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The English Patient:
The Influence
of Kipling
Set in an Italian villa at the end of the Second World War, Michael Ondaatje's novel, The English Patient, brings together four unlikely characters as it explores human relationships amidst the turmoil of war. Hana is an emotionally-scarred Canadian Army nurse who refuses to leave her last patient even when ordered to evacuate, while Caravaggio is a thief and spy who is drawn to Hana in ways he cannot articulate.
But the most compelling character in the novel is Kip, a Sikh sapper grudgingly loyal to the British military who disarms bombs by day and loves Hana by night. Kip represents many of the aspects of Rudyard Kipling's character Kim, for they share similar positions in life because of their ethnic heritage. The "English" patient, Count Almasy, is a mysterious survivor of a fiery plane crash, through whom much of the action in the novel unfolds in the form of flashbacks.
There are obvious parallels between the character Kim in Rudyard Kipling and Kip, the Sikh demolitions expert in The English Patient. Kipling created Kim as a white, Irish boy who grew up as an orphan on the streets of Lahore, "a poor white of the very poorest". But because his skin was "burned black as any native," and because he looked and lived like a low-caste Hindu street-urchin and was unable to read, write, or speak English very well," Kim was an outcast in society. (Kipling 159-162)
When Kim begins, the influences on Kipling's memorable protagonist have been almost exclusively Indian. He has grown up dressing like an Indian, thinking like an Indian, and feels at home among the poor people of Lahore. (Mackean) His skin has been burned as brown as an Indian's, but despite these aspects he doesn't think of himself as a native. But he is not British either, he has no real identity.
All of the characters in Ondaatje's novel have been damaged, both physically and spiritually, by the demands and ravages of war, but Kip bears the extra burden of being a dark-skinned Sikh in the white British Army. His situation is much like Kim's, for as an outsider in war-torn Europe, he doesn't fit in. His predicament is symbolized quite well in the famous villa scene where Kip is struggling to read Kipling, for the style of the British writer alienates him and he tosses the book aside in disgust, proclaiming that he can't read Kipling, the words stick in his throat. (Ondaatje)
Count Almasy explains that one must read Kipling slowly, for when one does, Kipling's phrasing reveals the power of his prose. Like Kipling's accounts of Kim, images and scenes in Ondaatje's novel slowly combine like the pieces in a jigsaw puzzle and lead to a powerful conclusion. It is not until the final few pages of The English Patient that readers learn what compels Hana to tend with such devotion to the mortally-burned English Patient, and it is not until then that Kip feels compelled to reconsider his dedication to the British war cause and makes a life-changing decision.
Through the interaction between Kip, Hana, and the other memorable characters in The English Patient, Ondaatje deals with themes of loyalty, patriotism, the nature of war, friendship, and loneliness, just as Kipling did in works such as Kim. Kip is a typical Sikh in terms of culture, social heritage, and religion, but he is also a soldier in the British Army and takes his responsibilities seriously.
Ondaatje's prose style is of course very different from Kipling's, for it is both langurous and sensuous, while Kipling's was distinctively British. As scenes in The English Patient flow back and forth in time, recounting the love affair between the Austrian Count Almasy and Catherine Clifton, a married British woman; Kip is seduced by Hana, an event which enables Ondaatje to explore the cultural dynamics of such an unlikely romantic pairing between two very different people.
While it is only one subplot of the novel, the affair between Kip and Hana is compelling because he is a Sikh and she is a Canadian. Because they don't share the same culture and religion, theirs is a wary, awkward courtship punctuated with frustrations that are recognizably human, just as Kim's frustrations were recognizably human. The relationship between Kip and Hana is representative of the relationship between the Indian subcontinent and the West, which was such a prominent theme in Kipling's works. (Mackean)
Like Kipling, Ondaatje creates realistic fictional worlds and memorable characters that capture the reader's imagination. Like the other characters in The English Patient, Kip represents aspects of Kim, for he is struggling to deal with the consequences fate has imposed upon him. Estranged from his family by his nontraditional beliefs and pursuits, he is a man without a country, a Sikh sapper in an English army that does not welcome foreigners, especially dark-skinned foreigners. A loner by nature and by circumstances, Kip finds respite if not meaning in Hana's arms, and like Kim he represents everyone who feels lost and alone in the world.
There is much symbolism in Michael Ondaatje's novel, just as there is much symbolism in Rudyard Kipling's characterization of Kim. Ondaatje's striking passage, "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," (Ondaatje) is evocative of Kipling's language when he describes the political, social, and cultural dynamics of imperialism and the consequences they inevitably have upon human relationships.
Just as the British Empire in Kipling's lifetime sought to be a commonwealth of different nations, undivided by borders on maps and united by communal goals despite their differences, the ultimate theme of The English Patient promotes communal ideals. "I believe in such cartography," one passage in the novel reads, "we are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience. All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps." (Ondaatje 261)
Like the theme Rudyard Kipling developed through Kim, Ondaatje's theme reflects their shared view that a life is like a landscape. It can be mapped, explored, and conquered, but it can remain as much a mystery as when it was first seen. Ironically, the painting of a Queen delivers meditative relief for the traumatized Kip during the war, but it is only a transitory relief. Like Kim, Kip must deal with the consequences of imperialism and race.
Like Kip, Kim defines his identity during his trials and tribulations by being open to influences. He tries to respond positively to people, while warding off influences which he finds abrasive or demeaning. When Kim is captured by soldiers, Kipling uses the encounter to show a clash of Indian and British mentality, with Kim representing the Indian view and the members of the regiment featuring aspects of British mentality which Kipling proceeds to criticize. (Kipling 127-134)
At the end of the novel Kip angrily leaves the British Army in outrage when he hears the news of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, saying that the Allies would never have treated a white city like that. As a Sikh, he felt the powerlessness of his people and would have been aware that the British had imprisoned Gandhi and Nehru, had suppressed the 1942 Quit India movement, and had committed a large number of imperialist and selfish acts, the worst of which was a disastrous famine in the Bengal that cost millions of lives. Kip was very conscious of the racial prejudice in the British Army, and could no longer tolerate the hypocrisy of white Europeans.
The English Patient is like Kipling's work in many ways, for it explores through Kip and Hana how we strive to reclaim the ghosts of our past, even as we try to escape them. Their relationship is poetic and haunted, for Kip's duty of disarming unexploded bombs has become virtually his sole purpose in life. When he learns of the ultimate bomb, an ultimate weapon that even he cannot disarm, and when he sees who it is used against, he confronts the English patient in a moment of deep irony.
This novel also reflects Kipling's characterization of Kim, in that it is a treatise on grief, loss, nationhood and isolation. Like Kim, all of the main characters in The English Patient are outsiders in search of some sense of belonging. Hana is stricken by tragedies and displaced from her homeland; Count Almasy sought solitude in the desert, Katherine finds herself among foreigners and men, and Kip is a Sikh thousands of miles from home, serving in the army that has oppressed his homeland.
Their discovery of each other and the change in their inner lives from these discoveries parallels the realignment and disappearance of national borders. To each other, they surrender a little bit of their territory by sharing a journey of recovery, and their individual stories. Just as Kim comes as close as he ever does to feeling he has discovered his identity in the final chapter of Kipling's tale, Kip finally discovers at the end of The English Patient that his identity cannot be found within the British Army.
At the end of Kipling's story Kim seems to have arrived at a sense of self towards which he has been struggling, and which he has been defining cumulatively through his experiences. "I am Kim. I am Kim," he says. "His soul repeated it again and again and tears trickled down his nose" as he felt the "wheels of his being lock up anew on the world without." (Kipling 331) The question remains: what is Kim? and even though Kipling offers his readers no definitive answer to that question, perhaps the important thing is that he has remembered to ask it, as we all should. (Mackean)
In conclusion, The English Patient is set in an Italian villa at the end of the Second World War and explores the relationships between four unlikely characters as they struggle to deal with the ghosts of their pasts amidst the turmoil of war. As a Sikh demolitions expert loyal to the British military, Kip is remindful of Rudyard Kipling's character Kim, for they are both troubled by racial prejudice, are victims of imperialistic attitudes, and are seeking their identity amongst strangers.
Bibliography
Kipling, Rudyard. Kim. New York: Penguin Classics, 2000.
Mackean, Ian. "Kipling: Kim, by Rudyard Kipling." Online. Available: http://www.english-literature.org/essays/kipling.html. 12 December 2004.
Ondaatje, Michael. The English Patient. New York: Vintage, 1993.
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