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ANALYZING SYMBOL AND ALLEGORY
“Published in 1924, considered one of the author’s finest works, the novel examines racism and colonialism as well aw the need to maintain both ties to the earth and a cerebral life of the imagination…It is picture of the clash between East and west, ruler and ruled, and of the prejudices and misunderstanding that foredoomed Britain’s “jewel in the crown.” A PASSAGE TO INDIA shows why many critics have called E. M. Forster “the finest writer of the twentieth century””
http://www.blackstoneeaudio.com/html/books/b1307.html
A Passage to India is full of symbols and allegories. You have to know them very well to understand this novel. The structures of A Passage to India are tree-fold; it is composed of three dominant metaphors: ‘Mosque’, ‘Caves’ and ‘Temple’. These three sections of the novel have their narrative as well as symbolic substances and meanings. Forster’s imagination has quite often been kindled by the concept of three-fold structural pattern. The artistic-spiritual journey toward India takes place though Mosque, Caves and Temple, which are places of worship or primal abodes. Caves are primal abodes because man in his primitive state lived in them. They are metaphors projecting religious and spiritual meanings.
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Mosque
The “Mosque” symbolizes Islam. E. M. Forster tells Muslim Indians, Kuran and other features of Islam. While he is telling he uses in a very good way. To understand this part you really have to know something about Islam. “The “Mosque’ sections open out the possibilities of friendship and affection between the Indians and English which is one of the principal themes of A Passage to India. It symbolizes the values of Islam, such as the equality of all men and universal brotherhood.”
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Bridge Party
Irony of ‘bridge’ between East and West. The stream of events only adds to the subtleties of the narrative structures of the novel and its deeper. As we all know very well ‘bridge’ has got two meaning. One is structure providing a way across the river. The second one is card-game. Both meaning of it is suitable. They play bridge in this party. And other meaning is they do this to be friend with Indian people. I mean it is used as a bridge between East and
West. But it fails.
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Caves
“Although many critics agree that the Marrabar Caves are the main symbol in A passage to India, interpretation of their function and meaning are widely diverse. The Caves seem to be symbolic of the principal theme of A Passage to India of the barrier between unity and separations of an essence, India and Anglo-India.” York’s Notes
‘Caves’ Suggests primeval darkness and negation resulting in a breakdown of human relationship.
What happen to Adela in this cave? Here is the answer:
“When Quested enters the cave, she is, or is not confronted by a shadow, which may have been guiding her. In her struggle to ovoid the union of male and female, conscious and unconscious, she loses her vision and, because she rejects the shadow the injuries she suffers (earns) are only skin-deep; her compatriots do not permit the cactus spines to enter her blood.” Reviewer: G B TALOVICH from Wluai, Taiwan, Roc February 18, 2000
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Temple
‘Temple’ signifies harmony and regeneration the transformation of wasteland into a green land, and changeover from alienation to affection.
A passage to India is basically a symbolical novel and its final meaning emerges out of a group of symbolic metaphors. The tree sections of the novel make one organic harmonious whole. While ‘Mosque’ symbolizes the values of Islam of unity and brotherhood of man, ‘Caves’ suggests primeval darkness and negation resulting in a breakdown of human relationships. ‘Temple’ signifies harmony and regeneration, the transformation of the wasteland into a green land, and a changeover from alienation to affection. The spiritual image in A Passage to India is presented through its three-fold simplistic structure.
“Forster’s A passage to India then, is an ovelof cosmic significant. His men and women, even animals and apparently inanimate objects, such as rocks, participate in this cosmic drama. The situation Forster presents is dramatic and the whole world the earth and the starts seem to participate in it. The first chapter, which is quite short, is itself a summary of the theme and symbolism of the whole novel”.
The language is abstract, formal, literal and also figurative. Figurative devices such as simile, metaphor, personification patterns of rhythm and sounds are used. Here is one example of rhythm:
“He is,was not, is not,was. He and Professor Godbole stood at opposite ends of the same strip of carpet.
‘Tukaram, Tukaram,
Thou art my father and mother and everybody.
Tukaram, Tukaram,
Thou art my father an mother and everybody…”
You may meet some parts like this, which are taken from holy books or old storybooks.
Here is another example:
“Adela thought of the young men and women who had come out before her P.-and –O.-ful after P.-and-O.-ful, and had been set down to the same food and the same ideas, and been snubbed in the same good-humored way until they kept to the accredited themes and began to snub others.”
As we see in this example the story full of reputation, sounds, descriptions. While you are reading the story you can image places and characters very well just because of perfect descriptions. Sometimes you met four or five pages descriptions. (You can see another pages some more example.) All sentences are very long, compound and complex. And also I believe that the person who wants to read this book has had to know religions.
FORSTER’S STYLE In A PASSAGE TO INDIA
Style is the form in which thought is expressed, the ‘manner’ distinguished from the matter. However, the thing said is not entirely independent of the manner of saying it. Each writer dresses his thought in his own way, and therefore style bears the stamp of his personality. Forster’s style in A Passage to India is elegant, urbane, rhythmic and fully attuned to the needs of his story and its subject.
Forster’s main objective in A Passage to India is obviously the expression of the interaction of two cultures, the Indian and Anglo Indian or British power. I t is primarily this confrontation or conflict of cultures and attitudes that he aims at projecting in a language appropriate to the occasion. In his earlier novels he had treated the theme of connecting the prose and the passion of life, but here in A Passage to India he deals with the difficulty of making the connection. The Indians dislike the English; so, too, do the English dislike Indians. However, people such as Fielding wish to break this barrier and desire to seek friendship. The primary aim of language is made means of expressing the lack of communication between individuals or groups o men.
Forster also aims at showing how Indians converse among themselves in English, what kind of idiom they use, and how it departs from the norms of the native speakers of English. Thirdly, he is intent upon highlighting the Anglo-Indian slang, the kind of language that the British used in India in the twenties:
‘Miss Quested, what name!’ remarked Mrs. Turton to her husband as they drove away. She had not taken to the new young lady, thinking her ungracious and cranky. She trusted that she hadn’t been brought out to marry nice little Heaslop, thought it looked like it. Her husband agreed with her in his heart, but he never spoke against an English woman if he could avoid doing so, and he only said that Miss Quested naturally made mistakes. He added: ‘India does wonders for the judgment, especially during the hot weather; it has even done wonders for Fielding.’ Mr. Turton closed her eyes at this name and remarked that Mr Fielding wasn’t pukka, and had better marry Miss Queested, for she wasn’t pukka. (p.26)
The use of Anglo-Indian slang term, ‘pukka’ reflects the British imperial attitude to life.
Forster presents Aziz’s arrival at Hamidullah’s in style, which adequately reflects their human relations:
‘Hmidullah, Hamidullah! Am I late?’ he cried.
‘Do not apologies,’ said his host. ‘You are always late.’
Kindly answer my question. Am I late? Has Mahmoud Ali eaten all the food? If so I go elsewhere. Mr. Mahmoud Ali eaten all the food?
‘Thank you, Dr Aziz, I am dying.’
‘Dying before you your dinner? Oh, poor Mahmoud Ali!’
Hamidullah here is actually dead. He passed away just as you rode up on your bike.’
‘Yes, that is so,’ said the other. ‘Imagine us both as addressing you from another and a happier world.’ (pp.7-8)