On The Traumatic Narrative In Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient

The Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje’s novel The English Patient is a unique trauma narrative with its original narrative form and exquisite narrative skills.It is about horrifying experiences and unerasable traumatic memories characters had who got together temporarily in the postwar time in a bleak Italian villa.This thesis attempts to combine trauma theory with narratological approach to examine the narrative strategies the novel utilizes to delineate the various kinds of trauma the fictional characters suffered.By probing into the multiple narrative lines,illness narrative,the shifting of focalization and the fictional characters’ storytelling in the novel,this thesis aims to discover how these narrative strategies work together to create a panoramic view of a traumatic postwar world.Firstly,in order to answer how this trauma narrative is clearly-structured with seemingly disorderly narration,fragmentary plots and disjoint structure,the thesis focuses on the nonlinear narrative lines to illustrate the way incoherent stories about Almasy,Hana and Kip’s past and present life are juxtaposed,intersected and integrated into an organic whole.Secondly,guided by doctor-patient relationship between characters,the thesis investigates illness narrative underlying the novel to justify that the survivors’ disorderly narration and abnormal behaviors actually suggest the symptoms they had,symptoms relevant to Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.Thirdly,in the light of narrator-observer relationship between characters,the thesis analyzes the shift of internal narrative focalization and external narrative focalization to penetrate into the survivors’ inner world and the terrifying living condition.Finally,according to narrator-narratee relationship between characters,the thesis explores the ultimate meaning of the recurrent storytelling triggered by the listeners’ curiosity and some purpose,that is,the only way to relieve the trauma they had is to listen to others’ miserable stories and tell their painful stories to others.The narratological inquiry of the traumatic narrative The English Patient shows that the novel finds its peculiar structure and narrative strategies which match the traumatic characters’ traits and symptoms,whereby to put all narrative fragments into order and weave them into an elaborate literary work.And the original narrative techniques of the novel contributes a lot to the innovation of the narrative form in the trauma literature as a whole.