1992 Governor General's Awards Essays

  • Prose as Poetry in The English Patient

    627 Words  | 2 Pages

    Prose as Poetry in The English Patient "Never again will a single story be told as though it is only one." John Berger. The English Patient consists of the stories of its four characters told either by themselves or by Ondaatje. Two stories, the accounts of Kip's military service and the many-layered secrets of the patient, are developed while Hana's and Caravaggio's stories are less involved. However, none of these stories could stand alone. The clash of cultures and changing relationships between

  • Destruction through Imagery and Theme in The English Patient

    519 Words  | 2 Pages

    Destruction through Imagery and Theme in The English Patient The imagery in Michael Ondaatje's novel The English Patient serves to illustrate the theme of destruction in this novel. The setting of the novel as well as the characters themselves present to the reader a vivid picture of demolition. Critics also find that Ondaatje's imagery is a vital element in the presentation of this theme. The English Patient is set at the end of World War II in a war-ravaged Italian village. Ondaatje gives vivid

  • Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient

    968 Words  | 2 Pages

    Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient The limited character in Michael Ondaatje’s novel, The English Patient, was Almásy. Almásy was a man who was burned from head to toe, and whose identity is unrecognizable thus making him a limited character. The novel takes place in a villa where the man was being taken care of by Hana, a young nurse who stayed behind to take care of Almásy while the rest of the nurses escaped to a safer place to stay. She calls him the English patient because of his accent

  • Visual Imagery in The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje

    604 Words  | 2 Pages

    Every writer uses a different set of methods, known as the narrative mode, to portray the plot to the audience for individual reasons. In the first section of “The English Patient”, Michael Ondaatje uses his narrative mode in order to more effectively convey his message in an appealing way. One way he does this is by presenting the reader with visual images and vivid description that trigger their imagination. His use of visual imagery, description, and pronouns to present the settings, and to

  • A Year of Lesser and Miriam Toews’ A Complicated Kindness by David Bergen

    1697 Words  | 4 Pages

    Through David Bergen’s A Year of Lesser and Miriam Toews’ A Complicated Kindness, one can learn what salvation means to Mennonites. Protagonists Johnny Fehr and Nomi Nickel struggle with the concept of salvation through the novels and eventually, the question of salvation remains ambiguous. It is unclear at the conclusion of both novels whether the characters have achieved salvation and whether salvation itself is the key to a happy, fulfilled life. Authors Toews and Bergen are keenly and self-consciously

  • Literary Works of Margaret Atwood

    2118 Words  | 5 Pages

    Literary Works of Margaret Atwood Margaret Atwood is an acclaimed poet, novelist, and short story writer. With such a variety of works in different types of writing, it is difficult to grasp every aspect of Atwood's purpose of writing. A comparative analysis of Rape Fantasies reveals the Atwood's writing is varied in many ways yet soundly consistent especially when comparing a particular set of writing such as a group of her other short stories. Atwood's background plays a large part in her