Welcome!

The purpose of this independent study is expansive. I desire to increase my understanding of Canadian literature and its origins and effects, and I want to take pride in the fact that I am reading Canadian literature as well. I think supporting your nation's art base is very important, and will somehow reflect back to me in some shape or form. Also, upon reading and learning, I hope to expand my vocabulary and become a better writer, because reading is a fundamental step in the path to better writing. I'll also benefit from writing responses as well as feedback for peer responses. I think it is very important to remain connected to a comfortable base and feed from other people's ideas. What better environment to do this than a classroom, with twenty-eight other students who are just as inquisitive and supportive as I!

Links List

Biographies:
http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth205

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0005927


Reviews: (The former half of most of these reviews are synopses, please bear through them with this in mind)
http://www.booklounge.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780676973617

http://inkpot.com/books/english.html

http://caferati.blogspot.com/2004/12/book-review-english-patient.html#110326147362525127

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,312457,00.html

http://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=TlXCVdq9DWEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA289&dq=Michael+Ondaatje+academic+essays+The+English+Patient&ots=JJWloXUGcR&sig=Ut0ABaDgTLy1kU--8CH3MXg1Rs8#PPA291,M1


Interviews:
http://www.powells.com/authors/ondaatje.html (Re: Anil’s Ghost)

http://www.salon.com/nov96/ondaatje961118.html (Re: The English Patient)


Historical Context of the Novel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapper (What is a Sapper?)

http://www.sparknotes.com/history/european/ww2/section11.rhtml (Timeline of German Advancement of the period)

Characteristics, Themes, Motifs in Canadian Literature:
http://www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/SCL/bin/get.cgi?directory=Vol22_1/&filename=fledderu.html

Response Journal #4: Comments on Character Identities Part II: The Darkness of Hana

My Favourite Line in this entire book is as follows: 'In darkness, in any light after dusk, you can slit a vein and the blood is black'. I believe that dusk represents the point of no return in depression, and the make-up of the soul becomes dark and colourless. This is a powerful line to say so early in the book, and is a slight foreshadowing of the tone to ensue. Not only this, but it is the characters' reflection to the grim acts of war they endure which highlight the melancholy. Needless to say, Hana is mentally 'affected', and would do well with some rehabilitation. The problem is, she is trapped inside the maw of a threshing memory. She is mentally ground after each passing day just by living in her own personally haunted house. Firstly, the very walls of the villa are what should remind her of the nightmare of duty as a military nurse. As if the sights and smells are not enough, she is still caring for the English patient, which puts her into a spiral of insanity. Her fate is clearly not self-designated, as she allows her personality to drift from extreme to extreme. Then Kip arrives. Things looked grim before, but seeing someone who is so readily-able to ignore serious problems with themselves in favour of a crutch or a quick-patch is a red flag for psychotic behaviour.
Two excerpts I liked from this book that also support Hana's psycho-analysis were these: '"Soldiers were coming in with just bits of their bodies, falling in love with me for an hour and then dying"' and: '"I leaned forward to close a dead soldier's eyes, and then he opened them and sneered, "Can't wait to have me dead? You bitch!" He sat up and swept everything on my tray to the floor."' These speak for themselves. Hana was heavily mistreated, and has internalized everything to the point of eerie silence. These harsh memories of hers are like shrapnel going off in her brain, warping and slicing and severing memories and blurring the line of what is real and what is desired and what is eternal. I think Hana's grey past has entwined itself as the very fibre of her conscience, woven firmly into interlocking habits of memory. She is restricted only to the English patient because of what she has been changed by. Change is difficult to most people, impossible for people affected like Hana. But the change that twisted Hana is constant, consistant, familiar, comfortable (in ignorance) and devitalizing. It is like riding a downdraft.

Response Journal #3: Constitution of Weight

This has been the most prominent idea pressing at the back of my mind since about 150 pages in: What is the constitution of this book? It is so obviously character-driven, but at times I have felt that everything is so impregnated with abstract thought that it is hard to distinguish objects from characters from ideals. I thoroughly believe the house they live in is an independent character on its own; it has a personality, it has needs, and it provides setting. In fact, the villa is described, in detail, more than any other character. All other characters are silhouettes of themselves and must be generated in the mind's eye. Not to refute this, because I view it as an opportunity to personalize the characters; make them look exactly the way you want, or like people you know to further immerse yourself in the novel.
To be truthful, this book seems more like a platform to base virtues and ideas, as some other novels are as well, I'm sure. This is the first I have read of its kind, and it was hard not to call the book 'weightless' at first, until I realized that this is a book of artistic expression, and plot has hardly any relevance here. I seldom came across any metaphors, because the points Ondaatje makes are direct. He uses his characters as vehicles of portrayal to allow them to interpolate and extrapolate his thoughts with each other, in their own setting, place and time. Conveniently for Ondaatje, characters can ramble and ramble on about certain ideals and principles and beliefs simply because they are characters. Puppets. The author can use a particularly chatty character (Such as Almasy) to reveal everything he wants about himself without taking particular credit for it. Of course, this merely takes the sting out of a blowhard-author trying to outweigh his reader with ideas no-one can understand. Ergo, Ondaatje has no reason to hide, because his writing is very accessible, yet still he uses artistic license.

Response Journal #2: Comments on Character Identities Part I: What Is Comfort?

At pages 120 and 126 there were some very interesting points raised about character and the human condition, especially the former. I truly think Carravagio has cracked at this point, and Hana has started to come out of her insanity; a reversal of roles. In the passage at page 120, Carravagio starts talking argumentatively, and we are told that he has just taken a hit of morphine. He goes from exclaiming the futility of sex, to the importance of mental humility to others, to eloquence. Simply put, he says it's better to love someone smarter than you, because they will nurture and teach. I personally think it goes deeper than that. Being mentally submissive to someone you love is a way of incorporating something missing to you in your life. It will be the closest thing you come to of actually being more intelligent. I think the attraction lies not in learning more, but in gaining something you don't have. Ondaatje is successful in making this point, regardless of style, because he has initiated higher-level thinking. It is merely a part of the human condition to desire things we may never have.
On page 126, the author goes into the ways each character finds comfort. The reader-author relationship is evident here because the comforts are quite archetypal, and can all be found in a certain part of us as well, depending on where you look. Kip's strict regime of eating only his own food shows he finds comfort in home and religion. Hana, however, does not find comfort in these places because she has lived with and cared for a dying man for two months alone, allowing her values to be distorted. At this point, home and religion are all she has, and it tortures her. Going back to what was said about loving someone who is wiser: Hana loves Kip because theoretically she looks up to him for defeating and living by her very own fears. I believe that Hana finds comfort in Kip because she knows that the very things that disturbed her once, have left another man untouched. He seems strong, invincible even, and she wants to be a part of that to heal her. Carravagio finds his comfort in morphine, which is artificial, but all-too common. Lastly, Almasy, the English patient himself, finds comfort in "Ointments of desert invention", which plays well with supernatural beliefs that so many people respect to stay above the surface. The way Ondaatje unveils this is subtle, yet direct. His inquiry into the human condition is remarkable, yet it never strays from the story or theme. Nothing is bent out of proportion to display his ideas, which may point to the reason why they are all so subtle.

Response Journal #1: Comments on General Format

There are many points in this novel that made me pause and think about how the format contributes to the effect and art of the novel.
Firstly, Ondaatje’s spectacular use of parallel structure makes the novel more accessible and provides personal insight on both complex and simple levels. He relates present events to ancient mythology twice, and repeats certain phrases within emphatic paragraphs many times.
Also, Ondaatje, whether conscious of this or not, has two major shifts of tone. In about the first fifty pages or so, he describes setting and character beautifully. After this, for the next hundred pages, he seems to open a window into his soul, and it appears that the main characters act as puppets with which the author can communicate through. Not to say that this is original in comparison to other books, but I have noted this as very prominent, and it is quite effective, if not necessary. At this certain point, it seems the novel is less about character development and more to do with expressing the ideas and ideals about life and love. It’s a pleasure to read. The second shift reverts mostly to expository writing, though still artfully symbolic and tactfully expressed. This tone lasts throughout the rest of the book, and is necessary to give the already amazingly-textured story some weight.
At many points, due to the author’s style, I couldn’t help but to think of ways to make this novel into a movie. Although the detailed description is enough to let the story stand alone, the technical devices the author uses are what make it cinematic. For example, at many areas, the characters flash back and tell tales about it. During these flashbacks, there are no quotation marks to indicate dialogue, even when other characters interject or change the subject. I feel this makes the voices omnipotent, almost narrative in nature, allowing the story of the past to be watched as an audience would a movie. The only difference is, the audience is commenting on what the people on screen are saying, and the people on screen are reacting to the audience. Very clever technique.