The Notion of Identity in Michael Ondaatje’s “The English Patient”

Abstract

This paper focuses on the notion of identity and its representation in fiction, in particular, in Michael Ondaatje’s “The English Patient.” “Identity” in its current, historically novel complex of meanings derives most of all from Erik Erikson’s works in the 1950s. Under the influence of postmodernism and debates over multiculturalism, the late 1980s and 1990s found historians, anthropologists, and most of all humanities scholars relying ever more heavily on “identity” as they explored the cultural politics of race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, citizenship, and other social categories. All these categories respond to different types of identity such as: personal (individual), national, cultural, ethnical, social and others.