Whoa... I doubted in the beginning if I could finish reading this book on time, but I finally did... It was a hard fight with myself to finish it a day before the test. As I have always felt, I realized that I should be more planned before starting the book and read it everyday little by little.
The English patient, who is now discovered to be a Hungarian geographer Almasy, keeps telling the story about his lover, Katharine. After the disastrous event in the plane, Almasy brings Katharine to the cave and promises her that he will be back soon to rescue her. However, because of his mysterious identity, he is considered a spy for Germans and arrested for a few years. When he goes back to the cave, he finds the decaying body of his lover.
After listening to all puzzles of his story, Hana no longer romanticizes him as an English war hero who fought for the country. She is still responsible for taking care of him, but she does not feel respect and love she felt before. Unlike her imagination of him, Almasy is in fact a selfish person who cheated on another man's woman, and he actually helped Germans find ways in the desert. Furthermore, Hana's scar in her mind is eventually healed when she writes her stepmother, Clara, about the death of her father, Patrick, and her emotional suffering.
Significant change also comes to Kip. After he hears the news that the atomic bomb has been thrown to a Japanese city called Hiroshima by Americans, he becomes furious about the racist attitude of the Whites. He strongly believes that if Japan were the country of White people, Americans would never throw such powerful bomb to kill innocent citizens. He suddenly becomes suspicious about what benefit does his service for Britain bring. He starts to avoid white people, including Hana, and eventually leaves to go back to India. In India, he becomes a doctor and marries a woman and bears children. He occasionally thinks about Hana and still loves her, but he does not dare marrying her because she is Caucasian and he is Indian.
In the past reflection, I wrote that unlike other war novels, <The English Patient> deals with new kind of intimate relationship that only war can bring. Regardless of their physical conditions, nationalities, and races, main characters in the villa get along with each other very well. However, at the end of the book, most of them end the relationship, even though the reasons are all different. The only reason that I did not feel depressed while reading this novel was because of the warmth I could feel in the villa, but this intimacy ends suddenly, which makes me disappointed. However, in general, I enjoyed reading this book. If I re-read this a few years later, I think I will be able to grab more subtle and deep messages, because this book is full of them.
