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A passage to india forster orientalism
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Leonard Woolf considers E.M Forster’s novel A Passage to India to be a representation of ‘’the real life of politics in India, the intricacy of personal relations, the story itself, the muddle and the mystery of life’’ (Jay, 1998). Fosters novel has been the subject of literary criticism from many angles given the highly controversial subject matter which is called into question as to whether it is a genuine representation of India under colonisation written from an objective experience, and whether this attempt to represent India is successful or a failure. The question of how successful this representation of India and the British occupation of the country is will form the argument of this work. Forster makes it known to the readers of the novel that when he first began to compose A Passage to India he had felt that he did not know India well enough to continue in an accurate portrayal, therefore returned later to India before completing the novel. In the time of his second visit, Forster felt that he was able to understand the ways in which the Anglo-Indians behaved towards the natives and also that he became better acquainted with the Indian natives. This would suggest that his writing would be objective portraying both sides of the divide without prejudice towards either class.
A Passage to India is a portrayal of India during the control of the British Raj in the 1920’s. The narrative tells the story of a young British woman, Adela who falsely accuses an Indian Doctor, Aziz of attempted rape. When this progresses to a court, during the trial she withdraws her lawsuit and admits she was mistaken. As a result of her false accusation, the trial and the retraction of her charge there is a further and deeper divide created betw...
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...mud, the inhabitants of mud-moving’’ (Foster, 1968). It is questionable whether Forster is writing from an objective experience from the point of view of a Colonial English man. He carries the reader from one event to another in the novel however his reaction to his own personal experience seems to be portrayed as a social reaction placing almost exclusively middle class raised characters in the midst of a country falling.
Works Cited
Beer, J., 1985. A Passage to India: Essays in Interpretation. London: The Macmillan Press Ltd.
Foster, E., 1968. A Passage to India. London: Aldine Press.
Jay, B., 1998. Icon critical guides- A passage to India. Cambridge: Icon Books ltd.
Page, N., 1987. Modern Novelists: E.M Forster. London: The Macmillan Press Ltd.
Said, E., 1978. Orientalism. US: Vintage Books.
Washington, P., 2007. Kipling: Poems. New York: Everyman's Library.
If we look closely at the words racial and tension, we can see that it
Impact of British Colonization Exposed in A Small Place, A Passage to India, and Robinson Crusoe
James, Lawrence. Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India. New York: St. Martin's, 1998. Print.
The authors uses the strategy of symbolism to show how the Indians are struggling and are being restricted. The text states, “my Motherland! - fear, the phantom demon, shaped by your own distorted dreams… burden of ages, bending your head, breaking your back, blinding your eyes to the beckoning call of the future...shackles of slumber...mistrusting the star that speaks of truth’s adventurous path… anarchy of destiny… Sails are weakly yielded to blind uncertain winds… hand….rigid and cold as Death… The insult of dwelling in a puppet’s world… movements are started through brainless wires….repeated… mindless habits… Figures wait with patient obedience for a master of show to be stirred into… Life” These quotes show imagery to develop meaning in word choice. He uses the words ‘Motherland’ to represent India and the ‘phantom demon’ being Great Britain. The Indian people are afraid of the controller that watches them. India tries its best to get out of the clutches of Britain. But the country keeps on getting pulled back in and all the people can do is to have hope for a future in which they can be free. Thus, the rights of Indians were
2 Stein, Burton (2001), A History of India, New Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. xiv, 432,
Nicholas B. Dirks. (2011). Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton University Press
Literature throughout time has contained many similarities. These similarities become even more prevalent when authors share a similar style and inspirations. Two authors that have similar experiences are Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and E.M. Forster. Both these authors have written books that are in the modernism style. Jhabvala and Forster also were fascinated by India and choose the relationships between native Indians and English colonizers as one of their themes. These similarities helped produce books that have similar characters. The women, not native to India, in both Jhabvala' Heat and
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...
In a story, there are often aspects of the story that are not clear upon first reading, but add clarity and infinitely more depth to the passage. This is especially evident in “Do You Like It Here?” Roberts is a new student at this school who finds himself “wanted in Van Ness’s [Headmaster of the School] office,” which he follows with a speech regarding the differences between this phrase and other similar ones, “If a master [Van Ness] wanted to see you on some minor matter, it didn’t always mean that you had to go to his office; but if it was serious, they always said ‘you’re wanted in somebody’s office.’ That meant Somebody would be in his office, waiting for you, specially for you.”
Mishra, Vijay. "The Texts of Mother India." After Europe.Ed. Stephen Slemon and Helen Tiffin. Sydney: Dangaroo Press, 1989. 119-37.
Silver, Brenda R. “Periphrasis, Power, and Rape in ‘A Passage to India.’” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 22.1 (1988): 86-105. JSTOR. Web. 4 Mar. 2011. .
Crane, Ralph J. Inventing India: A History of India in English Language Fiction. London: Macmillan, 1992.
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.
In Forster's A Passage to India we recognize certain elements that can be seen as Orientalist. According to Edward Said's definitions of Orientalism I tried to point out some of these Orientalist elements. However, there are many more examples in the novel which would also fit in the Orientalist frames set by Said.
Naipaul, V.S., India: A Wounded Civilization. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1983. All subsequent reference with page numbers are from this edition.