HOME | POLITICS | SPORTS | LIFE | SCI/TECH | OPEDS | HELPFUL TIPS
|
Feb. 27, 2007 A few weeks ago I was in the local library and in hurry .I needed something to read.I spotted the book "The English Patient " and thought 'why not ,I should have read this years ago ,in fact I didn't even see the movie.'I glanced at the back cover for endorsements.The Globe and Mail said it was OK and so did the Melbourne Post.Not really a first class endorsement but wait on; there was a Macleans Magazine plug saying something about it being a jewel, or some such thing, of Canadian literature.I became slightly suspicious '.Oh well ,'I thought, 'they did make a movie about it ,and it did win international acclaim so I guess it's OK.' I read it in a day or two so fast paced and beguiling is Michael Odantantje's style of writing.As I read I was trying to figure out the point getting progressively curiouser and curiouser.There was the steadfast nurse who had devoted her time to a single badly burned Englishman,there was the expatriate Italian of now of Canadian nationality in love with the nurse who had, unfortunately for him, been taken by the British Indian army engineer. The Indian guy is the only character with out a flaw.The Canadian Italian is a shallow callow ex thief.The English man is privileged ,spoiled and decadent.The nurse doesn't seem too bad of a person, although she is badly disturbed by the wounded she has treated all across WWII Italy . There is a lot of morphine around as they are in an abandoned hospital,the Englishman needing it for his burns,the Italian Canadian because he is a no good crook .The fact that he works for British Military intelligence suggests that the magnitude of his criminality has now been doubled. The point of the whole thing hit me as I neared the end.The Indian chap throws a rage on hearing of bombing of Hiroshima.He picks up a gun ,aims it at the English patient ,who by implication, because of his race and nationality, is guilty of incinerating thousands of Japanese while he is engaged in peacefully clearing unexploded bombs . So there you have it the tired old liberal cliche.All whites are bad.Inter racial sex(preferably between a dark male and white female )mitigates the original sin which all whites are born with.Drugs are all over the place and it is not any ones fault that people use them ,they are more the result of the terrible state of affairs in western society rather than any individual wrong doing.And oh yes, authority ,especially any thing to do with the police,is bad. It ends with a ray of hope as the nurse, now back in Canada, drops a spoon and stoops to catch it just as her former lover ,now in the Punjab, does the same.Get it ,get it,? the old European and American world ,due to its accumulation of evil over the centuries will give way to the coming brighter future where the developing world(including Canada )takes the lead and sweeps away the old civilization. A secondary point to be considered is the fact that Michael Odantantje is of Dutch extraction ,his people for years engaged in the planting of tea in Ceylon.As the English edged the Dutch out of their ancestral home he has no doubt inherited a rage ,the book a good way at venting it.
Do not a host of modern not so well reviewed authors,
use the same technique,and in fact is not this
technique also common in fiction magazines stories
adorning the shelves of
Barnes and Noble .There is usually a black and a white
person(usually poor)battling the evil rich white
establishment.In fact do not the democrats use a
similar technique ,professing to represent the
common man in the fight against the rich conservative
minority.Seems that those of small talent are ganging
up against the talented ,who is this case I suppose
must be the movers and the shakers of the western
world.
|
||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
