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Metaphor
Explanation and Analysis—Almásy's Transformation:
In Chapter 9 of The English Patient, the newly-revealed Almásy shares his entire history with Caravaggio—from his early days of exploration in the desert to his tumultuous romance with Katharine Clifton before World War II began. Although Caravaggio does not physically force Almásy to divulge his past, his pressures cause Almásy to feel taken advantage of—an experience Ondaatje illustrates with a metaphor:
You must talk to me, Caravaggio. Or am I just a book? Something to be read, some creature to be tempted out of a loch and shot full of morphine, full of corridors, lies, loose vegetation, pockets of stones.
Prior to this moment, Caravaggio suggests to Hana that Hana inject the English patient with additional doses of morphine, as an encouragement to share more of his history. Aware of Caravaggio's attempted manipulation, the English patient confronts Caravaggio for his treatment of the patient as a book or "something to be read." The metaphor of the English patient as a book connects to the larger theme of history and storytelling that The English Patient so heavily explores throughout its narrative. As much as the English patient treasures books and stories, he does not appreciate becoming one himself, for he feels that Caravaggio and others are using him simply for his wealth of knowledge. He receives little information about Caravaggio's life in return and exposes this irony with his interrogation of Caravaggio.
However, even when bed-bound with no control over how others approach him, Almásy harbors incredible mental and verbal capabilities, which this passage demonstrates through its breadth of figurative language. In The English Patient, knowledge, memory, and history are taken advantage of. Almásy’s memories are the keys to understanding his past—and the intertwined stories of his fellows at the villa—but war upsets the nature of memory, identity, and how humans approach them, as Almásy’s speech to Caravaggio demonstrates.
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