Man today, stripped of myth, stands famished among all his pasts and must dig frantically for roots, be it among the most remote antiquities. What does our great historical hunger signify, our clutching about us of countless other cultures, our consuming desire for knowledge, if not the loss of myth, of a mythic home, the mythic womb?

—Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy (137)

In an article on the elements of Arthurian romance in The English Patient, Bill Fledderus competently analyzes the parallels between Michael Ondaatje's novel and the themes and characters involved in the fabled quest for the holy grail. Although the “holiness” of the grail gives the retrieval process substantial religious significance, Fledderus concentrates on the ritualistic and ceremonial aspects of the quest, limiting direct discussion of Christian myth to a few relatively brief statements. While it is clear that elements of Arthurian romance exist in the novel, they function within a much larger religious framework that deserves close analysis. In order to comprehend the wealth of the “timeless or continually reinterpretable truths” (Fledderus 21) Ondaatje displays in his text, one must examine the meaningful panoply of Christian images that engage the reader and demand interpretation. Ondaatje's persistent allusiveness to the sacred myth produces a web of correlation in which his novel is exalted by appropriating the unique holy status of Christian imagery. The correlation is inevitably imperfect, however, and the resulting contrast between holy myth and impious action evolves into a subtly acerbic criticism of an increasingly debased, demythologized world.

In addition to explicit references to the Bible, Paradise Lost, and numerous Christian symbols, Ondaatje's characters adopt and exchange shifting mythical identities. The interaction of these identities and the collection of scattered images they contribute allows for the subtextual development of a narrative that culminates in an essential reenactment of the New Testament.

IN THE BEGINNING

A discussion of Christian imagery in The English Patient may easily turn into a work of encyclopaedic proportions. The wealth of explicit reference, intimation, and imagery evoked through the process of word or image association is overpowering and must be addressed. Any relegation of pertinent religious imagery will return to haunt the reader later in the story and detract from the fruitful reading it makes possible.

Ondaatje defines his idea of myth as being “biblical, surreal, brief, imagistic” (“O'Hagan's” [“O'Hagan's Rough-Edged Chronicle”] 25), and his treatment of Christian myth in The English Patient readily conforms to this definition. The first of the four elements mentioned is especially relevant in my analysis, since the Bible is the original source of all Christian imagery and a source from which Ondaatje steadily borrows.

Much of the novel's action, pieced together from Almásy's recollections at the Villa San Girolamo, takes place in a desert atmosphere. “We were desert Europeans” (135) says Almásy, as he dictates his group's journey in search of the lost oasis of Zerzura. Deserts, sandstorms, and treks with camels across miles of uncharted “fire and sand” (139) furnish Almásy's narrative as he recounts his experience; “It was a place of faith” (139). The desert was definitely “a place of faith” if one remembers the abundant desert imagery of the Old Testament. The Israelites refer to “the Lord that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, that led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and of pits, through a land of drought, and of the shadow of death, through a land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt” (Jer. 2:6).¹ Considering the theme of mapmaking and orientation in the novel, Isaiah 40:3 is especially relevant: “The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” The khamsin, one of the sandstorms listed by Almásy as “the ninth plague of Egypt” (16), is a reference to the plague of darkness as recorded in Exodus 10:21-29 (Alexander and Alexander 159). When Almásy lapses into third-person narration near the end of the novel, he refers to himself as being “lost in another Egypt” (245). When his burning plane crashes in the desert sands, members of a nomadic Bedouin tribe,² reminiscent of the children of Israel, administer healing oils that save his life. Hana is also linked with these desert nomads: “She herself preferred to be nomadic in the house with her pallet or hammock, sleeping sometimes in the English patient's room, sometimes in the hall, depending on temperature or wind or light” (13).

Ad de Vries refers to the desert as “the place to which the prophets return,” “the place of divine revelation,” and the place “to regain purity and ascetic spiritualism” (133). Almásy links himself with “one of those mad desert prophets” (251), and states: “I am a man who fasts until I see what I want” (258). In a particularly important scene, Almásy acknowledges that “there is God only in the desert” (250). This scene hearkens back to the beginning of the novel, where the Bedouin (or Hana—the scene is deliberately ambiguous) attempt to learn the identity of the burned man:

Who are you?

I don't know. You keep asking me.

You said you were English.

(5)

At the “backside of the desert” (Exod. 3:1), Moses has a similar encounter with God, whose voice emanates from a burning bush:

And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?

And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

(Exod. 3:13-14)

Viewed together, the two scenes have remarkable similarities, and Ondaatje's text resonates with significance in association with the mythical story, which contributes a sacred element to an otherwise Godless event. Ondaatje's implicit comparison of Moses, the deliverer of God's chosen people, with Almásy, a burn victim of uncertain origins, seems inexplicable, perhaps even bizarre. The implausibility of the connection is key to understanding its significance. The disparity between the mythical figure and the faceless, mythless man is symptomatic of what William C. Johnson Jr. calls “a language and culture infected by so much misplaced empiricism, agnosticism, and imaginative stagnation” (31). The mythological subtext illuminates a story—and by extension the social environment that influenced its creation—that is regrettably, but not necessarily, without a vital myth. Ondaatje's method of allowing his characters to adopt the characteristics of Christian mythological figures does more than lend them a temporary grandeur: it is a provocative statement concerning the loss of sacred origins and the diminishing potential of humanity to create or recover a dynamic, meaningful myth.

In addition to the specific desert scenes, Ondaatje echoes other elements of Christian myth from the Old Testament. The Villa San Girolamo is an Eden-like sanctuary, isolated from the horrors of the war that has mutilated the neighbouring countryside and continues to propagate destruction outside of Italy. In an interview, Ondaatje refers to the villa as “an Eden, an escape, a little cul-de-sac during the war. … Then with the news of other bombs, suddenly this became, perhaps, the last Eden” (“Interview” [“An Interview with Michael Ondaatje”] 252). In keeping with the Eden myth, the novel begins with Hana (Eve) standing up “in the garden” (3), and ends with Kip passing Caravaggio while leaving the villa: “halfway down the path to the gate, Caravaggio was waiting for him, carrying the gun. He didn't even lift it formally towards the motorbike when the boy slowed down, as Caravaggio walked into his path” (289). Compare a passage in Genesis when God expels Adam from Eden: “So he drove out the man: and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life” (4:24). Caravaggio adopts the role of the cherub and, substituting a rifle for the flaming sword, symbolically blocks the entrance to “the last Eden” following the completion of the atomic sin.

Associated with Eden, but not happening in the villa itself, is Almásy's identification of the guns for the Bedouin (20), which parallels Adam's naming of created things: “And out of the ground the Lord God formed every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof” (Gen. 2:19). Caravaggio strips himself naked (as were the innocent Adam and Eve) in order to retrieve the photographic film (37), and during this retrieval “his left hand waves to the ceiling of cherubs” (38) as if prophesying their symbolic kinship at the novel's conclusion. With his service binoculars, Kip views “a twig from the Tree of Good and Evil inserted into the mouth of the dead Adam” (70), and Almásy views Katherine “with the eye of Adam” (144).

Almásy's experience with the Bedouin evokes yet another Old Testament story. His travels into “villages … where there are no women” (21) leads to an apparently homoerotic encounter with a naked dancing boy: “there is a boy dancing, who in this light is the most desirable thing he has seen. … Then the fire is sanded over, its smoke withering around them” (22-23). The intimated idea of sexual transgression and the accompanying imagery awakens images of the “wicked cities” of Sodom and Gomorah: “[Abraham] looked toward Sodom and Gomorah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace” (Gen. 19:28). The aftermath of God's destruction is seen in miniature, with smoke rising from the extinguished fire reproducing the smouldering remains of the two destroyed cities.

Ondaatje continuously uses religious language to describe his characters' actions and appearances, effectively reinforcing the framework of biblical images he expands throughout the novel. Almásy is a “despairing saint” (3) who is “anointed” and placed on “an altar of hammock” (6). The Bedouin merchant doctor is “a baptist” (10), Caravaggio has “wings” (48), as does Kip (128), and Katherine has a “pale aureole” (158) on her arm, which, according to Webster's dictionary, may be defined “as a radiant light around the head or body of a representation of a sacred personage.” In addition, Katherine's “shroud” unfurls in the cockpit (175), and Caravaggio expresses his belief that “there is more to discover, to divine out of [Almásy's] body on the bed” (247; emphasis added). The entire novel is saturated with references to churches, monasteries, and nunneries (including the Villa San Girolamo), and chapter 8 is entitled “The Holy Forest.” Some of the many other visual allusions to the Bible, especially the New Testament, will be addressed later. The allusions satiate the reader's “melancholic or nostalgic longing for pre-apocalyptic stability,” a longing that Josef Pesch believes common in characters in postapocalyptic literature (119), by providing a cohesive clarity lacking in the novel's fragmented and ambiguous action. When Pesch asks “is it not that [Ondaatje's characters] need stories to confirm the coherence and significance of their apocalyptic experiences as antidote to complete nihilism and despair?” (Pesch 122), the same question may be asked equally of the reader. Ondaatje furnishes these needed mythological stories with a barrage of imagery and words concerning biblical scenes or characters that fall like a wave upon the unsuspecting reader, washing away any preconceptions and establishing a firm foundation in a mythologically Christian world.

IT WAS THE TIME OF THE WAR IN HEAVEN

The vivid image of Almásy's burning plane crashing in the desert gripped Ondaatje's imagination and acted as a catalyst for the writing of The English Patient (“Interview” 253-54). It also draws from a profound extrabiblical source of biblical imagery, John Milton's Paradise Lost. Milton's work, an extensive literary truncation and elaboration of Christian myth, is cited in Ondaatje's list of acknowledgements and preeminently supplements the Bible with its imagistic contributions to the novel.

Almásy's declaration that he “fell burning into the desert” (5) immediately recalls Milton's image of Satan “Hurld headlong flaming from th'Ethereal Skie / With hideous ruine and combustion down / To bottomless perdition …” (I.45-47). While Satan is not literally “burning” as he unwillingly descends into Hell, he soon experiences “… a fiery Deluge, fed / With ever-burning Sulphur unconsum'd” (I.68-69). To extend the metaphor, Almásy's desert is his Hell, and the Bedouin mimic Satan's fallen comrades. If one considers the fact that, according to Milton, the rebellious angels invented artillery (see PL [Paradise Lost] VI.482-91), Almásy's identification of the firearms (20) fits well with this metaphorical model. When Almásy adds that “it was the time of the war in heaven” (5), he evokes not only Revelations 12:7-9 but also Milton's extended treatment of the war in Heaven in Paradise Lost.

Milton's influence continues when Almásy catalogues and comments upon the different existing sandstorms (16-17) in a scene similar to Milton's extensive identification of demons (I.391-490). The Bedouin medicine man resembles “a wave of glass, an archangel” (9), such as Michael or Gabriel, who lead god's forces in the war in Heaven (VI.44-47, Milton's source being Rev. 12:7). In keeping with the Eden-like atmosphere of the Villa San Girolamo discussed above, Hana declares, “someday there would be a bower of limes, rooms of green light” (42), stimulating visions of Adam and Eve's “blissful Bower” with its “… odorous bushie shrub / Fenc'd up the verdant wall …” (IV.690, 696-97). “The Villa San Girolamo, built to protect inhabitants from the flesh of the devil” (42), is designed to be an Eden-like sanctuary, impregnable to evil. Its vulnerability is demonstrated, however, by Kip, who brings evil news with him when he announces the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (284). He infects the villa with his news just as easily as Satan enters Eden: “At one slight bound high over leap'd all bound / Of Hill or highest Wall, and sheer within / Lights on his feet …” (IV.181-83).

Within Eden, Satan continues his evil agenda by polluting Eve's dreams with his “inspiring venom,” “Assaying with his Devilish art to reach / The Organs of her Fancie, and with them forge / Illusions as he list, Phantasms and Dreams” (IV.804, 801-03). Hana relinquishes her role as Eve to Katherine as another parallel materializes. Katherine contemplates: “Who lays the crumbs of food that tempt you? Towards a person you never considered. A dream. Then later another series of dreams” (150). Satan (Almásy) infects Eve's (Katherine's) dreams. Katherine awakes frightened next to her husband (149) as Eve awakes “with startl'd eye” next to Adam (V.26). In a separate passage that includes a direct quote from Paradise Lost, Almásy understands himself and Katherine as mirroring Adam and Eve: “I see her still, always, with the eye of Adam” (144).

In a passage with uncanny precedence in Milton's work, Kip defuses an unexploded bomb in a Hell-like atmosphere: “Somehow, earlier on, surrounded by arc lights, and in his fury, he had withdrawn the sheared second fuze out of the booby-trap. In the sulphureous darkness under the bombing raid he witnessed the white-green flash the size of his hand” (198). The gloomy environment and sibilant language immediately arouse visions of Hell as described in Book I of Paradise Lost. Compare especially Milton's initial description:

At once as far as Angels kenn he views
The dismal Situation waste and wilde,
A Dungeon horrible, on all sides round
As one great Furnace flam'd, yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible
Serv'd onely to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery Deluge, fed
With ever-burning Sulphur unconsum'd.

(I.59-69)

The echoes of Paradise Lost in Ondaatje's novel, read and envisioned in conjunction with the Old Testament allusions discussed above, establish and maintain a Christian mythological atmosphere in which Ondaatje's characters exist and interact. In his biography of William Blake, a poet and artist who admired Milton and whose work is dominated by biblical motifs, Peter Ackroyd comments upon a particular illustrated poem: “he has deliberately modelled it upon the assembly of Satan and his legions in the second book of Paradise Lost. Thus he is able to give epic cadence and dignity to current events” (166). Ondaatje's inclusion of Christian and Miltonic elements in The English Patient performs a similar function: association with distinguished works of the past allows for an appropriation of part of their glory, an “epic cadence and dignity.” Similarly, an established continuity of imagery potentially secures for the more recent work a privileged position in the mind of the reader. Its ability to trigger treasured, recognizable images is a valuable quality, in addition to whatever social, political, or spiritual significance such allusions may have. His use of a mythology fully absorbed or immediately recognizable by most readers procures for his characters “brief, imagistic” bursts of significance, qualities that are difficult or impossible to create with any other means. But Ondaatje's system of myth is “imagistic,” not allegorical, and transient connections exist only long enough for the reader to notice their significance. After the connection is made, the character is free to borrow other mythological robes, allowing previous ones to accumulate and ceaselessly resonate in the reader's mind. It is these resonating flashes of myth that supply the material for Ondaatje's complex religious framework.

SINNERS IN A HOLY CITY

Characters in The English Patient are not passive recipients of religious dogma, nor are they mere automata playing roles in a grandiose biblical theatrical presentation. In addition to mirroring biblical myth, characters engage and question the myth's ideological basis in imagery that is often startling and confrontational. Religious images are depicted ambiguously or juxtaposed with negative images that cannot but sully the faith's pretensions of purity. Apart from its obvious practical function, the constant shift and change of mythical identity—in which a single character may become both saint and Satan in the space of a few pages—presents uncertainty that is symptomatic of internal struggle.

The most significant instance of negative presentation is when Hana constructs a scarecrow out of a crucifix: “She worked in the garden and orchard. She carried the six-foot crucifix from the bombed chapel and used it to build a scarecrow above her seedbed, hanging empty sardine cans from it which clattered and clanked whenever the wind lifted” (14). Peter Angeles describes the important role of the cross in the Christian faith: “The cross is an emblem of that on which Christ died and of the church he founded. The cross is the principal instrument of the Passion of Christ and is a sign of his suffering and laying down his life in sacrifice, by means of which humans have been given redemption and salvation” (66). Hana uses the holiest of Christian symbols to scare birds. “Empty sardine cans” stand in stark contrast to the rich ornamentation with which many churches and religious artists display the cross. The poignant, perhaps even sacrilegious relegation of the cross to the position of repellent or frightening totem violates the sanctity of the image and suggests a similar resistance in the mind of Hana. Hana's father's bizarre equation of a dog's paw and a cathedral (8) similarly denigrates the holiness of the latter. Dog paws and sardine cans fail to uphold the glory of God to say the least.

Hana articulates her frustration fed by the incongruity of faith and circumstance: “Who the hell were we to be given the responsibility, expected to be as wise as old priests, to know how to lead people towards something no one wanted and make them feel comfortable. I could never believe in all those services they have for the dead. Their vulgar rhetoric. How dare they! How dare they talk like that about a human being dying” (84). Hana questions the possible coexistence of a war in which she encounters men “with just bits of their bodies” (83), where nurses “carry a severed arm down a hall, or swab at blood that never stopped” (41), and a God who is all powerful and promises a glorious life to the faithful. Hana's horrific memories seem to erase the plausibility of religious faith. As a result, she becomes desensitized to emotional suffering and closed to the idea of its alleviation through religion.

The coupling of war with religion pervades The English Patient. The Villa San Girolamo was a nunnery prior to being demolished by bombs, and wounded men were often housed in monasteries or basilicas (51). “The cross hairs shook along the biblical figures …” as Kip views religious art through the scope of a rifle, in act that he “knew was outrageous in this sanctuary” (77). The “Holy Trinity” of Miss Morden, Fred Harts, and Lord Suffolk are “blown up” by a bomb they attempt to defuse (178), and Madox commits suicide during a church service that advocates war (240). Kip recalls “naive Catholic images” as he nervously awaits the outcome of a defusing mission that may destroy him (278). Almásy's oxymoronic reference to the Bedouin as “captors and saviours” (22) underscores the ambiguous state of religion in the novel: may a liberating saviour bind one as well? Is the liberation itself binding? The incongruous image of saviour as jailer is perplexing and irreconcilable within the traditional framework of Christian mythology.

In contradistinction to the sixth commandment—“thou shalt not kill” (Exod. 20:13)—war becomes intimately linked with religion in a manner that suggests a pattern of cause and effect. War follows religion. Religion follows war. Religion is war. All three relationships are intimated as the attributes of war and the attributes of religion become the attributes of both as a result of continual affiliation.

While war may pose difficult theodicial obstacles for Hana, and perhaps for the reader who absorbs all of the unholy juxtapositions, Almásy expresses his confrontational belief before the war begins: “When we parted for the last time, Madox used the old farewell. ‘May God make safety your companion.’ And I strode away from him saying, ‘There is no God.’ We were utterly unlike each other” (240-41). Almásy's declaration of atheism is an inappropriate response to a departing friend. In what seems a deliberate act of antagonism, he comments upon a Godless world and the idiocy of his companion for believing otherwise. Almásy's irreligious beliefs are noted earlier in the novel by Katherine, who comments upon his self-fashioned iconoclasm (173). Almásy once again appropriates the role of Satan, whose name literally means “adversary.” Accordingly, he is said to have been in a “zone of limbo between city and plateau” (246; emphasis added), a place that is, according to extrabiblical Catholicism, closer to Hell than earth.

A few pages later, Almásy modifies his belief: “there is God only in the desert, he wanted to acknowledge that now” (250). The amendment is made in the third person, as if Almásy wishes distance between his past and presents selves. He is a reluctant convert and admits his conversion only after recalling his necessary abandonment of Katherine in the Cave of Swimmers (249). In a time of extreme emotional stress, Almásy needs to believe for Katherine's sake: “it is important to die in holy places. That was one of the secrets of the desert” (260). As a result, his language becomes mystical as he contemplates the afterlife of his beloved: “a stone or found metal box or bone can become loved and turn eternal in a prayer. Such glory of this country she enters now and becomes part of” (261). The extreme nature of Almásy's religious conversion may be seen in his preparation of Katherine's body for death in a sort of primitive ritual: “herbs and stones and light and the ash of acacia to make her eternal. The body pressed against sacred colour” (260-61). Almásy's shift from professed atheism to primitive ritual is sudden and impassioned and fortified with conviction. The mounting climax of his life with Katherine is dotted with references to his own beliefs: “I do not believe I entered a cursed land, or that I was ensnared in a situation that was evil” (257); “I believe this. When we meet those we fall in love with, there is an aspect of our spirit that is historian” (259); “I have lived in the desert for years and I have come to believe such things” (259); “I believe in such cartography” (261). Almásy's multiple statements concerning his beliefs near the end of the novel are a subliminal declaration—“a concentration of hints” (8)—of his newfound faith.

The collection of images associated with religious doubt, frustration, or the explicit confrontation of religious ideology forms part of Ondaatje's religious framework in The English Patient. Although not always Christian, the characters' engagement of religious issues smoothly coalesces with the unending reproduction of Christian mythology and acts to highlight the issues in question. The characters' criticism of the novel's essential images and mythological motifs only serves to perpetuate their significance.

CITY OF LIGHT

In a study of Ondaatje's production of myth, George Elliott Clarke writes: “it is always in motion, either becoming clearer or fading into chaos. … It is free to be—and do—whatever it desires, rendering genres irrelevant. … Composed of fragments of myths, … myth appears in art as collage” (18-19). The English Patient itself may be read as a collage of mythological images, glimpsed briefly but often throughout the novel. The allusions to the Old Testament, Paradise Lost, and Christian symbols discussed earlier occur in quick sequence, as if in a motion picture. And like a motion picture, it is the gradual accumulation of images that renders the storyline intelligible. In order to create the collage, Ondaatje's characters adopt shifting mythological identities. All images that suggest significant biblical characters or events are read together, regardless of which character contributes the image. In this manner, Ondaatje efficiently collects “brief, imagistic” moments that reproduce significant events from the New Testament.

The first allusion occurs on the first page, when Hana “wets a washcloth and holding it above his ankles squeezes the water onto him” (3). Christ receives similar treatment from a female “sinner” who “stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment” (Luke 8:38). As if to underscore the similarity, Hana refers to her patient's “hipbones of Christ” (3). Christ himself engages in a similar act: “he poureth water into a basin, and began to wash the disciple's feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded” (John 13:5). Hana's use of water has obvious baptismal qualities that are echoed within the novel: the Bedouin merchant doctor is a “baptist” (10); Hana lies under a fountain when “suddenly there is a crash as the water arrives bursting around her” (92); “most of all she wished for a river she could swim in” (129). In a seemingly inexplicable movement, Hana pours milk over Kip—“over his brown hand and up his arm to his elbow” (123).

Events in the life of Christ are achronologically presented in miniature. Hana's references to her gardening (seeding and sowing) suggest Christ's parable of the sower (Matt. 13:3-8, Mark 4:3-8). Almásy's comments support this:

Your hands are getting rough, he said.

The weeds and thistles and digging.

Be careful. I warned you about the dangers.

(8; emphasis added)

Parables are stories intended to teach righteousness and warn about the dangers of deviation. Almásy notices “the rustle of things. Palms and bridles” (6) when he is carried through the desert by the Bedouin in a scene that parallels Christ's entry into Jerusalem: “and many spread their garments in the way: and others cut down [palm] branches off the trees, and strawed them in the way” (Mark 11:8). Also in this scene, the merchant doctor administers “the most potent healer of skin” (10) in a gesture that recalls Christ's miraculous healing of the leper (Luke 5:12-13). This happens during “the day of the eclipse” (6)—an event that also occurs when Christ is crucified (Matt. 27:45). The shift of characterization is especially evident in this scene, where Almásy is both Jesus and the leper, and where the Bedouin merchant doctor is both Jesus and “the baptist.” The temporary attributes of both men function to direct the reader's attention to the biblical mythology from which they are borrowed and thus lend significant authority to the actions.

When Hana pulls off the grey sheet that covers the piano, it becomes “a winding-cloth, a net of fish” (62). Christ is wrapped in a “clean linen cloth” following the crucifixion (Matt. 28:59), and fish are prevalent in many parts of the New Testament, including Christ's offer to his future apostles: “and he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. And they straightway left their nets and followed him” (Matt. 4:19-20). The symbol of the fish also comes to represent the Christian faith after the death of Christ.

Caravaggio becomes obsessed with learning the identity of the English patient, hoping to uncover a secret that will dissolve Hana's special bond with a man he calls “a corpse” and “a ghost” (45). His wish to betray Almásy's identity mirrors Judas Iscariot's willingness to betray the identity of Christ “for thirty pieces of silver” (Matt. 26:15). Unlike Christ, however, Almásy suffers no more by Caravaggio's revelation due to Hana's total indifference. (Hana subscribes to the Christ-like saying, “Tenderness towards the unknown and anonymous [is] a tenderness to the self” [49].) The theme of betrayal continues in the relationship of Katherine and Almásy. Almásy states that he is “not the only betrayer” when confronted with his “inhuman” behaviour, and he ponders the nature of their attachment: “what had our relationship been? A betrayal of those around us, or the desire of another life?” (238). Their mutual betrayal lies in their clandestine breakage of the seventh commandment: “thou shalt not commit adultery” (Exod. 20:14).

In a demonstration of how two seemingly unrelated scenes coalesce to create a significant image, Caravaggio and Hana contribute the matter of the Eucharist. When the English patient shouts after encountering the dog, “Caravaggio walked into the kitchen, tore off a section of bread and followed Hana up the stairs” (56; emphasis added). Hana supplies the remaining component with “the carafe of wine” procured from generous monks (58). Although the bread and wine are not consumed in a single image, the effect is unmistakable in a novel based firmly in a framework of Christian mythology.³ The eating of bread and drinking of wine are essential elements of the “last supper”:

And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup [wine], and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.

(Matt. 26:26-28)

Although Christ's declaration is to be read in purely symbolic terms, blood is literally consumed in the novel. Almásy states, “she once sucked blood from a cut on my hand as I had tasted and swallowed her menstrual blood” (170). The same moment is mentioned earlier: “she sees one tear and leans forward and licks it, taking it into her mouth. As she has taken the blood from his hand when he cut himself cooking for her. Blood. Tear. He feels everything is missing from his body” (157). Blood is suggested again with Almásy's “list of wounds” (153), which parallel the five wounds Christ receives on the cross.

The most fundamental belief of the Christian faith is of the Resurrection, Christ's rising from his tomb after his crucifixion. Christ's alleged triumph over death and possibility of eternal life is the cohesive of the Christian community and is vividly recounted in the New Testament. Ondaatje adopts the idea of the Resurrection and its concomitant imagery using a variety of methods and characters. The most direct representation involves Kip. Entering the villa and partially disrobing, he leans “against the corner of the vestibule like a spear” (221), in an action that in retrospect recalls the wound Christ receives on the cross from the spear-wielding soldier: “one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water” (John 19:34). Following this image of the disrobed, crucified Christ, Kip “climbed down into the well” and “closed the lid over himself” (221), resting in a darkness that directly parallels Christ's entombment. His brief residency is ended when “He came out of the well” (222)—a phrase that is uniquely detached from the rest of the text, as if to highlight its significance. Kip symbolically rises from the tomb. Considering the religious overtones of the novel, this depiction of Resurrection cannot be overlooked.

Kip's portrayal of Christ is continued, albeit achronologically, after his successful defusion of the Esau bomb: “He heard the pulley jerk and just held tight onto the leather straps still half attached around him. He began to feel his brown legs being pulled from the grip of the mud, removed like an ancient corpse out of a bog. His small feet rising out of the water. He emerged, lifted out of the pit into the sunlight, head and then torso” (215). Kip's mechanically aided elevation suggests the Ascension of Christ: “while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9). The time between the Resurrection and the Ascension is said to be forty days (Acts 1:3), which is also the name of a road Almásy travels with the Bedouin (10). Gregory Shaw writes:

In the Hellenistic world the ascent of a king, prophet, hero, or holy man to the heavens, the place of the gods, was a well-known motif signifying the divine status of the one who ascended. … Christ's ascension similarly demonstrated his divinity, but more importantly … signaled the beginning of a messianic kingdom and the empowerment of Christ's followers by virtue of their identification with him through the rite of baptism.

(61)

The “empowerment” of Christ's followers lies in the belief of a transcendent, eternal life granted as a reward for faithfulness. Almásy is referred to as Hana's “eternally dying man” (115) and “has the appearance of a still hawk swaddled in sheets. The coffin of a hawk” (116). The latter phrase evokes images of the Egyptian practice of mummifying birds in order to eternalize their souls. When Caravaggio repeatedly refers to Almásy as “the bird” (120, 122), however, other possibilities are presented. The Holy Spirit is represented in the form of a dove: “the heavens were opened unto [Christ], and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him” (Matt. 3:16). The reference to Almásy as an “eternally dying man” suggests the fabled phoenix, “a universal symbol of resurrection and immortality, of death and rebirth by fire. … It remains dead for three days … and rises again from its own ashes on the third day” (Cooper 129). Since Christ also rises from the tomb on the third day, and Almásy falls “burning into the desert” (5), the evocation of the phoenix is appropriate within this context. Almásy also seems to transcend his present situation, as Caravaggio frankly observes: “The Englishman left months ago, Hana, he's with the Bedouin or in some English garden with its phlox and shit. He probably can't even remember the woman he's circling around, trying to talk about. He doesn't know where the fuck he is” (122).

The culmination of Ondaatje's mythological journey is a representation of Revelation, “a fitting close to the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, for its final chapters depict the consummation toward which the whole biblical message of redemption is focused” (Metzger and Murphy 364NT). Kip acts as angel of the apocalypse and participates in dramatic scenes that foreshadow Armageddon: “as he lay there the mined bridge exploded and he was flung upwards and then down as part of the end of the world. … he swam up to the surface, parts of which were on fire” (60; emphasis added). Such imagery fills the book of Revelation: “lo, there was an earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; And the stars of heaven fell unto earth” (Rev. 6:12-13).

When Kip is flown into Naples with his fellow sappers to stabilize the “booby-trapped city” (274), he participates in an event that evokes the apocalyptic Day of Judgement: “walls will crumble around him or he will walk through a city of light” (280). The two alternatives echo the assignment of the damned and the faithful to their respective Hell and Heaven, with the dying earth replaced by “the holy city, the new Jerusalem” (Rev. 21:2). The heavenly Jerusalem is also the ultimate “city of light”: “and the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it … for the Lord God giveth them light” (Rev. 21:23-24, 22:5).

The sappers become “the city of twelve” (278), in a phrase that has important biblical precedence: “‘the twelve’ is an expression employed by all the Gospel writers, and once by Paul (1 Cor. 15.5) to denote an inner, more intimate circle of followers of Jesus” (Overman 783). Twelve is significant in both the Old and New Testaments and is especially evident in the description of the new Jerusalem. John writes of his vision: “[the city] had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel … and the wall of the city had twelve foundations and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb” (Rev. 21:12, 14).

Kip traces his way to a damaged church where he remembers seeing a scene that depicts “a bedroom where a woman is in conversation with an angel” (279)—an artistic representation with obvious allusions to Hana and the angelic Almásy. Kip recalls the moment: “darkness replaced the brief scene and he sat in a pew waiting, but there was to be no more revelation” (279; emphasis added).

In addition to the novel's two overt depictions of apocalypse—nuclear and biblical—another may be added: the apocalypse enacted by existing in a mythologically vacant society. In his role of the modern Christ, Kip appropriately leads the way to mythological salvation by being “literally blown … into the past, back into the tradition he came from” (Pesch 129). Ironically, the direction of true progress is backward: continuing forward into an increasingly apostate future would only ossify the mythological deficit of contemporary Western society.

It may seem odd that Kip, a faithful Sikh, is a harbinger of Christian apocalypse. Fledderus writes of the “novel's expansive religious vision that avoids specific traditional religious practices or theology in favour of a generalized spirituality” (36). While Kip does not adhere to the Christian faith and comments upon the “naive Catholic images” (278), he is fascinated with Christian religious artwork, is equated with Christ in passages discussed above, and feels comfortably attracted to statues of Christian holy figures (90). He has a profound experience during the Marine Festival of the Virgin Mary, but realizes semi-reluctantly in a sort of afterthought, “he had his own faith after all” (80). Christian affinities are also understood when Almásy offers him his Herodotus, his personal bible. Kip's reply, “we have a Holy Book too” (294), demonstrates his tolerance and understanding of Christian belief. Fledderus's idea of the novel's “expansive religious vision that avoids specific traditional religious practices or theology” is eclipsed by a pre-dominant Christian mythology that only hints at the existence of other practices.

The English Patient is a rich bible of Christian myth that prevalently displays its images in the actions and interactions of its characters. Ondaatje's method of alternating mythical identity allows the efficient construction of a panoramic religious framework with widespread mythical significance. The diffuse imagery enacted by all characters in distinct and shifting biblical and extra-biblical roles, ranging from the Old and New Testaments to Milton's literary reworking of them both in Paradise Lost, produces a unique modern novel, brimming with mythological significance. Read alongside the established myth of Western civilization, the actions of Ondaatje's characters are illuminated in a unique and meaningful manner, an achievement that may be potentially duplicated by replacing contemporary spiritual vacuity with the recognition of a sacred element. Ondaatje has created his own “new testament” (269) that will continue to resonate indefinitely.

Notes

1. This and all subsequent quotations from the Bible are taken from the Authorized King James version.

2. It is interesting to note that members of the Bedouin are responsible for unearthing the Dead Sea Scrolls, documents that have created controversy in the Christian community since their discovery in the Judean desert in 1946 or 1947 (see Dead Sea Scrolls 4).

3. Readers who have seen the film adaptations of both The English Patient and Nikos Kazantzaki's The Last Temptation of Christ may make further connections. Willem Dafoe, who portrays Christ in The Last Temptation of Christ, is cast as Caravaggio in The English Patient.

Works Cited

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Alexander, David, and Pat Alexander, eds. Eerdmans Handbook to the Bible. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992.

Angeles, Peter A. Dictionary of Christian Theology. San Francisco: Harper, 1985.

Clarke, George Elliott. “Michael Ondaatje and the Production of Myth.” Studies in Canadian Literature 16.1 (1991): 1-21.

Cooper, J. C. An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Traditional Symbols. Lancaster: Thames, 1978.

The Dead Sea Scrolls. Trans. Michael Wise, Martin Abegg Jr., and Edward Cook. New York: HarperCollins, 1996.

de Vries, Ad. Dictionary of Symbols and Imagery. London: North, 1974.

Fledderus, Bill. “‘The English Patient Reposed in His Bed like a [Fisher?] King’: Elements of Grail Romance in Ondaatje's The English Patient.” Studies in Canadian Literature 22.1 (1997): 19-54.

Johnson, William C., Jr. “On the Literary Uses of Myth.” The Power of Myth in Literature and Film: Selected Papers from the Second Annual Florida State University Conference on Literature and Film. Ed. Victor Carrabino. Tallahassee: U Presses of Florida, 1980. 24-34.

Metzger, Bruce M., and Michael D. Coogan, eds. The Oxford Companion to the Bible. New York: Oxford, 1993.

Metzger, Bruce M., and Roland E. Murphy, eds. The New Oxford Annotated Bible. New York: Oxford, 1991.

Milton, John. Paradise Lost. The Riverside Milton. Ed. Roy Flannagan. New York: Houghton, 1998. 297-710.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals. Trans. Francis Golffing. Garden City: Doubleday, 1956.

Ondaatje, Michael. The English Patient. Toronto: Vintage, 1992.

———. “O'Hagan's Rough-Edged Chronicle.” Canadian Literature 61 (1974): 1-25.

———. “An Interview with Michael Ondaatje.” With Eleanor Wachtel. Essays on Canadian Writing 53 (1994): 250-61.

Overman, J. Andrew. “The Twelve.” Metzger and Coogan 783.

Pesch, Josef. “Post-Apocalyptic War Histories: Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient.” ARIEL 28.2 (1997): 117-39.

Shaw, Gregory. “Ascension of Christ.” Metzger and Coogan 61-62.