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Title: A Passage to India by E. M. Forster ISBN: 0-15-671142-7 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 01 December, 1984 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.91 (76 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Wonderful
Comment: What makes A Passage to India so different from other Orientalist works (and Orientalist it is) is that Forster, being a homosexual, understood the oppression that the colonized Indians had to live with. This understanding permeates throughout the book. From his piercing insights into the nature of Anglo-Indian women (why were they more racist? They were threatened to be replaced by Indian men in the minds of the colonizers). The relationship between Fielding and Aziz is startlingly sharp; people from the time must have been delusional not to see the homoerotic message that Forster was trying to portray. It's such a shame that the politics of the book (which Forster really wanted to downplay -- notice that neither Aziz nor Fielding care about them) so often overshadow the message of male-male relationships that Forster cared so much about. It's sad though that he still fell into the trap of thinking that no Englishman or woman could completely remove themselves from the racism that dominated the culture. What does he do the one's who try? Adela has an nervous breakdown, Mrs. Moore dies after realizes the futlity of love, and Fielding is not only a repressed homosexual, and therefore a social outcast, but sacrifices his ideals in the end to marry an English country woman. The ending perfectly sums up how Forster himself must have felt -- remember that when you want to cry at the unfairness of it all.
I don't think it's really necessary for me to comment on the brilliance of the prose, or the entertaining primary narrative since I'm sure that's been done to the upteenth time. However, the book holds so much that I couldn't not share some of my thoughts. Please read A Passage to India as soon as you can.
Rating: 5
Summary: Great memorial to British India
Comment: With all due respect to Rudyard Kipling, E.M. Forster's "A Passage to India" seems likely to remain the definitive novel about British Imperialist India written by an Englishman. It does not merely see India as a picturesque land in which to set an exotic adventure, but examines the complicated relationships between the British and the Indians with penetrating wisdom, astuteness, and fairness. Forster is not shy about portraying the British attitude towards the Indians as one of bigotry and condescension, but he also notes the considerable cultural and religious conflicts between the Muslims and the Hindus.
Most of the action takes place in a city called Chandrapore and concerns the friendship between a British school principal named Cyril Fielding and a Muslim physician named Dr. Aziz. The novel's events are set in motion in an empty mosque, where a praying Aziz meets an elderly Englishwoman named Mrs. Moore. After some friendly conversation, they take a liking to each other, and Aziz learns that Mrs. Moore's son is a man he knows well -- Ronny Heaslop, the Magistrate of Chandrapore. Later, having tea at Fielding's house, Aziz meets Mrs. Moore again and her companion, a young lady named Adela Quested, who is vaguely affianced to Ronny. Eager to see the "real" India, Adela enthusiastically accepts Aziz's offer to go on a picnic to the Marabar caves, a nearby tourist attraction, and Mrs. Moore is convinced to accompany them.
Forster lavishly describes the journey to the caves -- by train and then elephant -- and the caves themselves, each of which apparently is shaped somewhat like a frying pan, with a short corridor ending in a circular chamber. The outing proves to be much more eventful than the three spelunkers expected. Mrs. Moore, haunted by the eerie echos the caves propagate, crosses the threshold of insanity. And upon their return to Chandrapore, Adela claims that she was sexually assaulted in one of the caves and accuses Aziz, who is consequently arrested and tried for the crime.
Of course, there are a few different explanations for what really happened to Adela in the caves, but the British are prejudicially biased against Aziz. This puts Fielding in a quandary, as his defense of his good friend Aziz infuriates his British compatriots and gets him kicked out of his club. When Adela later admits that she can't confirm Aziz's guilt, Ronny acknowledges that a retraction of the charges would embarrass the British; he even hustles his mother out of India because, as a witness, her increasing incoherence would damage the case for the prosecution.
Although the cave incident and the subsequent trial drive the plot, the novel is more about the clash of three headstrong societies (Muslim, Hindu, and Christian) forced to dwell together amidst political turmoil, and how certain members of these societies manage to reconcile themselves to each other's differences. The final scene between Fielding and Aziz, in which Aziz uncannily predicts an independent Indian nation resulting from British dissolution, is a poignant display of this theme; for all the trouble and conflict in the world, there is always room for friendship and understanding.
Rating: 2
Summary: Disappointing
Comment: This book never grabbed me the way I had hoped it would. None of the characters is particularly engaging, and indeed some are barely tolerable. This is a 360 page book that reads like a 600 page book. I'm not what you'd call a plot-junky, but this book was just too slow and too boring. There are only three or four memorable scenes in the whole book, and only one of them possesses any dramatic tension. I think Forster set out to make a statement about relations between colonial power and colonized people. Certainly he accomplished that, but then again he could have done it in a page or two. Instead he threw together a mediocre work of literature to demonstrate his point.
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Title: A Passage To India (Cliffs Notes) by Norma Ostrander ISBN: 0822009854 Publisher: Cliffs Notes Pub. Date: 11 February, 1964 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, Eudora Welty (Introduction) ISBN: 0156907399 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1989 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: A Room With a View (Classic) by E. M. Forster ISBN: 0553213237 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 August, 1988 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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Title: Howards End (Penguin Classics) by E. M. Forster, David A. A. Lodge ISBN: 014118213X Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 03 April, 2000 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie ISBN: 0140132708 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 1995 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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