Essays in part

Narrative point of view, no matter of which type, will ultimately shape and define a text. Narrative point of view (NPOV) contributes to portraying the attitudes and values of a society (both within a novel and within its context in a number of different ways. The English Patient, written by Michael Ondaatje and set in the 1940’s, is defined by both its external narrator and its multiple reflector characters. Ondaatje employs a number of different literary techniques alongside NPOV, all of which assist to portray the attitudes and values of a post-colonial society. The use of interetextuality, the interpolated tale or back-story, and defamiliarization are imperative in constructing the values, ideas and themes within the text, but it is the post modernist presentation of the traditional narrator, in juxtaposing the characters to the point of questioning reality, that is the foundation of The English Patient.
The English Patient contains an external narrator, one who ‘stands outside’ the world of the story. Essentially, the story, or core narrative within the text is told by the reflector characters – those not aware that they are the subject of narration, not telling the story but merely having their experiences reported. The use of the multiple reflector characters means the values and attitudes of each character are juxtaposed, meaning that the fundamental value system(s) of the time are questions. The conflicting societal values of those who had been colonized by the British, such as the Canadians and Indians, with the setting of the end of World War 2 and the change to post-colonization, cause certain cultural values to be stripped away, revealing those that are inherent to human nature.

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Representational strategies, otherwise known as narrative conventions, can be handed in such a way that readers can both understand and identify with what is foreign, unrealistic, unfamiliar or strange within a text. The English Patient, a fictional novel written by Michael Ondaatje, employs a number of these conventions, which are centred on the theory of cognitive estrangement. That is, a representational strategy that takes the familiar and puts it in a new setting where it takes on a new and strange meaning. This prescribes to the principle of defamiliarization, which forces the reader to recognize common things in an unfamiliar or strange way, in order to enhance perception of the familiar. Some examples of the themes, ideas and issues within the text are religion, relationships, identity and history, of which have exemplified through the representational strategies of narrative point of view, the interpolated tale, intertextuality, imagery and symbolism. The English Patient is a post-colonial novel written in a post modernist style. “Postmodern texts work through a process of denaturalization, simultaneously inscribing and subverting narrative conventions” (Linda Hutcheon). The juxtaposition of narrative point of view, imagery and symbolism creates a common ground to what may have originally appeared as foreign. In the words of Sassure, “meaning is a result of difference within a general system of language”. The English Patient takes the unfamiliar and clarifies it through representational strategies.