History in any context is from a subjective perspective. When history is transmitted into writing or passed through generations it is warped by the geographic, social, economic and political factors of its environment. So through these factors history undergoes changes as the perspectives of the interested parties change. Colonial powers believed their creation of a universal history was totally objective, but as said above this cannot be true. “Was it as my brother said, because you had the histories and the printing presses?”(Ondaatje, 2002: 304) Skip comes to the realisation of the fault in colonial power arising from its extensive history, “My brother told me never turn your back on Europe. The deal makers. The contract makers. The map drawers. Never trust Europeans, he said. Never shake hands with them. But we, oh, we are easily impressed by speeches and medals and your ceremonies. What have a been doing these last few years? Cutting away, diffusing, the limbs of evil. For what? For his to happen?”(Ondaatje, 2002: 304-5) After this intriguing passage Skip tells Almásy, “to swallow your history lesson.”(Ondaatje, 2002: 305) Through these differing views the reader sees the ambiguity of history.
Ondaatje uses history to place the book in context; by using historical facts the characters are given a realistic edge, for example, Lord Suffolk. The history of the desert is important as it is ever changing due to the shifting of the sand which is able to cover ancient civilizations. Through out the book clarity on the desert is unobtainable, this is reflected in the ever changing elements of the characters, which results in their portrayal been distorted throughout different sections in the novel.
Ondaatje uses the above traditional historical facts to give sub-contexts and backgrounds to the text. In contrast to this he also uses fictional text that is able to represent life’s complications, inexplicabilities, and fullness. This subtextual richness cannot be represented by traditional narratives of historical facts. The continuous interrelated engagement of historical facts and fictional text brings out much confusion between fact and fiction. This blur created by Ondaatje is what makes the novel and its characters so ambiguous. There is a cloud over Skip’s loyalty to the Western world until the last chapter of the book, “In my country, when a father breaks justice in two, you kill the father.”(Ondaatje, 2002: 305) Skip’s past cannot be erased by new colonial ideologies no matter how hard he or they try, “And in truth he has never gotten accustomed to the beds of the West.” (Ondaatje, 2002: 300)
As Herodotus’ ‘Histories’ states that, “this history of mine has from the beginning sought out the supplementary to the main argument.” (Ondaatje, 2002: 127) So Ondaatjie’s ‘The English Patient’ aims to fill the erased history of subjugated civilizations, “this was a world that had been civilised for centuries... I was walking not in a place where no one had walked before but in a place where there were sudden, brief populations over the centuries.” (Ondaatje, 2002: 152)
The definitions of history provided in the above introduction are very broad; some inherently encapsulate the humanised side of history. This side of history has been disregarded for several centuries. Ondaatje retrieves the human oral stories of the desert that would have been lost, thus giving voice to those who have been silenced, marginalized, or misrepresented in official history; they represent the human, the personal side of history.” (Renger, 2000: 115)
The gaps and misinterpretations of history can be paralleled to the patient as he falls asleep each night: “gaps of plot like sections of a road washed out by storms, missing incidents as if locusts had consumed a section of tapestry, as if plaster loosened by bombs had fallen away from a mural night.” (Ondaatje, 2002:7) Ondaatje’s text fills certain gaps of history through the patient’s memory and knowledge of “the map of the story” (Cook, 1998:110) The patients history itself is only discovered in the latter part of the book; not through a factual relation to history but rather through Caravaggio’s personal experience with Almásy.
At this point it is important to refer back to the epigraph which in no way mentions Almásy. This epigraph is the epitome of dehumanising history in which human behaviour is disregarded. The amendments that are continually made to Herodotus’ Histories by the English patient contrast to the explicit objectivity and dehumanised text of the epigraph. This is what arises out of the different engagements of history in the novel; the fact that History cannot be totally objective as it will always need human input.
Conclusion
History is the foundation of this novel: the catalyst which makes the characters perform in certain manners within the novels environment. Ondaatje uses history within a post colonial discourse to revise a sphere of history that has gone unnoticed. His different employments of history culminate in validating the fact that, “history will always need ‘revision’. (Renger, 2000: 115) Through revision of history Ondaatje changes ideologies; he is able to, “draw more flexible and hybrid maps for the future.” (Renger, 2000: 123)
Bibliography
Cook, R. 1998. Imploding Time and Geography: Narrative Compressions in Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient. Extracted from: Journal of Commonwealth Literature. 1998.
Glage, L. 2000. Beings in Transit: Travelling, Migration, Dislocation. Amsterdam: Rodoe
Ondaatje, M. 2002. The English Patient. Oxford: Picador.
Renger, N. 1997. Cartography, Historiography, and Identity; in Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient. Extracted from Glage
Shorter Oxford dictionary. 9th ed. 1993. Oxford: OUP.
