Comparison Of Death In Bright Lights, Big City And The English Patient

“When we meet those we fall in love with, there is an aspect of our spirit that is historian, a bit of a pedant, who imagines or remembers a meeting when the other had passed by innocently” (Ondaatje 259). In Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City and Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient the characters seem to go through similar trials to get over Death. Death is a serious topic in which the authors choose to discuss in their novels. In both novels, the protagonists’ withdrawal from society after the loss of their significant other results in their alienation that time cannot heal.
Both characters, after the loss of their significant other, go through denial as part of their never ending healing process. The fact that both characters are
For both protagonists, time did not heal them. There is no reason to live because, “Everything [he] had loved or valued has been taken away from [him]” (Ondaatje 257). Almásy requests a lethal injection of morphine because he feels that he is dying. While the unnamed protagonist feels “It [is] funny, people are funny, everything’s so funny you could die laughing, you [cannot] breathe, you [cannot] even see” (McInerney 175). This character is supressing his emotions in laughter. It is one of the signs that the unnamed character in Bright Lights, Big City is losing his mind. The characters final fate leads them to being at their poorest and most vulnerable death. As a gun is pointed at him he says, “do it, Kip. I [do not] want to hear anymore” (Ondaatje 285). Almásy would rather die than live. There is nothing that can mend his broken heart so he would like to take a bullet to deal with his pain. The unnamed protagonist describes how he is feeling in his state of depression by saying “you consider violence and you consider reconciliation. But you are left with is a premonition of the way your life will fade behind you like a book you have read too quickly,” (McInerney 127). The character is feeling like his life is fading away and there is nothing that he can do about