culture of Western colonialism) define his relationship with Kip in the early chapters of the novel. However, in a moment of situational irony during Chapter 3, it is Kip who has the upper hand, for he has a keen knowledge of bomb diffusion:
Once Caravaggio entered the library and saw the sapper up by the ceiling, against the trompe l’oeil—only Caravaggio would walk into a room and look up into the high corners to see if he was alone—and the young soldier, his eyes not leaving their focus, put out his palm and snapped his fingers, halting Caravaggio in his entrance, a warning to leave the room for safety as he unthreaded and cut a fuze wire he had traced to that corner, hidden above the valence.
Related Themes:
Chapter VI. A Buried Plane
Explanation and Analysis—The "English" Patient:
Throughout The English Patient, the title character of the English patient is only assumed to be English because of his English accent. Appearing from the desert with significant memory loss and without formal identification, those at the villa resort to calling him "The English patient." However, the great irony of The English Patient itself is that the patient is not English at all, but Hungarian. In Chapter 6, Caravaggio begins to uncover what he believes to be the true identity of the patient. Hana dismisses him at first and claims that the patient's nationality is unimportant, but Caravaggio believes that the patient’s national identity is the key to uncovering the rest of his history:
Unlock with LitCharts A+"I think he is an Englishman,” she says, sucking in her cheeks as she always does when she is thinking or considering something about herself.
“I know you love the man, but he’s not an Englishman. In the early part of the war I was working in Cairo—the Tripoli Axis. Rommel’s Rebecca spy—”
Related Themes:
