Unacknowledged Multiple Personality in “The English Patient” by Michael Ondaatje (post 3): Another character thinks: “Who is he speaking as now?”

I hope I’m not jumping to conclusions, since I still have about sixty pages to read in this 321-page novel, but I am surprised to find what appears to be a blatant revelation that the English patient has multiple personality:

Another character notes that the English patient sometimes speaks in the first person from Mr. Almásy’s point of view, but other times speaks in the third person as though Mr. Almásy were someone else.

Mr. Caravaggio, listening to the English patient, thinks: “Who is he speaking as now?” (1, p. 259).

Caravaggio “is still amazed at the clarity of discipline in the man, who speaks sometimes in the first person, sometimes in the third person, who still does not admit that he is Almásy.”

‘Who was talking, back then?” [Caravaggio asks Almásy, the so-called English patient].

‘ “Death means you are in the third person.” ’ [Almásy replies, cryptically] (1, pp. 262-263).

Why do most readers fail to see the above as depicting multiple personality? First, no narrator or character explicitly calls it “multiple personality.” Second, spurious alternate interpretations are provided: either that Almásy is speaking metaphorically as Death (since the extent of his severe burns will probably be fatal) or that he is in a delirious or delusional state caused by his burns and morphine.

Ultimately, the reason that most readers do not interpret The English Patient as depicting multiple personality, per se, is that the author probably did not think of it as depicting multiple personality.

1. Michael Ondaatje. The English Patient. London, Bloomsbury, 1992.