The English Patient - Katharine's Poem

February 04, 2016 by David in Word

In one part of the movie, Katharine Clifton (played by Kristin Scott Thomas) and her love, Count Lazlo de Almasy (played by Ralph Fiennes), take refuge in a cave in the middle of the desert after a near death experience that leaves Katharine seriously inured. Because she is debilitated, the Count leaves Katharine to find help but ends up wandering the desert for days until being captured. Katharine realizes her fate and writes a letter, or as I read it, a poem.

These were her last words:

What it all boils down to...

November 12, 2014 by David in Word

"Humans are caught - in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too - in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There's no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well - or ill?"

- Excerpt from John Steinbeck's masterpiece East of Eden