Geoffrey Clifton Character Analysis in The English Patient

Katharine Clifton’s husband. Geoffrey is an Englishman who joins the English patient’s desert exploration team as a pilot, but he is actually a member of British Intelligence sent to take aerial pictures of the North African desert, which is expected to soon become a theater of World War II. Geoffrey discovers Katharine and the English patient’s affair long after it is over, and just as Katharine suspects, Geoffrey “goes mad.” Geoffrey flies to the Gilf Kebir to pick the English patient up from base camp and attempts to crash his plane into the English patient in a poorly-executed murder-suicide. When the English patient, who is unharmed, runs to the wrecked plane, he finds Geoffrey dead, and Katharine, the passenger, badly wounded. British Intelligence finds Geoffrey’s body in 1936 and are convinced that the English patient—who they know as László Almásy, a Hungarian explorer—has killed Geoffrey because of Almásy’s own affair with Katharine.

Geoffrey Clifton Quotes in The English Patient

The The English Patient quotes below are all either spoken by Geoffrey Clifton or refer to Geoffrey Clifton. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

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She picks up a cushion and places it onto her lap as a shield against him. “If you make love to me I won’t lie about it. If I make love to you I won’t lie about it.”

She moves the cushion against her heart, as if she would suffocate that part of herself which has broken free.

“What do you hate most?” he asks.

“A lie. And you?”

“Ownership,” he says. “When you leave me, forget me.”

Her fist swings towards him and hits hard into the bone just below his eye. She dresses and leaves.

Related Characters: The English Patient/László Almásy (speaker), Katharine Clifton (speaker), Geoffrey Clifton

Page Number and Citation: 152

Explanation and Analysis: