Summary:
Analyzes The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Explores how each novel evokes the notion that Western culture places high values on the gaining of power, control, wealth, and status.
The two texts The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad challenge the ways of Western culture, their ways of thinking and their values. The English Patient brings together people of different cultural backgrounds who desire to evade the confinements of nationality and identity. Heart of Darkness enquires into the nature of colonialism, questioning the values of white civilisation, the wish for power, wealth and status which bring the innate human darkness to life.
The English Patient set during World War II brings the lives of the four protagonists together. The Hungarian Almasy, the Canadians Hana and Caravaggio and the Sikh Kip, all from different cultures, "each of them entered the villa from a different doorway," in a metaphoric way, meeting at one central point. The four characters cope with the war in different ways but it is also this that brings them together. In the villa the cluster of different cultures can be regarded as a personification of multiculturalism, representing their freedom and isolation from the war in which national identity is prized above all else, they are not bound by nationality and culture, they "became nationless," they did not "belong to anyone, to any nation."
The fact that the Almasy remembers everything but his name is symbolic to how he does not wish to be owned or labelled. The obsession with ownership and naming is a symbol of the values of colonial culture. Ondaatje makes recurring references to mapping and cartography which symbolises colonialism, the desire to name, own and fix identities as an essential strategy for incorporating subjects into the orbit of colonial power. Almasy sees this hunger for power and control to be the cause of the war and its complementary horrors. Hence he "came to hate nations," wishing to become like the desert that "could not be claimed or owned - it was a piece of cloth carried by winds, never held down by stones."
The characters in The English Patient look to loose their identity, leaving it in the horrors of the war, on the contrary Marlow looks into the darkness to find his own reality when he "steps over the threshold of the invisible," he sees the "chance to find yourself. Your own reality." The reality that Marlow sees after witnessing Kurtz's confrontation with death makes him question the behaviour of men, of all cultures and colours, and man's position in the universe. He comes to realise that all people were alike, the Africans were not different to the civilised westerner, "what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity - like yours."
Almasy's journey through the desert can be compared with Marlow's journey on the river in Heart of Darkness. Almasy's journey allows him to loose his identity, not be owned and Marlow's journey on the river leads him into darkness, "instead of going to the centre of a continent, I were about to set off to the centre of the earth," this is symbolic to how the centre of the earth is a place where light does not shine, a place of "impenetrable darkness." Marlow sees that the word ivory which "rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed," is what draws many white men toward Africa, worshipping it like a god "you would think they were praying to it." It is the lust for wealth and power that draws men to Africa and the same lust that feeds on their inner self opening a door to the capacity for human evil, "a darkness he had in his keeping." The hunger for power, wealth and control are what Ondaatje and Conrad convey to be the road to destruction of nations and of self.
Kurtz is a symbol of a highly sophisticated culture - a musician, a painter, a journalist, and a politician. His "burning noble words" contrasts to his postscript "exterminate all the brutes!" He represents the failure of white civilisation to put its ideals into practice, making Marlow question the nature of colonialism and the values of white civilisation. Kurtz is a personification of human darkness and destruction. His desire to kill for just a little ivory represents the innate devil of human lust for wealth and status. Kurtz is a "remarkable man" his more knowledgeable than others in the Congo, he understands better the temptations in the world and thus becomes "the heart of impenetrable darkness." Marlow remains loyal to Kurtz because of all the "wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity" he gains from stepping "over the threshold of the invisible" making Kurtz's destruction to be "an affirmation, a moral victory paid for by innumerable defeats, by abominable terrors, by abominable satisfactions," but also a victory.
Kurtz acts as a personification of self-destruction and the "heart of impenetrable darkness" in Heart of Darkness, while fire and explosion are symbols of a landscape of desolation caused by Western obsessions with power and control. The burnt patient represents fire's ability of destruction to humans and the evacuation of Naples, the possibility that "the city would dissolve in flames," demonstrates fires capacity of destruction on physical landscapes. The news of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, "like a burst map, the hurricane of heat withering bodies as it meets them," evokes a world of dystopia caused by Western civilisation's lust for power.
The novels evoke the notion that Western culture places high values on the gaining of power, control, wealth, and status. The English Patient makes continuous reference to colonial behaviours - the mapping and naming of places; this conveys the Western obsession of ownership through the labelling and claiming of lands. In Heart of Darkness Conrad questions the conventional ways of thinking, employing Marlow as a figure who after observing how darkness can devour human souls, understands that colonial superiority is only a myth, the barbaric Africans contain the same humanity as any other people. The values which the Western culture holds high are those that open the door to destruction, in both the physical landscape and the human
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