Dissociating Traumatic Self : A Psychoanalytic Reading of Ondaatje’s The English Patient

Abstract

In Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, identity is reconstructed among four
characters who are avoiding many lost aspects of their previous lives in an Italian villa
during World War II. They need to escape the trauma created, their old identities,
names, bodies, and places to begin anew. The reconstruction of identity takes place,
regardless of the characters’ attempts to escape separate versions of their identities.
The novel is mostly about resisting the Eurocentric view of the world, focusing on
human relationships and human resilience. Eventually, after the bombs are dropped
on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the English patient is assumed by the reader to die in the
Italian villa. The surviving characters Kip, Hana