Verisimilitude in The English Patient Essay -- The English Patient

Verisimilitude in The English forbearing One critic has written, Ondaatje has always been fascinated by history - seen as a series of arcane stories about the past. In his hands, tear down the documents of history slide away from actual re ease upation toward a haunting apprehension of indeterminacy. (Barbour 207). In The English Patient Ondaatje blends fiction and history into a socially conscious story. Verisimiliude is the aspect of belivability present in a fabrication. Ondaatjes use of the element of verisimilitude accentuates important undercurrents and events which are zippy to understanding the novel. The English Patient is set in the Villa San Girolamo at the windup of World War II. The war has damaged the rests of the four main characters. The consideration of a war torn villa reflects the damage in their lives. All approximately the people are unexploded bombs. Ondaatje questioned Kips job of diffusing bombs carefuly. He gives hour by bit narration of the pr ocess of diffusing a live bomb. This careful detail and verisimilitude creates an air of tension and apprehension. Bombs were attached to taps, to the spines of set asides, they were drilled into harvest trees so an apple falling onto a lower branch would stir up the tree, lust as a hand gripping that branch would. He was unable to look at a room without seeing the possibilities of weapons there. (Ondaatje 75). The characters themselves are like walking bombs. They were all innocent before the war began save it devaststed them. They all must endure secret torments from their pasts. The emotional climax of the book is provided by another bomb - Hiroshima - which invokes one of our times most terrifying images of the murder of innocents. It is the final explosion that drives the fo... ...expedition in search of Zerzura. Michael Ondaatje did considerable amount of research for this book, which took him five years to complete. He shuffled through the archives of Londons Royal g eographical Society and read the journals of 1930s explorers. The results of this painstaking research is a novel with graphical and realistic detail. The description of the desert is the most potent detail. These vivid discriptions are the greatest contributers to the verisimilitude of the novel. He gives detailed descriptions of the many types of desert winds such as the africo, aajej, khamsin, and datooand the changing landscape of the dunes. Places such as Gilf Kebir, Zerzura, the Sudan, and Gebel Kissu are brought to life. The diachronic accuracy and events in The English Patient leads the reader to believe that even though this story never happened - it might have.