Character Analysis
(Avoiding Spoilers)
Grew Up… in the interwar period in French Canada. Hana is still a young woman, but has done a great deal of growing up during the War. As an Ally nurse nearing the end of the war, she has surely seen some of the worst of what men can do to each other with guns, artillery, and bombs.
Living… with a critically burned patient who can’t remember his own name or history in an abandoned Italian village. The house Hana and her patient occupy has clearly been through a lot, and is partially exposed to the elements, though the spring weather and Mediterranean climate make for a comfortable situation, idyllic compared to what Hana and her burn victim have surely gone through earlier in the war.
Profession… nurse. Her nurturing and kind demeanor suits her to the work, especially now that she looks after a particularly unwell patient. Now as the war winds down she has elected to take special care of the man. Beyond administering shots of morphine, treating his skin, feeding him, and reading to him from Herodotus, Hana’s job is to help the man regain his memory. All she knows is that he’s English and that he can be quite funny from time to time.
Interests… caring for others. She likes to share and reach out to those in need. In her down time, she likes to play the piano (she plays Bach very well) and play hopscotch.
Relationship Status… cursed. When a visitor tells Hana she’s in love with her patient she responds. “I'm not in love with him. I'm in love with ghosts. So is he, he's in love with ghosts.” Hana believes she has a curse, which harms anyone close to her. Despite this, she starts a romance with Kip, a Sikh sapper in the British Army defusing bombs.
Challenge… keeping her patient alive and helping him rediscover his identity. After being denied a cigarette one day, the patient asks Hana why she’s so determined to keep him alive. She answers, “Because I’m a nurse.”
Personality… mature and jovial. She possesses the caring love of a mother, but also a number of girlish qualities. Hana likes to laugh and does so often. She’s seen some grim sights, but doesn’t allow it dampen her fullness of life.
Get to Know her in...
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In the 1930s, Count Almasy is a Hungarian map maker employed by the Royal Geographical Society to chart the vast expanses of the Sahara Desert along with several other prominent explorers. As World War II unfolds, Almasy enters into a world of love, betrayal, and politics.
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With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Hana, the exhausted nurse; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burned man who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal,and rescue illuminates this book like flashes of heat lightening.
From the Hardcover edition.
