Ondaatje, Michael - Susan Ellis (essay date 1996)
Susan Ellis (essay date 1996)
SOURCE: Ellis, Susan. “Trade and Power, Money and War: Rethinking Masculinity in Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient.” Studies in Canadian Literature 21, no. 2 (1996): 22-36.
[In the following essay, Ellis discusses Ondaatje's representation of masculinity in The English Patient, demonstrating how the novel constructs a masculine identity through personal relationships instead of traditional cultural assumptions about masculine autonomy, isolation, and individuation.]
As Almásy, the English patient, slowly reveals his story in the pages of Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, he describes leaving his mortally injured lover hidden in a cave and walking out into the Libyan Desert to find help. In the course of his three-day trek he realizes that “There is God only in the desert. … Outside of this there was just trade and power, money and war. Financial and military despots...
[The entire page is 6035 words long]
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