Critical comment about A passage to India
E. M. Forster was part of the intellectual Bloomsbury group, which
flourished in London just before and after World War I. Educated at
Cambridge, as were many of the group, Forster became one of Englands
leading novelists during the prewar Edwardian period. His Bloomsbury
friends included biographer Lytton Strachey, novelist Virginia Woolf, art
critic Clive Bell, painter Roger Fry, economist John Maynard Keynes, and
philosopher G. E. Moore. The group rejected convention and authority and
placed great faith in its own intellect and good taste.
Forster wrote several acclaimed novels between 1905 and 1910: Where
Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a
View (1908), and Howards End (1910). After a hiatus of fourteen years
came A Passage to India, the last work he published during his lifetime.
(The early novel Maurice was published posthumously in 1970.) He once
confessed that he did not understand post-World War I values and had
nothing more to say. A Passage to India, however, belies this statement, as
it remains relevant.
Forster took his title from the Walt Whitman poem by the same name, an
odd choice, since Whitmans vision is of the total unity of all people while in
Forsters novel the attempt to unite people fails at all levels. The book is
divided into three sections: Mosque, Cave, and Temple. These divisions
correspond to the three divisions of the Indian year: cool spring, hot
summer, and wet monsoon. Each section is dominated by its concomitant
weather. Each section also focuses on one of the three ethnic groups
involved: Muslim, Anglo-Indian, and Hindu. The Cave could also have been
called the Club. Just as the Mosque and the Temple are the Muslim and
Hindu shrines, so is the Club the true Anglo-Indian shrine. Forster knew
that religious-ethnic divisions control social modes of activity. The Muslims
are said to be emotional; the British said to rely on intellect. Only the
Hindus, in the person of Godbole, are said to have the capacity to love.
The novel, however, is much more than merely a social or political
commentary. Forster belittles social forms on all sides of the conflict and
favors neither the Indians nor the British. The bridge party, Fieldings tea
party, and Azizs cave party are all failures. More important than social
forms are the relationships among individuals. The novels theme is the
search for love and friendship. Forster presents primarily relationships
between men with the capacity for mutual understanding, and his male
characters are the most clearly defined. The womenMrs. Moore and
Adela Questedhave no real possibility of finding friendship across ethnic
lines. Mrs. Moore is too old, Adela too British. Both women want to see the
real India, but they are unprepared for it when the experience comes.
Mrs. Moore at the mosque and the first cave, and Adela at the cave and the
courtroom, discover the real India, and both suffer an almost catatonic
withdrawal.
The male characters are more complex. With his Muslim sensitivity, Aziz is
determined to find humiliation no matter what the experience. He tries to be
both physician and poethealer of body and soulbut he is inept in both
attempts. In the last section, readers see him abandoning both. Aziz needs
love and friendship, but ultimately he is incapable of establishing a
satisfying relationship among his own people, with the Hindus, or, more
important, with Fielding. Muslim sensitivity prevents him from accepting
friendship when it is offered.
Out of the multiple failures of the first two sections of the novel there is only
the relationship between Aziz and Fielding that holds any promise of
reconciliation. Muslim and Anglo-Indian, they meet in the final section in the
Hindu province. Both men desire friendship and understanding, but in the
final scene the very land seems to separate them. They are not in tune with
nature, which is renewing itself in the monsoon downpour, and neither man
has come to accept the irrational. They are not ready, in the Hindu sense of
love, to accept things as they are. Only Godbole, a Hindu, can fully accept
India and its people. The nothingness of the caves and the apparent chaos
of the people do not disturb Hindus.
The most crucial scene in A Passage to India is the visit to the Marabar
Caves. These caves puzzle and terrify both Muslims and Anglo-Indians and
form the center of the novel. Only Godbole understands them. The Hindus
had called India home before either the Muslims or the British. The caves
are elemental; they have been there from the beginnings of the earth. They
are not Hindu holy places, but Godbole can respect them without fear.
Cave worship is the cult of the female principle, the sacred womb, mother
earth. The Marabar Caves, both womb and grave, demand total effacing of
ego. The individual loses identity; whatever is said returns as Ommm, the
holy word.
The caves are terrifying and chaotic to those who rely on the intellect. The
trip itself emphasizes the chaos that is India. Godbole can eat no meat;
Aziz can eat no pork; the British must have their whisky and port. The
confusion of the departure epitomizes the confusion that pervades the
novel. Significantly, it is Godbole, the one person who might have helped,
who is left out. Once in the caves, the party encounters the Nothingness
that terrifies. Only Mrs. Moore seems to accept it on a limited scale, but the
caves have reduced her will to live. She retreats from the world of
experience. She came to India seeking peace; she finds it in death.
The conclusion of the novel emphasizes the chaos of India, but it also hints
at a pattern that the outsider, Muslim or British, cannot understand.
Drenched in water and religion, the last chapters portray the rebirth of the
god Shri Krishna. It is the recycling of the seasons, the rebirth and renewal
of the earth that signals the renewal of the Hindu religious cycle. Godbole
shows that humans may choose to accept and participate in the seeming
chaos, or they can fight against it. They must, however, be in tune with the
natural rhythms of the universe to receive true love and friendship. Neither
Fielding nor Aziz, products of Western civilization, can accept the confusion
without attempting to impose order. Although they move toward the
irrational in the course of the novel, they do not move far enough.