SOURCE: Roxborough, David. “The Gospel of Almàsy: Christian Mythology in Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient.” Essays in Canadian Writing, no. 67 (spring 1999): 236-54.

In the following essay, Roxborough explicates the significance of Christian imagery and alternating mythical identities of the characters in The English Patient, tracing a narrative subtext that closely parallels elements of the New Testament.

Man today, stripped of myth, stands famished among all his pasts and must dig frantically for roots, be it among the most remote antiquities. What does our great historical hunger signify, our clutching about us of countless other cultures, our consuming desire for knowledge, if not the loss of myth, of a mythic home, the mythic womb?

—Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy (137)

In an article on the elements of Arthurian romance in The English Patient, Bill Fledderus competently analyzes the parallels between Michael Ondaatje's novel and the themes and characters involved in...