There are people bustling, merchants selling, Anglo-Indians watching, and birds flying overhead. How many perspectives are there in this one snippet of life? They are uncountable, and that is the reality. Modernist writers strive to emulate this type of reality into their own work as well. In such novels, there is a tendency to lack a chronological or even logical narrative and there are also frequent breaks in narratives where the perspectives jump from one to another without warning. Because there are many points of view and not all of them are explained, therefore, modernist novels often tend to have narrative perspectives that suddenly shift or cause confusion. This is because modernism has always been an experimental form of literature that lacks a traditional narrative or a set, rigid structure. Therefore, E. M. Forster, author of A Passage to India, uses such techniques to portray the true nature of reality. The conflict between Adela, a young British girl, and Aziz, an Indian doctor, at the Marabar Caves is one that implements multiple modernist ideals and is placed in British-India. In this novel, Forster shows the relations and tension between the British and the Indians through a series of events that were all caused by the confusing effects of modernism. E.M. Forster implements such literary techniques to express the importance or insignificance of a situation and to emphasize an impression of realism and enigma in Chandrapore, India, in which Forster’s novel, A Passage to India, takes place.
Forster has a tendency to suddenly switch narratives from one point of view to another, contrasting point of view. This emphasizes another modernist outlook that suggests that there is not only one truth and rather that there a...
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...e refuses to come… I say to Him, Come, and come, come, come, come, come. He neglects to come”. (84) The meaning is never understood because the narration does not explain it or its significance, and as a result, the muddle of India is further enforced.
Therefore, much of the modernist views on India being a muddle, realistic truths, and the fact that there are multiple truths are all enforced by the narrative techniques used that E.M. Forster uses. Many of the modernist techniques that are frequently used by modernist writers work in collaboration with the manipulation of narration. In A Passage to India, most of the modernist views are reinforced by the narration shifts, multiple truths, and confusing narration or dialogue. By doing this, Forster escapes the traditional, strict forms of writing and is able to explore a new and modern literature fit for his time.
Stone, Wilfred. The Cave and the Mountain: A Study of E.M. Forster. London: Oxford University Press, 1966.
Forster’s contrasting descriptions begin as early as the introductory scene when Lucy and Charlotte arrive and are seated at the dinner table of the Bertolini Pension
The art, literature, and poetry of the early 20th century called for a disruption of social values. Modernism became the vague term to describe the shift. The characteristics of the term Modernism, all seek to free the restricted human spirit. It had no trust in the moral conventions and codes of the past. One of the examples of modernism, that breaks the conventions and traditions of literature prior to Modernism, is Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Hills Like White Elephants”. The short story uses plot, symbolism, setting, dialogue, and a new style of writing to allow human spirit to experiment with meaning and interpretation.
In British imperial fiction, physical setting or landscape commonly plays a prominent role in the central thematic subject. In these works, landscape goes beyond an objective description of nature and setting to represent “a way of seeing- a way in which some Europeans have represented to themselves and others the world about them and their relationships with it, and through which they have commented on social relations” (Cosgrove xiv). By investigating the ways in which writers of colonial ficition, such as H. Rider Haggard and E.M. Forester, have used landscape, we see that landscape represents a historically and culturally specific way of experiencing the world. In Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines, the landscape is gendered to show the colonizer’s ability to dominate over native territory. However, while the scenario of the male colonizer conquering a feminized landscape reinforces a legitimizing myth of colonization, it is later overturned by Forester’s A Passage to India. In this novel, the landscape takes on a complex, multifaceted role, articulating the ambivalence of cross-cultural relationships and exposing the fragility of colonial rule. In contrast to King Solomon’s Mines, A Passage to India uses landscape as a tool to expose the problematic nature of colonial interaction that might have easily been left obscured and unacknowledged. We can read the landscape as a type of secondary narrator in A Passage to India that articulates the novel’s imperial ideology.
Yes, I agree with EM Forster that A Passage to India is not a political novel. Instead, it explores the vastness of infinity and seems (at first) to portray nothing. In those two words alone, `infinity', and `nothing', is the allusion of wondering, and wandering spirits. The title, A Passage to India, evokes a sense of journey and destination. When we string these two ideas together the novel begins to reveal itself as a garland worn in humble tribute to India. With this garland around his neck, Forster also pays homage to the Shri Krishna consciuousness as expressed through the Hindu religion. The clumsy attempts of the two great religions of Christianity and Islam to understand India represent forster's own efforts, and the journey he makes to India is tracked throughout the novel.
The modernist narrative developed through a mutual abhorrence of the Victorian Era’s fiction. Lawrence specifically objected the “mechanical and artificial,” (2481) that invaded the books of the past, while Woolf argued that the books of the past were written about “unimportant things” (2151). Woolf’s “Modern Fiction” argues that although the stories of the past are “so well constructed and solid in its craftsmanship,” (2151) there is no life in it, and it does not make the reader “quiver from the tremulation of the ether,” (2509), as Lawrence would put it. Woolf argued that the writers of the past spent far too much effort sorting out details and tying up all loose ends, which inadvertently sucked the life out of the novel. According to Woolf, however, the writer is not altogether responsible; rather, the writer is a “slave” who “[writes] what he must… and [bases] his work upon… co...
Rabindranath Tagore , although primarily a poet, had written many short stories that are simple yet powerful in delivering the philosophy that Tagore himself holds firm to. Tagore’s short stories usually begins suddenly, and develops around some trivial and ordinary incident or situation that ends with a twist when the readers’ interest about the story is almost heightened, or simply ends, as it should end, leaving readers provoked. The way Tagore presents life as vignettes and not in its totality or as a whole is enough to show the humanity in the characters. Tagore believes in humanity and champions this beyond race, colour, caste or gender in his short stories. In this essay, three of his short stories will be used to dissect how Tagore champions humanity beyond race, colour, caste or gender and the short stories are Kabuliwala, The Postmaster and Ruined Nest.
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster Upon a most rudimentary evaluation, A Passage to India is simply a story, a tale of two countries through which we follow a handful of central characters. As readers, we watch as these characters travel from England to India, into mosques and temples and through caves. We are given a window through which to view their interactions and whereabouts. It is undeniable that A Passage to India tells a story, however; to say that telling a story is all Forster does in A Passage to India seems to attenuate the accomplishment of his novel. The appeal of A Passage to India, the life of the novel, lies not in its story, but in the way Forster uses language to persuade readers to broaden their outlooks and to see that those who we may consider less intelligent or sophisticated than we, are, at heart, not so different, and the boundaries which we see as separating us are not as distinct as we would like to imagine. Forster uses his novel to suggest that much like the way any two sounds, no matter how different, brought before a hollow cave, will produce identical echoes, examined on their own, apart from the cultures which have come to define them, any two seemingly different people, no matter how superficially different they are, are at core, one and the same.
		Many critics are split on E. M. Forster's writings, although most things written are positive and they all seem to agree on the same things. His use of characters and their development and his story lines all seem to be the same and have the same theme. All the characters in his books seem to contain the same elements. They are exempt from poverty, hunger, lust, and hate. They seem to have almost perfect characteristics and are never poor. None of his characters are portrayed in a relation to society; and all must choose between good and evil. ( XXXXX, #2). These characters seem less significant in themselves and more in an allegorical aspect that varies in complexity. XXXXX says,
Mukherjee, Meenakshi. The Twice Born Fiction :Themes and Techniques of the Indian Novel in English. London : Heinemann, 1971.
When in 1978 Edward W. Said published his book Orientalism, it presented a turning point in post-colonial criticism. He introduced the term Orientalism, and talked about 2 of its aspects: the way the West sees the Orient and the way the West controls the Orient. Said gave three definitions of Orientalism, and it is through these definitions that I will try to demonstrate how A Passage to India by E. M. Forster is an Orientalist text. First, Said defined Orientalism as an academic discipline, which flourished in 18th and 19th century.
E.M. Forster's A Passage to India concerns the relations between the English and the native population of India during the colonial period in which Britain ruled India. The novel takes place primarily in Chandrapore, a city along the Ganges River notable only for the nearby Marabar caves. The main character of the novel is Dr. Aziz, a Moslem doctor in Chandrapore and widower. After he is summoned to the Civil Surgeon's home only to be promptly ignored, Aziz visits a local Islamic temple where he meets Mrs. Moore, an elderly British woman visiting her son, Mr. Heaslop, who is the City Magistrate. Although Aziz reprimands her for not taking her shoes off in the temple before realizing she has in fact observed this rule, the two soon find that they have much in common and he escorts her back to the club.
Forster’s complex work continues to exist as a paragon of literature, confounding the human mind and revealing to readers the unbidden consequences of the clash between two antithetical cultures. Perhaps appearing upon cursory glance to be merely a requiem for a bygone era, A Passage to India is in fact an affecting and enduring story that addresses not just one group or creed, but humankind as an entirety. Just like the variegated strokes of a piece of art, true works of literature generously open themselves to the world, beckoning all to uncover what it is to be human. So profoundly stirring the mind and soul, only when one brings such literature into their lives can the choking tendrils, the shroud of ignorance humankind has of its own condition, be finally blown
India constitutes a large number of diaspora all over the world. Migration of people in various countries is no longer a surprising issue. Immigrants endeavour to settle in adopted land. Though they adapt foreign way of life and culture yet the pull of past intervenes in their life. They become nostalgic and feel alienated. If out of these immigrants some choose writing as their profession, they consciously or unconsciously give vent to their diasporic experiences in their writings. They attempt to focus on pains, dilemma, discrimination and conflicts they have to face there. Through their imaginary characters they catharsise themselves.
The measured dialogue between Reader and Editor serves as the framework through which Gandhi seeks to discredit accepted terms of civilization and denounce the English. These principle characters amply assist in the development o...