A Passage to India: Culture Clash

CONTEXT British context ?Forster was a British writer and close of his readers were British. His work reflects also England and the period in which Forster lived and wrote. He is commonly regarded as an Edwardian new(a)ist, because his first four novels were published during the govern of King Edward VII (1901-1910) in this period his values and outlook were developed. ?England had underg star the traumatic experience of the First World War more than 750000 soldiers were killed, along with some other million from other part of British empire. Between 1912 and 1924, the British insurance policy had also changed in that respect were twain main parties, the Liberal and the Conservative. ?British Empire was changing. The change was more evident in Ireland. Ireland gained the indipendence in 1921. KEY POINTS ? right TITLE A going to India ?AUTHOR Edward Morgan Forster ?TYPE OF WORK childlike ?TIME AND PLACE WRITTEN 1912-1924 England ?DATE OF FIRST PUBLICATION 1924 ? distort Pas t ?THEMES Culture showdown Friendship Ambiguity Religion ?CHARACTERS Dr Aziz, Mr Fielding, Adela Quested, Mrs. Moore, Ronny Healsop ? orbit ( TIME ) 1910s or 1920s SETTING ( PLACE ) India, specific solelyy the cities of Chandrapore and Mau. Carico CHARACTERS Dr Aziz ?Is the central Indian eccentric mortal in the novel. ?He works at the authorities hospital in Chandrapore. ?He writes poetry and his favorite poetic themes be the Decay of Islam and the brevity of Love. ?Hes described as a true Oriental person. ?Hes very good give and his involuntary nature get him into situations that cause him trouble. ?Like troopsy another(prenominal) of his friends prefers to communicte throught confidences, underlying terminology and indirect speech ? Like many other Indians struggles with the problem of the English in India.CHARACTERS Mr Fielding ?The principal of the Government College (that is, a British? roam school) in Chandrapore. ?He has no racial feeling. ?Hes far and away som e the successful at developing relationships with inhering Indians. ?Hes slight comfortable in afternoon teacher pupil interaction than he is in one -on- one conversation with some other individual ? Serves as Forsters model of liberal humanism. ?At the and of the novel Forster seems to identify with Fielding less. CHARACTERS Adela Quested ?Her character develops in parallel to Mrs Moores one ?Shes an individual and educated free thinker Adela hopes to see the accepted India ?She puts her mind to the task, precisely not her heart and therfore never connects with Indians. CHARACTERS Mrs. Moore ?Mrs. Moore serves a triplex function in A Passage to India ? Shes initially a literal character. ?She becomes more a attributeic presence. ?The solution to the problem in India. ?Her name becomes more associeted with Hinduism ?Shes the heroine of the novel CHARACTERS Ronny Heaslop ?Forster s emphasis is on the change that happened, when Ronny first arrived in India. ?Ronnys character is a word stimulate of case, an exploration of the restrictions of English colonial. Ronnys tastes, opinions and even his manner of speaking atomic number 18 no longer his own, but those of older, ostensibly wiser British Indian officials. ?Clash with both(prenominal) Adela and his mother, Mrs. Moore. CHARACTERS on that point argon also some characters that are less important that the previous and are ? Mahmoud Ali a Moslem and a secretive friend of Dr Aziz. ?Major Callender the head of the government hospital in Chandrapore. ? professor beau idealbole an Indian who teaches at the college of Chandrapore. ?Hamidullah a Moslem, educated at Cambridge University. ?Mr. McBride the district super of police in Chadrapore.Carico DEEPENING ON FEMALE CHARACTERS ?Adela Quested ?A young Englishwoman who comes to India With Mrs. Moore. ?She is expected to marry Mrs. Moores son Ronny Heaslop. ?Her behavior radically affects the lives of the characters around her. ?On a symbolic level, A dela may also represent intimately peoples softness to communicate or to understand the deeper patterns and meaning of spirit. While she is at Fieldings tea party, she remarks that she is not planning to stay long in India. ?She breaks off her network with Ronny and stays with Fielding for a while forward leaving India and return to England.She does not reappear after this. DEEPENING ON FEMALE CHARACTERS ?Mrs. Moore. ?She is the most sensitive and reflective of the English characters. ? An elderly widow, she is the mother of Ronny Heaslop, She also has another(prenominal) son, Ralph, and a daughter, Stella, by her second marriage. ?Mrs. Moore is introduced in Chapter two when she meets Dr. Aziz in the mosque in Chandrapore. Her they talk, and a friendship develops Aziz is happy to have met an English person who is gracious toward him and India, while Mrs. Moore finds Aziz charming, intelligent, and interesting. ?In the meantime, Mrs.Moore argues with Ronny and when it becomes clear that Ronny and Adela will not marry, Mrs. Moore realizes that her duties there were seemingly finished. She doesnt want to see India Mrs. Moore has lost interest in the trip. For her, the echos put across is Everything exists, cypher has value. Shortly thereafter? just before Azizs trial? she leaves India we later learn that she has died on the voyage back to England However, her presence continues to be felt after her death. ?At the end of the novel, the spirit of Mrs. Moore returns to India symbolically in the form of her daughter Stella, who has married Mr.Fielding. THEMES Culture Clash ?The clash amongst two acknowledgeables cultures, those of the east and those of the West. ?The West is represented by the Anglo Indians in Chandrapore. ?Their social life centers around the Chandrapore confederation. ?They have no desire to understand India or Indians. ?The eastside is represented by the Indians. ?We have a clash also between two distinct group of Indian Moslem s and Hindus. ?Hindus have no brain of society. THEMES Friendship ?Is one of the most important things in life. ?There are many friendships 1. Dr Aziz and his friends Hamidullah and Mahmoud Ali . Dr Aziz and Mrs. Moore 3. Aziz has a curious friendship with Professor Godbole. 4. British and Indians ?Impersonal forces at work in India will not just allow the friendship between English and Indians. THEMES Ambiguity ?A Passage to India is full of equivocalness. ?In chapter 7 are introduced two terms that are repeated several times througthout the novel mistery and muddle. ?Doubt and ambiguity surround two different events in the book that occur at the Marabar Caves 1. Those of Adela. 2. Those of Mrs. Moore. THEMES Religion ?Religion is the major preoccupation in the book. The three parts of the book Mosque Cave and Temple, generally correspond to these religions 1. Aziz loves the cultural aspects of his Islamic heritage. 2. The Anglo Indians are spokemen of Christianity 3. Professo r Godbole is the central Hindu figure in the book. His belief is the most representative of the true spirit of India. STYLE ?A Passage to India is written in the third person, with an impersonal write up voice. ?The narrator is apparently omniscent. ?The narrative focus shifts from a description of external events and enters the consciousness of one character or another. At the same time, however, the narrative withholds a full story of certain events, most notably the misadventures that befall Mrs. Moore and Adela Quested at the Marabar Caves. Indeed, in relative these details, the narrator is ambiguous rather than omniscient. STRUCTURE ?A Passage to India is change integrity into three parts or sections 1. class 1 , titeld Mosque, takes place during the cool, dry out season. 2. Part 2, titeld Caves, takes place during the hot season. 3. Part 3, titled, Temples, takes place during the rain season. ?Part 3 is the shortest of the three sections of the novel and might be consi dered as an epilogue.SETTINGS ?Chandrapore and in the Marabar Caves ?Within the town itself the author identifies several settings 1. Civil Station 2. Chandrapore Club 3. Public places ?The third section is set in the town of Mau, a Hindu state several miles from Chandrapore. SETTINGS Although Forster uses poetic license in grant places, the settings correspond to real places in India. The novels main city, Chandrapore, is actually based on the Indian suburb Bankipore, part of the city of Patna in the northern share of Bihar. The invented name, however, is not so far fetched.Forster probably chose this city for its different government agency of India its culture, history, and nature are all noteworthy. The town of Mau, is an example of an Indian knoll station, a retreat from Indian plains that offers a serene place of cup of tea to both tourists and natives. The Marabar Caves about which Aziz knows so little are based on the Jain Temples on the Barabar piles, once considered a retreat for Jain monks. The most impressive of the four caves on the Barabar Hills is Loma Rishi. The three other caves on the Barabar Hill are Sudama), Karnachopar, and Visvajhopri. SYMBOL ?The most obvious symbols are mosque and cave.Both for Aziz and Mrs. Moore, the mosque is a symbol of refuge and peace, a sanctuary. The first meeting of Aziz and Mrs. Moore takes place in the mosque at night, under the moonlight. Mrs. Moore has gone to the mosque because she is bored with the play she has been attending at the Chandrapore club. ?The mosque, is a symbol of the real India. ?The cave bears some resemblance to the mosque, in that both are closed spaces. Here, however, the resemblance ends. The cave is dark, featureless, and menacing. Although there are many caves at Marabar, it is impossible to distinguish one from another they are all alike. We dont know the real meaning of this symbol but It is at least certain that whatever else they might suggest, they stand for fault and mea ninglessness, or what Mrs. Moore calls muddle. THE UNCERTAINTY IN THE CENTRAL EPISODE. ?One of the most uncomparable aspects of Forsters novel is the uncertainty, the sense of not defined, which is focused on the central sequence of the book the alleged attempted rape in Marabar caves. In fact, the writer says nothing about what actually happened in the caves in the novel there is a contrast between the before and the after that leaves the door kick in to interpretation. Forster himself said so very ambiguous, In the caves there is, a man an hallucination or the supernatural. If I say it becomes whatever the answer, a different book. ? This uncertainty is also present in the film between the before and the after theres a sharp cut that the knockout can interpret as he wishes, by carefully observing the scene we can feeling that Aziz is actually entered the cave with Adela but we arent sure of what he did. EXTRAS Islam Hinduism In Islam, belief in one God is the most important belief.Their God is called ALLAH, the Almighty, Creator and Sustainer of the universe, who is similar to nothing and nothing is comparable to Him Hinduism is commonly percived as a politheistic religion. Indeed, most Hindus would take the stand to this, by proffessing belif in multiple Gods. Islam exhorts man to consider himself and his surroundings as examples of Divine Creation. The trees belongs to God, The sun belongs to God The mayor differences between the Hindu and the Muslim perception of God is the common Hindus belif in the philosofy of Pantheism. The common Hindu considers everything as God.The major difference between the Hindu and Muslim belifs is the difference of the apostrophe s Hinduism has a circle system, with four major castes. Members of each are necessary by strict religious laws to follow hereditary occupations and to refrain from inmarriage or eating with members of another castes. The highest or priestly and intellectual caste is that of Brahmans,. The r emain three are Kshatriya (warrior caste), Vaisya (agricultural caste) and Sudras ( the low caste) In Islam, all gentleman are created equal, infact Islam rejects characterizing God as favoring certain individuals or nations.Everyone may distinguish himself and get His favour through virtue and piety. Cow is a consecrate animal. Cows cant be killed or eaten Muslims belive that each person has a body and a soul. Your faith and actions in this life will determine your fate in the life after Death. Hiduists believe in body and soul. Your soul returns to your body after death. Your status of caste in next life depends on your deeds in the previous life.