Journal of Academic Research for Humanities (JARH) is a double-blind peer-review, Open Free Access, online Multidisciplinary Research Journal
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Vol. 4 No. 1 (2024)
The International "Journal of Academic Research for Humanities"

Review Articles

A Postcolonial Perspective of Alterity in Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient

Published 25-03-2024

  • Dr. Riaz Uddin
    • ,
  • Sahil Anwar

Dr. Riaz Uddin
Associate Professor, Government College of Management Sciences, Sangota, Swat, Pakistan

Sahil Anwar
Lecturer in English, Qurtaba University of Science & Technology Peshawar, Pakistan.

Abstract

This article examines alterity in Michael Ondaatje’s novel The English Patient (1992). It explores the themes of racial and cultural alterity, the binary of “Us” and “Them”, and the Orientals as “lamentably alien” from the postcolonial theory of Edward Said. Textual analysis, as a research method, is employed for the collection, analysis, and discussion of data. The three strategies of textual analysis, namely preparation, organizing, and reporting, are utilized to establish a nexus between the theory and data. Humans are a single commune. However, they are categorized into “Us” and “Them” by the leaders and intellectuals of world powers for their national interest. Racism has been proliferated by them. The study explores the racial and cultural alterity of Kip in different geographical locations in the novel. Besides, it endeavours to follow the failed journey of Kip’s assimilation into English society. Ondaatje (1992) investigates the impacts of World War II on a group of multicultural characters in a war-torn villa in Italy. The racial and cultural alterity of Kip is a means of amazement in England and Italy. Although he serves altruistically as a bomb disposal specialist during the war, he is treated as a foreigner Sikh. The study finds that the psyche of colonizers and white race is discriminatory towards brown races. They are treated as racially inferior. Since Japan had a brown race population, it was nuked by the United States. Contrariwise, Germany, a white race nation, was overpowered through conventional war.

Keywords

alterity, racism, discrimination, colonizers, inferiority

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