acts of healing in the english patient

Grade saver has a great summary on this theme here it is

Healing vs. Denial

One of the more complex themes in The English Patient involves the extraordinary emotional baggage that the main characters bring to the start of the novel. When each character arrives at the Italian villa, it seems they are physically and/or emotionally wounded: Hana lost her father in an accident, Caravaggio lost his thumbs at the hands of the German army, Kip lost his mother and his surrogate father, and the English patient lost both the love of his life and his own body. Each character is given the chance to remember his or her story or speak it aloud, and it is the process of shedding light on the dark corners of their respective souls that seems to bring healing to each one of them. However, denial is a constantly threatening force: Hana refuses to admit the villa is unsafe, Kip has yet to come to terms with his race, and the English patient cannot even acknowledge his own name, because of its entanglement with a separate, politicized identity. The question of how much each character heals and how much each character denies is central to the novel.