In Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, the lives of several characters, particularly Hana (a Canadian nurse), Count Laszlo de Almasy (the English patient), Kip (a Sikh bomb dismanteler), and Caravaggio (a thief by profession) are shaped by their involvement in World War II (Italy 1944), and act as a catalyst for the relationships that develop between them. The theme of love and war is quite strong throughout the novel and this is used to help mould the characters and present their connection to each other.
The novel actually contains two love stories - the sacred and the profane: one in the desperation of Italy at the end of World War II as Hana's devotion to the English patient reflects on a pure and worthy kind of love. Their story is even reinforced by their existence in a ruined palazzo surrounded by books and a nearby medieval village. The other in the decadent cauldron of 1930's Cairo where everything is profane, and yet the love story that sprouts up between Katherine and Almasy is irresistible - and it draws us into its tale of desire and destruction. The two love stories intersect in the body of the "English patient". .
The reader is faced with many questions that are influential towards it's themes. How the patient received his terrible injuries? How Katherine and Geoffrey Clifton lost their lives? what became of the maps created by the Expedition Team and whose contents have a significant role to play in the desert war? what happened to Caravaggio's hands to reduce him to a morphine addict intent on revenge? All these questions form the heart of the story in the desert; a tragic counterpoint to the healing relationships in the monastery.
Hana is a young nurse who has suffered a great deal in World War II. Late in the novel, she reflects that "There are those destroyed by unfairness and those who are not" (p.272). This idea can be related to the effects of the war on the characters such that all of them are in a terrible situation.
