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Characters in The English Patient

Almásy

Almásy is the title character. He arrives under Hana's care burned beyond recognition. He has a face, but it is unrecognizable and his tags are not present. The only identification they have of him is that he told the Bedouins that he was English. Thus, they call him just the English Patient. Lacking any identification, Almásy serves a sort of blank canvas onto which the other characters project their wishes. Hana finds in him redemption for not being at her father's side when he died in a similar fashion without anyone to comfort him. Kip finds a friend. The irony in the tale arises in that Almásy is not, in fact, English. Rather, he is Hungarian by birth and has tried to erase all ties to countries throughout his desert explorations.

Because of his complete rejection of nationalism, many of Almásy's actions which would otherwise seem reprehensible are somewhat forgiven. To a man with no nation, it is not wrong to help a German spy across the desert. The German is simply another man. Almásy is portrayed in a sympathetic light. This is partly because Almásy tells his own story, but it is also because Almásy always adheres to his own moral code.

Almásy is also at the center of one of the novel's love stories. He is involved in an adulterous relationship with Katharine Clifton, which eventually leads to her death and the death of her husband, Geoffrey Clifton. Katharine is the figure who leads Almásy to sensuality. He falls in love with her voice as she reads Herodotus. Sensuality—in both the sexual and observational senses—is a major theme to the novel.

The character is loosely based on László Almásy, who was a well-known desert explorer in 1930s Egypt and who did help the German side in WWII; but he did not get burned or die in Italy, but survived the war and lived until 1951. Moreoever, he is believed to have been gay ^[1].

Hana

Hana is a twenty-year-old Canadian Army nurse. Hana is torn between her youth and her maturity. In a sense, she has lost her childhood too early. A good nurse, she learned quickly that she could not become emotionally attached to her patients. She calls them all "buddy", but immediately detaches from them once they are dead. Her lover, a Canadian officer, is killed. Hana comes to believe she is a curse whose friends inevitably die. Symbolic of her detachment and loss of childhood, she cuts off all of her hair and no longer looks in mirrors after three days of working as a nurse.

In contrast to this detachment, upon hearing of her father's death Hana has an emotional breakdown. She then puts all of her energy into caring for the English Patient. She washes his wounds and provides him with morphine. When the hospital is abandoned, Hana refuses to leave and instead stays with her patient. She sees Almásy as saintlike and with the "hipbones of Christ". She falls in love with the English Patient in a purely non-sexual way.

The character of Hana is entirely paradoxical. She is mature beyond her years, but she still clings to childlike practices. She plays hopscotch in the Villa and sees the patient as a noble hero who is suffering. She projects her own romanticized images onto the blank slate of the patient, forming a sort of fairytale existence for herself.

Kip

Kip is an Indian Sikh. Kip was trained to be a sapper by Lord Suffolk who also, essentially, made him a part of his family. Kip is, perhaps, the most conflicted character of the novel. His brother is an Indian nationalist and strongly anti-Western. By contrast, Kip willingly joined the British military, but he was met with reservations from his white colleagues. This causes Kip to become somewhat emotionally withdrawn.

The one place in England where Kip is completely and unreservedly accepted is the household of Lord Suffolk, the eccentric English nobleman who develops the practice of dismantling unexploded German bombs, a complicated and highly dangerous discipline - and who becomes Kip's mentor, friend and in effect surrogate father. Kip's emotional withdrawal becomes more pronounced when Lord Suffolk and his team are killed while attempting to dismantle a new type of bomb, which detonated. After this event, Kip decides to leave England and work as a sapper in Italy where he meets Hana. He and his partner hear her playing piano, and, as musical instruments were often wired, entered the villa to stop her. Kip's partner leaves the villa and dies so Kip stays on, setting up camp in the courtyard.

Kip and Hana become lovers and, through that, Kip begins to regain confidence and a sense of community. He feels welcomed by these westerners, and they all seem to form a group that disregards national origins.

They get together and celebrate Hana's twenty-first birthday, a symbol of their friendship and Kip's acceptance; however, shortly after, Kip hears news of America's dropping of the atom bomb on Japan. He comes to the conclusion that the West can never reconcile with the East, and that America would never have done something so horrific to a White population. So he leaves and never returns, though later in his life he often thinks of Hana.

Caravaggio

Caravaggio is a Canadian thief and long-time friend of Hana's father. His profession is legitimized by the war, as the allies needed people to steal important documents for them. Caravaggio arrives in the villa as "the man with bandaged hands". His German captors had cut off his thumbs. He, physically and mentally, can no longer steal, having "lost his nerve".

Hana remembers Caravaggio as a very human thief. He would always get distracted by the human element in a job. For instance, if an advent calendar was on the wrong day, he would fix it. She also has deep feelings of love for Caravaggio. It is debated if this love is romantic or simply familial, however Caravaggio does display a romantic love towards Hana in parts of the book.

Caravaggio is also addicted to morphine, as is Almásy. He uses this to get information out of Almásy.

Katharine Clifton

Katharine is the wife of Geoffrey Clifton. She has an affair with Almásy which her husband finds out about. She is Oxford educated. Almásy falls in love with her as she reads from Almásy's borrowed copy of The Histories around a campfire.

Katharine and Clifton met at Oxford. During the context of events told by The English Patient, she had been married to Geoffrey for only a year. The day after they get married, she and Geoffrey fly to the desert to join Almásy's expedition crew. Once the affair begins, she is torn by guilt and eventually breaks off the affair. After Geoffrey kills himself, and they are stuck in the desert, she admits she always loved Almásy.

Geoffrey Clifton

Katharine Clifton's husband. He joins Almásy's exploration group as another desert explorer, but is in fact on a secret mission of the British government (military intelligence) to make detailed maps of North Africa. The plane he "owns" is not a "wedding present," but Crown property. To perform his mission, he leaves his beautiful young wife in the desert with the real explorers. Everything else follows.

Geoffrey and Katharine Clifton were based Sir Robert Clayton East-Clayton, 9th Baronet of Marden, and 5th Baronet of Hall Place, Maidenhead, and his wife, Dorothy,^[2] both of whom were dead by the time the novel takes place. Sir Robert died of acute anterior poliomyelitis contracted during an actual 1932 expedition to the Gilf Kebir for which he hired Almásy and Pat Clayton (the basis for the character of Madox); Dorothy died in an airplane accident in 1933.