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@
 

 
 

The primary difference between history as a subject and historical literature is that, where the

former is concerned with determining an objective chronicle of facts in regards to the past,

the latter attempts to reconstructs the past in the form of a literary narrative. This

reconstruction of the past is usually done to serve an agenda, whether it is an attempt to

portray, with vivid detail, a plausible account of the events of the era, or, in more

contemporary cases, to illustrate an author¶s own agenda. This reconstruction and

reinterpretation of history is evident in Ondaatje¶s the „
 

and    
, as

both works make extensive reference, and reinterpretation, of historical events in the

construction of their narrative. A marked difference though, besides the more superficial

differences between prose and poetry, is the time and intention in both narratives. Where the

„
 
reinterprets history to portray an Ondaatje who, as an ³International bastard´,

questions his own Western upbringing and turns back on it,    
, written much later,

portrays an older Ondaatje reinterpreting history to connect back with his Sri Lankan roots.

A recurring artifice in the „
 

is the titular character¶s personal copy of

Herodotus¶s  
, which was the only belonging Almasy had when he was recovered

from the wreckage of his crashed plane. Almasy¶s copy, however, is portrayed as being filled

with other fragments of information ± ³maps, diary entries, writings in many languages,

paragraphs cut out of other books´ and ³even a small fern glued into it´. By focusing on the

information that is relevant to his research, eschewing the fragments that are irrelevant to his

interests by pasting his notes over the wars he¶s not interested in, and adding in fragments of

outside information, as well as a chronicle of his own life, Almasy effectively creates his own

book, or, as considered Hana, to be a ³sea-book of maps and texts´. Almasy reinterprets and
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reconstructs his own history from the base subject, 

 

 , mirroring

Ondaatje¶s own use of history in his narrative.

Such an approach is related to the presentation of    
to its reader. The poems of

   
are largely minimalistic, with most of the poems comprising of a few lines, and

very ambiguous description of history in some poems. One example is the very short lines of

³There were new professions´ followed by ³cormorant girls who screamed on prawn farms to

scare birds´. Festino suggests that such a description is based on the change of the role of the

cormorant changing, from an aide of fishermen in ancient times to a pest of prawn farms in

more recent times, with girls being employed to chase away such birds. This plausible, but

lengthy, explanation, is neatly and poetically summarized in the few lines cited, and can

suggest an invitation on the part of the author to the reader to annotate the line with this

explanation. Another example to highlight is in 

 where, later in the poem, this line is

written ³Our archaeologists dug down to the disappeared bodies of schoolchildren´. Although

such an ambiguous line was written mainly in reference to the Sri Lankan civil war, it also

paints a vivid image of burial and child abuse, as another interpretation can suggests

psychologists trying to µdig into¶ the childhoods of their patients. Just as Almasy¶s copy of

 
 is scrapbook unique to himself, no personal reading of    
would be the

same as another.

This portrayal of history, as something that is personal, and privy to unique and personal

interpretation, marks the use of historical information by Ondaatje to relate a larger

postcolonial theme. The „
 

takes place in the final days of the Second World

War, and the character of Almasy, the ³English´ Patient, is based on a real figure in history.

However, the Almasy of Ondaatje¶s imagining is meant to reflect an aspect that Ondaatje

wanted to focus upon, on a group of migratory characters who come together to and relate to

each other in the abandoned Villa San Girolamo. Almasy, though historically known as a
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Fascist collaborator, is portrayed as an intellectual who was far more interested in desert

exploration and desert culture research, as well as having a tragic love affair. Both

Caravaggio and Hana are Canadians who have been previously acquainted, with the latter

being a nurse who has suffered the loss of her father, and the former, a thief turned spy who

suffered the loss of both of his hands. The most interesting is the case of Kip, the sapper who

represents the educated, colonized Other in migration to the communities of the colonizer.

Kip¶s history, in his journey to England, his acquaintanceship with Lord Suffolk, and his

education and working for the British Empire mirrors that of other similar postcolonial

scholars and writers, like Ondaatje, Rushdie, Salih, and so on, who, initially originating from

the East, came to the West to study, immersing themselves in the ways of their colonial

masters. The villa, in its diversity of characters, is an escape, not only from the war, but also

from the concept of nationhood that initiated the war in the first place, rendering the villa a

postcolonial establishment to some extent.

Where the „
 

expressed diversity of characters in a community,    


makes use of a diversity of histories from different cultures and backgrounds. Ondaatje

makes use of references to Chinese history, as seen in the title of ³







 


´ (henceforth abbreviated to ³



´), and more explicitly in

³

 

´, where he relates the story of the friendship between the poets Zou Fulei

and Yang Wenzhem. There is also a reference to the trappist monk, Thomas Merton, in


, and the poems have a mixture, not only of events from ancient history, but also from

mythology, and from contemporary events, like the newspaper citation in Buried.

A recurrent motif in both works is that of burial, and recovery. The theme of burial in the

„
 
manifests itself in the chapter ³ 


´, where Katherine¶s husband,

in an attempt to kill himself, his wife and Almasy, deliberately crashes his own plane. With

the plane now buried, the narrative focus of Almasy who, upon leaving an injured Katherine
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in the nearby Cave of Swimmers, devotes an entire journey to get help, so that he can rescue

Katherine (now dead), recover the buried plane, and make his flight. Burial and recovery is

also associated with Kip¶s occupation, that as a sapper. One of the hazards of Kip¶s job is the

clearing of mines, that delicate operation of recovering buried explosives. This act of

recovering throughout the novel mirrors the act of recovering Buddha statues in the two

poems titled ³

´. Here, Buddha statues, books and information, are buried as a means of

protecting them from the threats of invades and colonization, only to be recovered later in

times of peace.

It is this motif of burial and recovery that expresses the theme of renewal and reconnection

with the past in both novels. Almasy¶s research, as it is in reality and in the novel, was

concerned primarily with culture in the desert which, though seemingly barren, is revealed to

be teeming with life and diversity.The relevance of Herodotus¶s  

 to Almasy is given

in the introduction in the chapter :´  !"´, where it is related how, after

Herodotus, there was little interest in exploring the desert regions until the 1920,s which was

Almasy got involved in the expeditions. He is also interested in understand ancient

calligraphy, which is comprised of meaning that is hidden and initially unobtainable.

Likewise, in handwriting, Ondaatje is trying to understand and reconnect with Sri Lanka¶s

past, and its culture and calligraphy, which remains alien and undecipherable to its author.

The first poem, with the titular reference to jade, highlights the difficulty of comparing, or

putting into words, the description of a decorative object, like jade. This image comes full

circle in the final poem, Last Ink, where Ondaatje writes:

³before the yellow age of paper

Before her story became a song,

Lost in imprecise reproductions

Until caught in jade´

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Ondaatje wants to convey the history embodied in jade, the jade being the cultures and

history of the Sri Lanka, which, though he had left, is nonetheless a part of his own heritage.

It could be argued, thus, that the poems of    
, and the work, as a whole, remains

unified in its diversity. Just like in Kolatkar¶s 

#, where each poem can be seen as a

continuous reflection of the novel, there is an interesting thematic progression in the work,

from a description of Sir Lanka in the first part, to Indian love poetry of the second part, and

the third part indicates a µreturn¶ of the author to Sri Lanka. This return is suggested at the

beginning of the third part, the poem Flight, where Ondaatje recounts a clear experience on

³Air Lanka Flight 5´ before arriving at Katunayake airport.    
, however, is

independent of a definitive chronology. Although the chronology is implied in the thematic

progression of poems, the poems themselves are independent of the constraints of a singular

narrative.

In contrast, the English Patient ends with the disruption of the postcolonial and postnational

settlement that had been established in its narrative. This unity is marked by a historical event

that reinforces the previously held colonial sentiments and beliefs, that being the bombing of

Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ondaatje portrays an enraged Kip who, upon hearing the atomic

bombings, threatens to kill Almasy, arguing that such a weapon would never be used by a

white nation against a white city. After this, Kip is seen as being the first leave to the villa,

his departure marking the end of the contra-national establishment that had permeated itself

throughout the narrative. It could be argued that Kip, in the realization that he had been a

pawn for his colonial masters, leaves the villa in an attempt to undo the µinvasion¶ that he had

become a part of. However, this portrayal of departure and rejection of the community that

had shied away from the constraints of nationality only reinforces this concept on the

remaining members of the villa. It is not only the use of atomic weaponry that ends the

postcolonial nature of the villa. The novel adapts a chronological and definitive recounting of
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events after the bombing, suggesting that it is History, that being the objective subject, that

ends the novel¶s personal history in the same way that it was initially used a backdrop.

It is from here that we can better understand Ondaatje¶s intention in the select interpretation

and reconstruction of history in each novel. The „
 

ends rather rosily, with Hana

and Kip being separate from each other. Kip¶s resolution is portrayed as being perfect, with a

happy life as a doctor and complete family of two children and ³a laughing wife´, a stark

contrast to Hana, who now lives alone and is distraught. Such a portrayal leaves out the

violence and turmoil that marked India following its independence, and seems to indicate an

ending that is too uplifting to Kip. However, the novel ends with a suggestion of a lingering

connectedness between Kip and Hana. 

„
 
, thus, is meant to reflect the

migratory nature of Ondaatje as a postcolonial writer, with each of the characters, particularly

Kip, mirroring the diversity of colonial views that he had become accustomed to during his

early understanding, views that remain to have an effect on him the way the connection

between Kip and Hana endures. For instance, Caravaggio is named after the 7th century

Italian painter of $%&


 , a painter who is both an inheritor of previous style

and an initiator towards a new direction in art, mirroring postcolonial writers who inherit the

traditions of colonial writings but write in a manner. Perhaps the most vivid description is

provided by Almasy, who describes himself and Kip as ³international bastards´, giving new

light to Rushdie¶s own quote of being ³borne across´ in 

.

   
, in contrast, marks another shift in the progression of Ondaatje as a postcolonial

writer. Jacobs describes 

„
 
³as one of those narrative cul-de-sacs in a larger

history, a fragment inserted into the story of Indian independence, which itself formspart of

the greater narrative of decolonisation´. If 

„
 
reflects the early development

of the postcolonial writer amidst his education in the colonial world,    
is set at a

later stage, where the postcolonial writer, in the spirit of decolonisation, attempts to reconnect
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with the lost culture of the colonized, in this case, Sri Lanka. The use of history here is

evident in the beginning of the first poem, where ³the enemy was always identified in art by a

lion´ and ³we began with myths and later included actual events´. Ondaatje¶s own journey, is

set against the backdrop of Sri Lanka violence, as suggested in the poems Buried and Death

at Kataragama, is a conflict against the all-encompassing world-view of the colonial

mentality, established in the „
 

, with the recovery of his Sri Lankan roots,

likened to the recovery of buried Buddha statues.

Both 
„
 
t and    
make extensive use of history to convey a

diversity that is emblematic of the postcolonial. However, 

„
 
, in being

reflective of an earlier moment of a postcolonial writers progress, see the destruction of the

fragile community established in this pages, whereas the unity and diversity of    

is unmarred, not only its status as a work of poetry, but also by its relevance to its writer as an

attempt to reconnect with his estranged roots.

























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- 


Adhikari, Madhumalati. History and Story: Unconventional History in Michael Ondaatje's
"The English Patient" andJames A. Michener's "Tales of the South Pacific".  ' 

', Vol. 41, No. 4, Theme Issue 41: Unconventional History (Dec.,2002), pp. 43-55

Festino, Cielo G.(2006) 'Writing Before the Letter: Reading Michael Ondaatje's Handwriting',
(


  )
    , 6: 2, 136 ² 147

Higgins, Lesley and Marie Christine Leps. "Passport, Please": Legal, Literary, and Critical
Fictions of Identity. 


(
 
, Vol. 25, No. 1, Law, Literature, and
Interdisciplinarity (Winter,1998), pp. 94-138

Jacobs, J. U.(1997) 'Michael Ondaatje's the English patient (1992) and postcolonial
impatience',  (
' 
, 13: 1, 92 ² 112

O¶Dea, Gregory. 2006. Nationality and Textuality in Michael Ondaatje's 

„
 
*
Paper presented as part of the Take Five public lecture series on international fiction at The
University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. May 9.