It is unhealthy to run away from a problem in the past or to dwell on it too much. In the novel In the Skin of a Lion Patrick displays a lot of unhealthy behaviour after he breaks up with Clara, his girlfriend. “After Clara leaves him, Patrick cleans his room on Queen Street obsessively” (p. 82). By cleaning out his house, he tries to remove every trace of her from his life and pretend that she never existed. Patrick ignores this event from his past because he cannot deal with the fact that she is gone so he tries to forget about their entire relationship. In The English Patient, when Katherine leaves the Englishman he cannot accept that she is gone so he holds on to the false hope that she will change her mind and come back. “He knows the only way he can accept losing her is if he can continue to hold her or be held by her” (p. 156). The Englishman dwells on the thoughts of Katherine leaving, and refuses to continue his life without her. Patrick and the Englishman both display very unhealthy behaviour after their girlfriends have left.
Events from Alice’s and the Englishman’s past affect their friends and family and it is unfair for Alice and the Englishman to not share these events with those concerned just because they cannot deal with the events themselves. In In the Skin of a Lion Alice tries to forget the time of her life that she spent with her boyfriend Cato because she is unable to deal with his death. Their daughter Hana develops a tendency to withdraw from people because this is what she has learned from her mother, Alice; and Hana has no other role model or father figure in her life. “There would always be something careful about her. As if she had been badly scalded and so would approach all water tentatively for fear it was boiling” (p. 137). In The English Patient, the Englishman refuses to reveal his name to Caravaggio. In the past the Englishman gave away information about Caravaggio which got Caravaggio in trouble and ruined Caravaggio’s life.(does not want Caravaggio to know that he is the one responsible for his thumbs being cut off and ruining his life). “He (Caravaggio) is still amazed at the clarity and discipline in the man, who speaks sometimes in the first-person, sometimes in the third-person, who still does not admit that he is Almásy” (p. 247). Caravaggio needs to know for sure that it was the Englishman who betrayed him so that Caravaggio can have closure knowing that the Englishman is suffering as well. Neither Hana nor Caravaggio are able to find closure because their loved ones are hiding relevant information from them
Not telling people relevant information about the past can affect others in a negative way and it is unfair to make them suffer because of it.
Ambrose tried running away from his past, and the Englishman dwelled on his past long enough to give himself false hope, but eventually their pasts caught up to them with drastic consequences. In the novel In the Skin of a Lion, Ambrose became so overcome with the stress of his life—keeping up his reputation and hiding his past from the public, that he lost his mind and just vanished; no one ever knew what happened to him. “On December 16, 1919, Ambrose Small failed to keep an appointment…. He had either been murdered or was missing. His body, alive or dead, was never found” (p. 58). In The English Patient the Englishman becomes too overwhelmed with his past that he can no longer deal with life anymore. “For him now the world is without sound, and even light seems an unneeded thing” (p. 298). The Englishman finally decided that he needs Hana to kill him because he constantly relives all the problems in his past and he is unable to cope with the stress of daily life anymore. No matter how much either of them tried to avoid it, the problems in their pasts caught up to both Ambrose and the Englilshman sooner or later.
Michael Ondaatje demonstrates in his two novels In the Skin of a Lion and The English Patient that it is essential to find a balance between running away from the past and dwelling on it too much, since all of the characters become who they are because of their past experiences. Patrick and the Englishman both display unhealthy behaviour after their girlfriends leave them, which ruins both of their lives; neither of them is able to continue leading a normal life. Alice and the Englishman do not tell relevant information about the past to their friends and family which makes everyone’s life worse instead of better. Events from Ambrose and the Englishman’s lives eventually catch up to them and bring about severe consequences that destroy their lives.
