Seventh Reflection on THE ENGLISH PATIENT

"[Desert] could not be claimed or owned—it was a piece of cloth carried by winds, never held down by stones, and given a hundred shifting names long before Canterbury existed."

         The desert itself is presented as an integral element of the novel. Almasy, the English patient, is obsessed with the desert, where he can completely lose himself, and does not belong to any person or any nation. In his past, he is constantly seeking to immerse himself in something greater, something that is immortal, and he finally finds that in desert. It is also the only place where no one cares about the superficial concepts of nationality and identity, which he hates the most. Nevertheless, the desert is also where the plane crushes, where his lover, Katherine, dies, and where he is disfigure and disabled forever. It is a living entity that has the power to kill, to bury, and to alter lives.

I have never been to a desert and I would never want to go there. Merging all the information I have obtained from books, movies, and other people’s descriptions, I depict desert as a horrible place filled with nothing but sand. From my imagination, it is a place where no life would survive, except cactuses, due to the torrid heat and the dryness, which sucks away all the liquid in any living creatures. I thought that deserts must be drab as it is a lifeless land without any dialogues, laughter, or passions. To be more concise, I am afraid of deserts. To me, they are harsh, ruthless, and soulless.