On daatje'sThe English Patient: Exposition of Irony in the Gap of Eurocentric History

Abstract

Michael Ondaatje'sThe English Patient strikingly examines the silences in the work of historical production rupturing the notion of "official" history on the casualties of World Wars and provides an alternative way of unconventional history to expose the reality of pseudo Eurocentric history. The central character, Count Ladislous de Almasy, represents the European (supposed to be English but really Hungarian) desert explorer in Africa, Egypt and Arabia with the secret view of colonizing as a truth. The novel examines the effects of the Second World War and events of 1942 on the human psyche, and suggests how human beings have always searched for the silver lining despite the devastation and devaluation of values. The fall of Almasy represents that of colonization ironized by decolonization unmasking the reality of history against the tendency of western cosmopolitan authority.