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Necrophilia and Medical Euthanasia in Michael Ondaatjes The English Patient: An Illustrated Literary Analysis
James Metcalf*
Professor, George Mason University (MS: 5-B7), Fairfax Virginia
Abstract
Critical literary analysis of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient identifies death as a major part of both its theme and its setting. The English patient himself represents the interface between life and death. His fingers are burned and fused. His face is scarred and expressionless, and the remainder of his frame is wrapped in gauze like a mummy: he is death. Death also surrounds Hana, his nurse. Her baby and its father are dead, as is her own father and of course many of her patients. In a larger sense the villa itself is death, the remains of a time and culture now dead from war. Hana is a nurse among the dead and near dead. Euthanasia is routine…merciful enough, but premeditated murder nonetheless. Ondaatje presents such euthanasia as an ethical part of nursing practice. In Ondaatje’s novel, the past, the present, and the future intersect and entwine as they move toward death and beyond. Life and death are segments upon the same continuum. Necrophilia occurs upon that continuum as a post-mortem episode of a continuing passion.
