(Re-)Constructing an Alternative History in Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient

Abstract

This research on Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient explores the ideas of history and memories that are distorted and re-narrated in the novel in the light of postcolonialism and subaltern studies. The novelist overthrows the fictional image that is planted on the subaltern characters through Kip's political and racial awakening to resist to the colonial gaze, which the Western hegemony fixes upon the subaltern or the represented subject. (Re-)Constructing an alternative history for the subaltern by means of adding fictional elements into historical documents or by merging the past with the present, Ondaatje depicts a fictional world that is chained by both the histories of European wars and the broken memories of the four characters.