A Passage to India: Themes, Motifs and Symbols. The
difficulty of English-Indian friendship. A
Passage to India begins
and ends by posing the question of whether it is possible for an
Englishman and an Indian to ever be friends, at least within the context
of British colonialism. Forster uses this question as a framework to
explore the general issue of Britain’s political control of India on a
more personal level, through the friendship between Aziz and Fielding.
At the beginning of the novel, Aziz is scornful of the English, wishing
only to consider them comically or ignore them completely. Yet the
intuitive connection Aziz feels with Mrs Moore in the mosque opens him
to the possibility of friendship with Fielding. Through the first half
of the novel, Fielding and Aziz represent a positive model of liberal
humanism: Forster suggests that British rule in India could be
successful and respectful if only English and Indians treated each other
as Fielding and Aziz treat each other as worthy individuals who connect
through frankness, intelligence and good will. Yet in the aftermath of
the novel’s climax Adela’s accusation that Aziz attempted to assault
her and her subsequent disavowal of this accusation at the trial, Aziz
and Fielding’s friendship falls apart. The strains on their
relationship are external in nature, as Aziz and Fielding both suffer
from the tendencies of their cultures. Aziz tends to let his imagination
run away with him and to let suspicion harden into a grudge. Fielding
suffers from an English literalism and rationalism that blind him to
Aziz’s true feelings and make Fielding too stilted to reach out to
Aziz through conversations or letters. Furthermore, their respective
Indian and English communities pull them apart through their mutual
stereotyping. As we see at the end of the novel, even the landscape of
India seems to oppress their friendship. Forster’s final vision of the
possibility of English-Indian friendship is a pessimistic one, yet it is
qualified by the possibility of friendship on English soil, or after the
liberation of India. As the Landscape itself seems to imply at the end
of the novel, such a friendship may be possible eventually, but “not
yet”. The
unity of all living things. Though
the main characters of A passage to India are generally Christian
or Muslim, Hinduism also plays a large thematic role in the novel. The
aspect of Hinduism with which Forster is particularly concerned is the
religion’s ideal of all living things, from the lowest to the highest,
united in love as one. This vision of the universe appears to offer
redemption to India through mysticism, as individual differences
disappear into a peaceful collectivity that does not recognise
hierarchies. Individual blame and intrigue is forgone in favour of
attention to higher, spiritual matters. Professor Godbole, the most
visible Hindu in the novel, is Forster’s mouthpiece for this idea of
the unity of all living things. Godbole alone remains aloof from the
drama of the plot, refraining from taking sides by recognising that all
are implicated tin the evil of Marabar. Mrs Moore also shows openness to
this aspect of Hinduism. Though she is a Christian, her experience of
India has made her dissatisfied with what she perceives as the smallness
of Christianity. Mrs Moore appears to feel a great sense of connection
with all living creatures, as evidenced by her respect for the wasp in
her bedroom. Yet,
through Mrs Moore, Forster also shows that the vision of oneness of all
living things can be terrifying. As we seen in Mrs Moore’s experience
with the echo that negates everything into “boum” in Marabar, such
openness provides unity but also makes all elements of the universe one
and the same, a realisation that, it
is implied, ultimately kills Mrs Moore. Godbole is not troubled
by the idea that negation is an inevitable result when all things come
together as one. Mrs Moore, however, loses interest in the world of
relationships after envisioning this lack of distinctions as a horror.
Moreover, though Forster generally endorses the Hindu idea of the
oneness of all living things, he also suggests that there may be
inherent problems with it. Even Godbole, for example, seems to recognise
that something , if only a stone, must be left out of the vision of
oneness if the vision is to cohere. This problem of exclusion is, in a
sense, merely another manifestation of the individual difference and
hierarchy that Hinduism promises to overcome. The
“muddle” of India. Forster
takes great care to strike a distinction between the ideas of
“muddle” and “mystery” in
a Passage to India. “Muddle”
has connotations of dangerous and disorienting disorder, whereas
“mystery” suggests a mystical, orderly plan by a spiritual force
that is greater than man. Fielding, who acts as Forster’s primary
mouthpiece in the novel, admits that India is a “muddle”, while
figures such as Mrs Moore and Godbole view India as a mystery. The
muddle that is India in the novel appears to work from the ground up:
the very landscape and architecture of the countryside is formless, and
the natural life of plants and animals defies identification. This
muddled quality to the environment is mirrored in the makeup of
India’s native population, which is mixed into a muddle of different
religious, ethnic, linguistic, and regional groups. The
muddle of India disorients Adela the most, indeed, the events at the
Marabar Caves that trouble her so much can be seen as a manifestation of
this muddle. By the end of the novel, we are still not sure what
actually has happened in the caves. Forster suggests that Adela’s
feelings about Ronny become externalised and muddled in the caves, and
that she suddenly experiences these feelings as something outside of
her. The muddle of India also affects Aziz and Fielding’s friendship,
as their good intentions are derailed by the chaos of cross-cultural
signals. Though
Forster is sympathetic to India and Indians in the novel, his
overwhelming depiction of India as a muddle matches the manner in which
many Western writers of his day treated the East in their works. The
negligence of British colonial government. Though
A Passage to India is in many ways a highly symbolic, or even
mystical, text, it also aims to be a realistic documentation of the
attitudes of British colonial officials in India. Forster spends large
sections of the novel characterising different typical attitudes the
English hold towards the Indians whom they control. Forster’s satire
is most harsh toward Englishwomen, whom the author depicts as
overwhelmingly racist, self-righteous, and viciously condescending to
the native population. Some of the Englishmen in the novel are as nasty
as the women, but Forster more often identifies Englishmen as men who,
though condescending and unable to relate to Indians on an individual
level, are largely well-meaning and invested in their jobs. For all
Forster’s criticism of the British manner of governing India, however,
he does not appear to question the right of the British Empire to rule
India. He suggests that the British would be well served by becoming
kinder and more sympathetic to the Indians with whom they live, gut he
does not suggest that the British should abandon India outright. Motifs. Motifs
are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help
to develop and inform the major themes of the text. The
echo. The
echo begins at the Marabar Caves: first Mrs Moore and then Adela hear
the echo and are haunted by it in the weeks to come. The sound of the
echo is “boum”, a sound
it returns regardless of what noise or utterance is originally made.
This negation of difference embodies the frightening flip side of the
seemingly positive Hindu vision of the oneness and unity of all living
things. If all people and things become the same thing, then no
distinction can be made between good and evil. No value system can exist.
The echo plagues Mrs Moore until her death, causing her to abandon her
beliefs and she ceases to care about human relationships. Adela, however,
ultimately escapes the echo by using its message of impersonality to
help her realise Aziz’s innocence. Eastern
and Western architecture. Forster
spends time detailing both Eastern and Western architecture in A
passage to India. Three architectural structures, though one is
naturally occurring, provide the outline for the book’s three sections,
“Mosque”, “Caves” and “Temple”.
Forster presents the aesthetics of Eastern and Western structures
as indicative of the differences of the respective cultures as a whole.
In India, architecture is confused and formless: interiors blend into
exterior gardens, earth and buildings compete with each other, and
structures appear unfinished or drab. As such, Indian architecture
mirrors the muddle of India itself and what Forster sees as the Indians’
characteristic inattention to form and logic. Occasionally, however,
Forster takes a positive view of Indian architecture. The mosque in Part
I and temple in Part III represent the promise of Indian openness,
mysticism, and friendship. Western architecture, meanwhile, is described
during Fielding’s stop in Venice on his way to England. Venice’s
structures, which Fielding sees as representative of Western
architecture in general, honour form and proportion and complement the
earth on which they are built. Fielding reads in this architecture the
sef-evident correctness of Western reason, an order that, he laments,
his Indian friends would not recognise or appreciate. Godbole’s
song. At
the end of Fielding’s tea party, Godbole sings for the English
visitors a Hindu song, in which a milkmaid pleads for God to come to her
or to her people. The song’s refrain of
“Come! Come!” recurs throughout A Passage to India,
mirroring the appeal for the entire country of salvation from something
greater than itself. After the song, Godbole admits that God never comes
to the milkmaid. The song greatly disheartens Mrs Moore, setting the
stage for her later spiritual apathy, her simultaneous awareness of a
spiritual presence and lack of confidence in spiritualism as a redeeming
force. Godbole seemingly intends his song as a message or lesson that
recognition of the potential existence of a God figure can bring the
world together and erode differences, after all, Godbole himself sings
the part of a young milkmaid. Forster uses the refrain of Godbole’s
song, “Come! Come!”, to
suggest that India’s redemption is yet to come. Symbols. Symbols
are objects, characters, figures, or colours used to represent abstract
ideas or concepts. The
Marabar Caves. The
Marabar Caves represent all that is alien about nature. The caves are
older than anything else on the earth and embody nothingness and
emptiness, a literal void in the earth. They defy both English and
Indians to act as guides to them, and their strange beauty and menace
unsettles visitors. The caves’ alien quality also has the power to
make visitors such as Mrs Moore and Adela, confront parts of themselves
or the universe that they have not previously recognised. The
all-reducing echo of the caves causes Mrs Moore to see the darker side
of her spirituality, a waning commitment to the world of relationships
and growing ambivalence about God. Adela confronts the shame and
embarrassment of her realisation that she and Ronny are not actually
attracted to each other, and that she might be attracted to no one. In
this sense, the caves both destroy meaning, in reducing all utterances
to the same sound, and expose or narrate the unspeakable, the aspects of
the universe that the caves’ visitors have not yet considered. The
Green Bird. Just
after Adela and Ronny agree for the first time, in Chapter VII, to break
off their engagement, they notice a green bird sitting in the tree above
them. Neither of them can positively identify the bird. For Adela, the
bird symbolises the unidentifiable quality of all of India: just when
she thinks she can understand any aspect of India, that aspect changes
or disappears. In this sense, the green bird symbolises the muddle of
India. In another capacity, the bird points to a different tension
between the English and Indians. The English are obsessed with knowledge,
literalness, and naming, and they use these tools as a means of gaining
and maintaining power. The Indians, in contrast, are more attentive to
nuance, undertone, and the emotions behind words. While the English
insist on labelling things, the Indians recognise that labels can blind
one to important details and differences. The unidentifiable green bird
suggests the incompatibility of the
English obsession with classification and order with the shifting
quality of India itself, the land is, in fact,
a “hundred Indias”
that defy labelling and understanding. The
Wasp. The
wasp appears several times in A
Passage to India, usually
in conjunction with the Hindu vision of the oneness of all living things.
The wasp is usually depicted as the lowest creature the Hindus
incorporate into their vision of universal unity. Mrs Moore is closely
associated with the wasp, as she finds one in her room and is gently
appreciative of it. Her peaceful regard for the wasp signifies her own
openness to the Hindu idea of collectivity, and to the mysticism and
indefinable quality of India in general. However, as the wasp is the
lowest creature that the Hindus visualise, it also represents the limits
of the Hindu vision. The vision is not a panacea, but merely a
possibility for unity and understanding in India. |