A Passage to India

    Hello I am back after a 100 year. I know it has been too long but my university courses were so intensive, I was so busy, final exams, paper etc.etc. This post is from my 2nd year novel course. We covered E.M. Forster's 2 books. A Passage to India and Aspects of the Novel. Aspects of the Novel is a kind of manual for an ideal novel. Forster gives the receipt of the his ideal novel. In the beginning of the semester we started with this one and rest of the semester we analyze all the books from with the light of this book. A Passage to India is a fat one physically which scared us a little bit. But it is interesting and easy to read in terms of language use. Me and my classmates enjoyed with it. I will post my response paper about the book but the thing is when I reread it now I see that my analyze would be better. It is very short and actually it must be more specific but interestingly I had good grade with this useless paper. Anyway enjoy your reading and hope it helps somebody.

A Passage to India

   A Passage to India, is the most famous novel of Edward Morgan Forster. The novel was selected as one of the 100 great works of English literature and he won the 1924 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. The novel is based on Forster’s experiences in India and also we can say it is an intertextual novel in terms of title because it is barrowed from Walt Whitman’s poem named “Leaves of Grass”. 

  The story is about the trip of two British women Adela Quested and her elderly friend Mrs. Moore, to India. They travel by train from England to Chandrapore which is a fictional British Indian city. Two British women arrive Chandrapore and they are welcomed gladly like a president. Then they start to attend other British’s parties and to have a talk with them, actually they would like to make communication with Indians but other British people avoid them to communicate with the Indians. One night they go to club but it is boring for Mrs. Moore so she goes out to take fresh air then discovers a secret, mystic place, it is a mosque. When Mrs. Moore goes inside of mosque she realizes that she is not alone there. Somebody is there, an Indian, Dr. Aziz. He sees the Engliswoman and reminds her that is a mosque because he is a muslim and he wants her to be respectful for  the place but Mrs. Moore has already taken off her shoes. Then Mr. Turton who governs Chandrapore gives a party and invites both two of Englishwomen and they have a chance to meet others so they meet Cyril Fielding, the principle of the government college in Chandrpore. Fielding is affected by Adela’s open friendliness for Indians, he invites her and Mrs. Moore to tea with him and the Hindu professor Godbole. Fielding invites Dr. Aziz as well as a request of Adela.

   At the tea Fielding and Dr. Aziz become friend immediately and also Adela likes to talk with him after that Ronny comes, he is Adela’s fiance and also Mrs. Moore’s son, interrupts the party rudely. At that night Adela tells Ronny that she decided not to marry with him, then they make a car accident and it changes Adela’s idea. Afterwards, Dr. Aziz organizes an expedition to the Marabar Caves those who attended Fielding’s tea but Fielding and professor Godbole miss the train so Dr. Aziz needs to go on with two Englishwomen. Adela, Mrs. Moore and Dr. Aziz go inside one of the caves but Mrs. Moore disturbes by the enclosed space and echo of the caves.

  Therefore, Adela and Dr. Aziz go on to the higher caves with a guide but Mrs. Moore waits them below. Meanwhile, Adela realizes that she does not love Ronny then she asks Dr. Aziz whether he has more than one wife after that Dr. Aziz goes inside one of the caves then when he returns Adela is gone. Dr. Aziz finds her broken field glasses but can not find Adela then returns down and learns that Adela has taken a car back to Chandrapore. Then Dr. Aziz is arrested unexpectedly. He is charged with attempting to rape Adela while she was in the caves, a charge based on a claim Adela herself has made. By the way Mrs. Moore will return to England as earlier than she planned but she dies on the voyage. In the trial of Dr. Aziz, Adela tells the truth that Dr. Aziz did not do anything to her. Now Dr. Aziz is free but Adela loses something like her fiance because she tells her mistake and gives back Dr. Aziz’s freedom only Fielding appreciates her behaivor who believes innnocence of Dr. Aziz from the begining. Then she returns to England. Then Dr. Aziz gets angry to Fielding because of his friendship with Adela. He becomes the cheif doctor away from Chandrapore. He learns that Fielding gets marry with Adela but he is wrong because Fielding gets marry with Stella, daughter of Mrs. Moore. At the end of the novel Dr. Aziz thinks that is it possible to be friend with a British or not.

  The novel shows us the relationship between two different races, especially among colonizer and  colonized people. When we read the text the main question comes our mind, is it possible actually being friends for those people or not. In fact, in the first part and also trial part of the novel we see bad behaivors of British people, in my opinion they humiliate Indians actually howewer Indians become happy and feel good when they have a chance to attend British parties like Dr. Aziz.