Another research study over a famous literary work with MLA style

A REVIEW OF A PASSAGE TO INDIA

E.M Forster was born in 1879 and died in 1970. During his lifetime, he wrote novels, short stories and essays. He has the decoration of merit and is one of the most important representatives of the modernist motion in England  for he is one of the founders of the modern novel movement . The writer of novel, story, and essay, puts emphasis on the genres of realism, symbolism and modernism and handles the subjects of class division, gender and homosexuality. He is homosexual, though this does not uttered much. He also examines the class division and its hypocrisy since he holds the idea that the English traditions bear insularity and hypocrisy. His 4 of 6 novels are published before the World War I; Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey(1907), A Room With a View(1908), and Howards End(1910). During the World War I, after he worked as a civil servant in Egypt, he made trips to India two times in 1911and 1921. A Passage To India actually is a production of these trips written by E.M Forster in 1920s. Being chosen one of the hundred big masterpieces of the 20th century by the Modern Library, A Passage To India deals with the relations between the English and native population of India during the colonial period in which India was ruled by England at that times. It also wins the Prizes of Femina Vie Heureuse and James Tait Black Memoria. Bearing a lot of generalisation made by both Indians and English, this novel presents us the England’s unjust and unmerited power upon the 1920’s India, the impacts of the religion over the poeple’s life, the storied answer of the question that making a friendship between the orient and occident is impossible in that the dichotomy of coloniser and colonised prevents it and how the India reflect its reaction to English imperialism as a result of that prevention. That is why, it is welcomed with praise by the literary circles and the public for it’s approaching such an issue that deals with the history of humanity closely . However, altough his these successes, he doubts his authorship and productivity for some time. But it is a crystal clear fact that he is a productive literary critic in his time, writing for various periodicals, reflecting the important events he saw in his own period to his works successfully, giving a series of courses upon literature in Cambridge which is collected into a book afterwards in 1927.  In his novel of A Passage To India, it is all about the clash of culture and suffering from misunderstanding as well as the British occupation of India. The novel set in Chandrapore a city nearby Marabar caves. The story returns around four characters;Dr. Aziz, his British friend Mr. Cyril Fielding, Mrs. Moore and Miss Adela Quested. The author divided the story into three section and each part is connected to a specific season like the cold weather, hot weather and the rainy season  .The leading subjects are imperialism, racism, the  toxic and insecure relationship of the Orient and Occident, prejudgement and so on. The attitude of Victorian era middle English class to Indians is handled with a perfect irony. Forster also developed a criticism towards his own society; the classist and moral attitude of the Victorian era for England is portrayed as a racist institution which exploits the whole India. And we will be touching on the elements in which how imperialism is reflected and what kind of symbolisms are applied in the novel as well as the concepts of culture clash and friendship in the following sentences.

• Symbolisms in A Passage To India

To begin with, there are some pominent symbols used by the author to convey mesages to the reader. These obvious symbols that is reflected in the novel are like mosque, cave and temple all of which corresponds to the different seasons of the India. Cave amounts to the hot weather and Mosque signify the cold weather while temple denotes the monsoon rains of the India. The most multiple interpretable symbol in the novel is the Cave whose meaning is clear. It demonstrates the nature and alien images. In that period, the Marabar Caves is the oldest place in India. His using the caves as a symbolic meaning is to screen the oldest nature of India as well as the darkness part of humanity with the help of the echos of it. The echos of the caves make way for Ms. Moore to realize the darker sides of her spiruality while Adela confronts her realization in the Marabar Caves that she does not love Rony Heaslop at all with whom she is going to marry soon, ironically. As soon as she realize her fault of keeping a relationship that is expected to end with a marriage, she truly feel ashamed of herself, and this is the darkest part of her, supposedly. On the other hand, it also symbolize the evil, savagery, chaos, misunderstanding, conflict and ignorance as it is stated in a study guide for E. M. Forsters A Passage to India that the cave is isolated, non-significant and threatening.   The cave is dark, featureless, and menacing(Gale, 2017,p.89)  Therefore, the caves in A Passage To India may be explained in different positions.

Another usage of symbolism of the writer is the mosque which gives additional meaning to his work. For Aziz and Ms. Moore, mosque has a meaning of refuge and peace. As every each person may comprehend, it has a denotation of islamic place. With this image, a religious perspective takes its place in this postcolonial novel. When Ms. Moore gets bored with the English play that is held in Chandrapore club, she goes into the dilapidated mosque in the hope of reaching some spiritual relief for its being a place of sanctuary, That is the point that their way intersect. The first moment they realize each others existence, they shocked because it is a meeting of an English woman and a native, after all, the place that they are in is just a sacred place for moslims and her being there is the most unexpected thing. Immediately after, their prejudgement to one another appears. These two different originated person that set foot in this holy place for the same purpose; for innner catharsis, preconceives each other for they are not from the same race, not from the same religion. Moreover, one of whom is exploited, while another whom is the one who exploits. For the very reason, their first interaction consists of a sheer misjudgement and approach with caution. Upon reproving her for getting in a holy place and wearing her shoes inside, Dr. Aziz encounters her knowledge of Islamic religion and soft-shelled response with a genuine appreciation. Altough his reminding to her not to queer sanctity of the mosque by saying, “ you should not be here,this is a place for moslims and if you are to come here, you must take of your shoes first”  (Forster,2020,p.12), he realizes, in fact, she has the sense of respect for native customs and religions; she even removes her shoes and acknowledges God’s entity in there. Hereupon, it can be observed that their first impression to each other is a victim of the period’s ongoing conflict between the natives and white men. If they are to meet in a different context where there are not such rules and norms that expose one not to ignore the differences but consider, maybe their first-moment prejudgement would never happen as Ostrander says that few characters can ignore these minor differences and find common respects (Chapter 1-3). Indeed, they become real friends though, for Ms. Moore has an oriental mind naturally as it can be understood from Forster’s detailed depictions.

He also utilizes from the image of green bird sitting in the tree. When Adela and Rony agree to break off their engagement, they discern this bird, yet funnily enough, either of them cannot identify the bird positively. For her, it comes to mean that undefined quality of whole India: no sooner had she is of the opinion that she can fathom any aspect of India than the aspect she tought she get changes or vanishes which connotes the mess of country as a result of the intensity between the English and Indians and many other things that pertain to India. In their 1987 study the Brownes remark that the reason why India is a diffucult place to understand is that it’s being vast and having dense population, multiplicity of cultures, fields, hills, jungles, though sunlight and eventually monsoon rains which in its totality, creates a position of a hundred Indias(Browne& Browne, 1987,p.42).  Also as it can be observed from the novel, the English are addicted to sustain power forwhy they are so much into knowledge and unequivocalness; they appraise statements primarily based on the literal truth contrary to Indians who are more conscientious to the emotions and nuances behind the words. Namely, Indians appraise the emotion and intention behind an expression much more than the literal meaning. Indeed, we see Dr. Aziz’s tellings in the line of Forster as a quite epitome of that; do you remember the water that flows by our mosque? It goes down and fill this tank which is a capable occasion of the Emperors. They halt here to go down into Bengal. They fancy water. Regardless of the place they go, they constitute  fountains, gardens, hammams. I was about to tell Mr. Fielding that I would give anything to render service to them(Forster,2020,p.50). This passage which occurs at Fielding’s tea party in chapter VII, presents the reader a primary differentiation between both nation. Apparently he is wrong about the water, an Emperor and his descriptions. Upon this, Forster goes on with his third person narrator expression; Ronny would have scolded him, Turton wanted to scold him but stopped himself yet,Fielding did not even desire to scold him; he blunted his aspiring for oral truth and mind mainly truth of mood(Forster,2020,p.50). This passage which occurs at Fielding’s tea party in chapter VII, presents the reader a primary differentiation between both nation. The English do not understand much ascribing multimeanings to the words, however Mr. Fielding, as sensed in this quotation, is able to regard situations with their mood as well as their literality which demonstrates his acquisition of  cross-cultural attitude by interacting with Indians not only in his English way but also with local’s own standards.  Here, the green bird also includes the maladjustment of these English’s monomania of power, order and categorization.

Among his row of symbolisms, he has any other image, a wasp, to enrich his work of art as he wants to show his modernist attitude. According to the Indian religious tradition, everything is a representation of the holy Brahman to some extent, regardless of the discrimination of any living creature. Here, the wasp is an emblem of the concept of oneliness. Ostrander states in her notes of literature in cliffnotes that there is an ecumenical oneness that may be accessed among all people, however exists only in the natural world(Ostrander).  No matter that Ms. Moore does not know much about this philosophy, we can conclude, in fact, from her reaction to little wasp when it occupy her cloak that she is not stranger to this thought, even, we can interpret that she is consonant with this way of thinking; she has that openness to the Hindu notion of collectivity, to the mysticism and inexpressible quality of India by and large. Not disturbing it, she bears a moderate kindness addressing it as “pretty, dear”.

The scene of sky, also is another component color in his toile of symbolisms. It reveal itself nearly in every chapter that it is engraved in everyone’s memory who read the novel of A Passage To India. It gives an indication of the entity which enfold all the living creature that could be construed as prognostication of inclusiveness.

• The concept of Imperialism in a Paasage to India

In the sequel of these aforesaid row of symbolisms, another sensational issue that Forster presents us is the imperialism which is a prevalent regime of the countries whose economy are strong and developed and who want to sparge their political power as well over the less strong countries whom they can easily control them. Before we hit the concepts like power dominance or imperialism, one must have a proper understanding of what it is. In that connection, colonization and imperialism are two interrelated terms which have a great role in human history. They appear with the emergence of human civilizations with human’s desire for they want to be the rulers of different countries taking themselves to the pinnacle of societarian hierarchy. Fundamentally, colonialism is the modus of establishing and sustaining colonies by gaining political and economic power from another region. In this way, the colonists make a set of uneven relationships with colonised local people. Rather, colonialism is called imperialism when it is used to spread influence by using military force or other means to spread the power of one country to another. In other words, while colonialism can be defined as a practice, imperialism is the idea that derives from that practice. Throughout all the history of colonization, it can be seen that all the colonizers have adopted an attitude which they assume the colonized locals as they are in need of help that they are already ready to give. As the late 19th century poet J. Rudyard Kipling remarks in his famous poem of which encourage the US to annex the Philippine Island, in ‘The White Man’s Burden’ , he says in his first stanza that “Go send your sons to exile, to serve your captives’ need”(Kipling,Joseph Rudyard ) which means send your people to the territories that belong to the natives, in his saying, the captives and cater for their needs. As a poet of imperialism, Kipling exhort the American people to take up the venture of empire with the phrase of The White Man’s Burden which justifies that imperial conquest as a mission of civilisation. So, as is the case with A Passage To India, they, in another saying, the white men stick on so much this presumed fact that their only goal is to enlight them and bring them civilization. And this is mostly because they, the colonizers, have this fear of losing their authority against them if they can not certify that they are worthy to rule expressing loftiness over the local populace. So, in this novel upon which I write my analysis, the English people bear the role of that aforementioned stereotype of colonizer. They rule the Indians, force them to deem and acknowledge the mediocrity and ignominiousness of themselves and to obey their prosecutions that they implement upon them. In the wake of colonialism, Indian’s identity gets disconcerted, moreover, they adopt another identity that is stereotypical and fictional which does not belong to them, so as to take a room in anglo-Indians’ own cultural class. So much so that, they, the Indians are so assimilated in the wake of that aforementioned presumed attitude which colonizers wear that they actually remain silent to white men’s forceful power which means they accept and consent, having the opinion of that standing against them is pertain to the politics. They promote colonists in their daily life as a common native citizen, even they attribute themselves a servant role and feel inferior automatically, when they come face to face with any English men, though this turns into a sheer insurrection of the Indians at the end of the novel thanks to Dr. Aziz’s unfair trial against to the Westerners in the hope of gaining their freedom that is handed to on a silver platter so to speak, In this regard, their natural acquiescence toward this domination can be observed until the trial of Indian physician, as Said explains the reason why the “cultural domination is maintained” is the“Oriental consent”(1978).

To wrap up, A Passage To India is an appreciated novel of all times by not only literary communities but also the mass of literary readers inasmuch as its being critical, satiric and realisitic novel. Its dealing issues are many, from the different nations’ relationship to the mysticism, racism and imperialism. Given these points, A Passage to India focuses on the problem of integration between the colonialists and the locals, it also sheds light on racism, imperialism, culture clash and racial segregation manifested by the colonialists towards the Indians, with the symbolisms given to reader to digest them. It shows misunderstandings and misinterpretations between the colonialists and locals, the division between East and West. As a consequence, race is one of the biggest obstacles which can obstruct any possible interracial affair between the indigenous Indians and the ruling British community. Cyril Fielding transgresses the boundaries of his race and becomes a true and supportive friend of Dr. Aziz; however, this transgression fails when both Fielding and Aziz set apart, they give up to the grisly will of racism and decide to end their friendship; they swerve away thanks to the racist milieu which surrounds them.