Ondaatje Sparknotes

As Hana cares for the wounded soldiers, she witnesses gruesome injuries and horrific deaths, and these experiences are so traumatic that her personality is unable to recover fully. The omniscient narrator describes Hana’s work during the war as extremely disturbing and harrowing: “Nurses too became shell-shocked from the dying around them.... They would carry a severed arm down a hall, or swab at blood that never stopped, as if the wound were a well, and they began to believe in nothing, trusted noting. They broke” (41). Because Hana worked as a nurse during the war, she saw many of these horrific injuries, and she could not escape from the violence of the war. By stating that the nurses “broke,” Ondaatje implies that they are completely transformed
swab at blood that never stopped... believe[d] in nothing, trusted nothing.” The fact that there is no emotion in Ondaatje’s word choice in this passage implies that the nurses are so traumatized that they repress all emotions in order to continue their work. Furthermore, Hana reflects upon her own experience as a nurse and recalls telling patients, “Hello Buddy, good-bye Buddy. Caring was brief. There was a contract only until death” (51). With only a brief period for an emotional connection, Hana is deprived of meaningful relationships and forced to live through the loss of almost all of her patients. In conjunction with her gruesome work, her grief only adds to her emotional pain during the war. After the main fighting in Europe during World War II ends, and Hana only has to focus on caring for the English patient, Hana tells David Caravaggio, “I know death now... I know how to divert [the dying] from agony... Who the hell were we to be given this responsibility” (83-84). Even though Hana was able to help many men die in peace, she is left angry after the war because she did not feel ready or fit for the job of being a