A Critical Study of Postmodern Ethnicity and Psyche in Michael Ondaatje’s the English Patient

Abstract

In this paper the researcher attempts to study about the postmodern ethnicity and psyche in the novel The English Patient. After exploring the status of World War II in the different debates that surround the concept of the ‘postmodernism’, the most obvious point is that even while the conflict was still underway, the second World War was identified as a crisis of modernity and also the loss of psyche. Since 1945, the scattering for survival and the killing process is often repeated. People started to hide their identity for survival after the second world war. After modernism the people started to problematize the problems. This novel The English Patient has the flavours of the interesting story line and suspicious past with some actual historical events. The novel also has the fragments of narratives, lives etc. Linda Hutcheon the postmodern theorist talks about the postmodern aspects like historiographic metafiction, self-reflective and intertextuality. This novel has the genre of Historiographic metafiction. The postmodern writings emphasis the earnestness of the historical records and they also allow us to think differently about the historical events. It relies heavily on parody of historical characters. This paper also studies about the most silenced character the English patient, so it comes under the positive postmodernism. In the postmodern aspect the researcher intends to find what made them to lose their identity, culture and why the characters suffered both physically and mentally. So, the post-world war period brings the changes in the San Girolamo villa of Italy which tells the most impactful story of the characters. According to the postmodernism it depends on the race, class, gender, and ethnicity what we consider as the proper knowledge.