Michael Ondaantje's A Farewell To Arms

Michael Ondaantje, author of The English Patient, and author Ernest Hemingway, who wrote A Farewell to Arms take the readers on a whole new journey set in the tragic time of war filled with stories of love and pain and loyalty which all of these feelings play an important role in the characters' lives. The English Patient is the story of four mentally and physically injured characters living in an Italian monastery as World War II was coming to an end at the time. One by one, Ondaatje reveals the stories of their past and how they came to be. A Farewell to Arms is a heartbreaking love story between a driver and a nurse who fall in love and how they deal with being separated during war. Ondaatje and Hemingway use their different styles of writing to capture their readers and to take them back to life of the World War I and World War II. Both use different types of themes, symbols, and views on how their novels to reflect on
Almasy, who lived and traveled mostly in the desert, creates an alternate identity for himself. The desert is an identity because it is constantly changing, and identity can be seen the same way. People have learned that the desert is where empires rose and fell, but as time moves on, they are all forgotten, and all their traces are covered by sand. "We were German, English, Hungarian, African - all of us insignificant to them. Gradually we became nationless. I came to hate nations" (138). The desert taught Almasy to hate nations and made him see that people should not be identified by their nation or where they are from. He views the desert as a place where people could live, a place without borders or rules, free without any limitations. Through all the journeys he has taken, he finds himself realizing that one's beliefs is what makes up a person, not a name or a country. In this novel, the desert is shown to be as a place where there is no prejudice, and one's nationality is not