Customer Reviews

A Passage to India: A Reader's Guide to Essential Criticism

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A Passage to India is an excellently written book, and a benchmark in the literary age of British Imperialism. It deserves a place on the bookshelf with Great Expectations and The Grapes of Wrath. The symbols are rich, deep, and thought provoking, and Forster provides a realistic storyline and a timeless classic.

However, a word of caution. A Passage to India is an excellent book, but not an excellent story. If you don't like deciphering symbols and "reading between the lines," and instead prefer a page-turning plot that produces sweaty fingers and a rapid heart rate, this book isn't for you. An excellent story with a similar setting and similar circumstances is Burmese Days, by George Orwell, which takes place in Burma under the imperialist regime of the British Empire.

Set in the fictional northern India city of Chandrapore, E.M. Forster's 'Passage to India', widely regarded as an early 20th century classic, tells the tale of the troubled interactions between British India and the country's Indian inhabitants. Forster's message seems to be that the white British and the native Indians should not have tried to interact socially outside of the accepted forms because it always ended badly for all concerned.

Rating this book is difficult. On the one hand, the characters are exceptionally well drawn as is life in British India (especially the British side). And the theme is undoubtedly largely correct that when British tried to befriend Indians in this colonial setting it usually went badly. At the same time, I found myself disliking the major characters, and particularly found young Dr. Aziz to be annoyingly flighty and over-wrought as he quickly jumped to conclusions over and over again.

The story meanders, to put it kindly, until Part 2 when the 'event' occurs at the also-fictional Marabar Caves and Forster breathes some life into the tale. Yet, while the confusion over what really happened at the caves is the focus of much of the second part of the book and the characters think they know at least what did NOT happen, Forster never does really explore what did in fact happen. And while there is clearly much fallout over the accusations Forster again does not explore how the fallout occurs.

An interesting aspect for the modern reader is the predominance of Muslim characters on the Indian side of the tale. Hindus play only a small role. This detail marks the book as predating the Partition of India that accompanied Indian independence and the establishment of India and Pakistan on the basis of religion. The Partition created millions of refugees flowing to their new country based on their religion and fostered tremendous violence and division. Hindus reasserted authority in India after the partition in place of the Muslims.

If you have an interest in British colonialism, India, or English Literature or all three, by all means read the book. Don't expect a sparkling story to go along with the fine characterizations and be ready for a dated view.

Forster's novel is a classic. It appears on all "Top 100" lists, for list maniacs, but it is not really all that great. I can certainly think of a good many novels I'd rather read or reread. In the film version the novel's exotic setting springs to life, of course, and that is 99% of the novel's appeal. Otherwise it is a rather dull social drama, which bears remarkable resemblance to the inter-sex squabbles D.H. Lawrence was so good at creating. Americans have a need to be liked that prevents them from going for the jugular in quite the same lacerating way the English can. This novel is really about the disappointment women feel for their hypocritical men: husbands, brothers, and fathers. The ladies saw through the facade of English decency and authors like Lawrence (a woman-hater) and Forster (gay) were on to it. Their men promised to treat the Indians as though they were Englishmen but, of course, they didn't. Nor did they treat their women as ladies. Everybody except white Englishmen were ordered around senselessly and the women recognized the stupidity of it all and the mindless inhumanity of it. This is Forster's subject really, and when they go at it, the men and women sound astonishingly like the characters in "Women In Love." They could be anywhere, nowhere. By putting them in India, Forster created a classic.