Does Caravaggio change during the course of the novel? Does he ever come to accept intimacy, and if so, what type of intimacy and intimacy with whom?ħ. Why has Ondaatje made Caravaggio a thief by profession? What is it in his character that makes such an occupation appropriate? "All his life he has avoided permanent intimacy". How does Ondaatje use maps and cartography as a metaphor for people and history? What does geography mean to the English patient and to Ondaatje's other characters?Ħ. We are communal histories, communal books". The English patient says, "I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. How does the landscape of the novel - the Villa San Girolamo, the country around it, and the boundary between the two - reflect the inner lives of its inhabitants? Why do you think that Ondaatje has chosen Tuscany as the setting for his story? What significance do other landscapes, like the desert and the English countryside, hold for the story and its characters?ĥ.
Why did Hana decide to have an abortion during the war? How has that decision affected her, and how much influence has it had on her life at the villa?Ĥ. What can you deduce from the novel about Hana's relationship with her father? Has her father's death, and the manner of it, caused her to retreat from the war and devote herself to the English patient? What influence do her feelings for her father have upon her relationship with Caravaggio?ģ. Why does the patient consider himself to have "died"? Does he undergo any kind of rebirth during the course of the story?Ģ. The English patient "whispers again, dragging the listening heart of the young nurse beside him to wherever his mind is, into that well of memory he kept plunging into during those months before he died".
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