Kip

    Among the four main characters in the novel, I want to talk about Kip, an Indian "sapper" in British, and works in demining and bomb defusion. He is a really conflicted and complicated person compared to other characters. Though his brother holds deep resentment toward the West, he is willing to serve in the British army.  

    Kip is trained as a bomb defuser under Lord Suffolk, a true English gentleman, and is then virtually welcomed into this English family. Living in the unit with Suffolk, he begins to love the English and their ways. He starts to adopt Western customs and culture. Nonetheless, he feels uncomfortable with the respect his skill earned him among the ranks of men. Because of his race, he was used to being anonymous and invisible in England, and he was comfortable with that.  It is self- contradictory that he is happy about being a part of the English family but still prefers to be invisible. Maybe that is something called racial barriers—no matter how nicely people treat you, you just feel somewhat awkward. Personally, I can totally understand his feeling. When my homestay brought me to her family party, the whole family was very enthusiastic to me, but I just wanted to disappear. They were talking about something I don’t know and I felt like that I didn’t belong to the party, though I knew what I was thinking probably not right.

     In the villa, Kip risks his life to defuse bombs every day, but meanwhile, he is confused about the killing among people and countries. He always thinks of Suffolk, and realize what a terrible weight rests on him. Later, he falls in love with Hana

There is an scene near the end of the book impressing me a lot: when Kip hears on the radio of the atomic bomb that the United States has dropped on Japan. He becomes enraged, knowing that a western country would never commit such an atrocity against another white country. He takes his gun and threatens to kill the English patient, whom he sees as a symbol of the West. Kip does not kill Almasy, but takes off on his motorcycle, leaving the villa forever. Every time, just when he thinks he has been accepted by the west world, something will remind him that an inescapable part of each of the characters. I feel sorry and confused that he gives up the relationship with Hana, though later in his life he often thinks of Hana.