First of all I’d like to apologize about the long delay in this post. I took way too long to read A Passage to India and I promise that the following books will not take me as long to complete.
Let’s start with a synopsis of the book. This is what is written in the cover jacket:
“This classic story set against a backdrop of Anglo-Indian affairs brings into sharp focus the menace lurking just beneath the surface of ordinary misunderstanding. As Forster was later to comment: ‘I tried to show that India is an unexplainable muddle by introducing an unexplainable muddle– Miss Quested’s experience in the cave. When asked what happened there, I don’t know.’
Miss Quested’s report of an attempted assault by the young Dr. Aziz and her subsequent retraction from the heart of this carefully crafted, complex novel that is not about India alone but about all of human life.”
While Historical Fiction is not my usual choice in fiction, I did find the clash of culture in this book interesting. The book takes place in India and introduces the strain between the English and the Indians. At the beginning of the book we are introduced to the characters of Dr. Aziz, a young and curious doctor that is open minded to India’s ‘Anglo-Indians’. He is naive to the ways of the English and find their culture astonishing, as the English find his just as baffling. He meets a Mrs. Moore, an older women who is the mother of the prestigious Ronny Heaslop (British city magistrate), when visiting a local mosque. Upon their first encounter, Aziz assumes that Mrs. Moore is in the mosque by her own British curiosity and fears that she is defiling it through her own naivety. But to his surprise, she is aware of local custom and is respectful of it. He is intrigued by her behavior and they quickly develop a solid friendship.
Mrs. Moore has traveled to India with the young Miss Adela Quested, who is vaguely interested in marrying Mrs. Moore’s prestigious son. They have come to visit Ronny, Mrs. Moore to enjoy the company of her eldest son before she becomes too old to travel, and Miss Quested to meet Ronny and truly decide if marrying him is the path she wishes to walk. Though both have an alternative reason for traveling to India: they are determined to see the ‘real India’.
The beginning of the book displays the clash of cultures well. The Indians represent a traditional culture while the English represent a more modernized curiosity. The English refuse to assimilate into the Indian culture and this has torn the natives in half. Half attempt to appease the English, and half are anti Anglo-Indians. Aziz soon meets Cyril Fielding, a British headmaster of a government run college for Indians. Fielding is respectful towards the Indian culture, and unlike most of the British that reside in India, he attempts to understand the way their culture works, though he cannot comprehend most of it. Aziz and Fielding make a strong connection and become fast friends.
The first half of the book develops the characters well, and you see Aziz bending over backwards to please his new found friends. Mrs. Moore and Miss Quested meet with him and while he does not enjoy the company of Miss Quested, he agrees to show them the ‘real India’, to the best of his ability.
Miss Quested spends the beginning of the book in conflict over her choice to marry Ronny. She goes back and forth about whether she truly loves him, and whether love really matters in a marriage. Ronny does not care for her new friend Aziz, and his hostility towards the Indians disgusts her. He tries to explain that after awhile of living in this country, she will also treat the Indians with the same contempt. That comment makes her realize that she cannot marry such a man. She tells him as such, and they agree to disband their engagement. As they come to such an agreement, they find themselves roped into a car ride that quickly becomes dangerous. After crashing into some animal on the road, the two find the excitement and close call have changed their minds about one another, and once again they reaffirm their engagement.
At this point in the book Aziz has agreed to show them the most wonderful site, the Marabar Caves. Fielding was supposed to accompany them, but missed the train. Aziz, Mrs. Moore, and Miss Quested journey to the caves, and Aziz spends a plethora of money to impress his new friends. They arrive at the caves, and this becomes a turning point of the book.
Entering the first cave, Miss Quested and Aziz are filled with wonder, while Mrs. Moore is filled with horror. She panics. The echos of the cave, and the many servants surrounding her terrify her. She feels as though she is about to suffocated by her surroundings, and the echo that rings within her head. Running from the cave she claims illness, and leaves Aziz and Miss Quested to go on alone.
Miss Quested is once again having second thoughts about Ronny. She is wondering if what she feels towards him is actually love, and she has begun to question all of her life choices. As her and Aziz walk alone to the second cave, she asks an extremely inappropriate question: “Have you one wife, or more than one?” The question shocks and enrages Aziz and he runs into a near by cave to calm himself. Miss Quested goes on alone. After calming himself, Aziz goes in search of her but cannot find her. He asks the guide where she went, but the guide does not know, and ends up running off. He looks in all the caves, but the echos and reflections make it impossible to find her. Returning outside he sees her down by the road riding off with another English girl. He is offended that she should leave so suddenly, and without warning but doesn’t question it further. As they return to town he is arrested for sexual assault.
Miss Quested claimed that she was attacked by Aziz in the cave, and while he denies it no one but the Indians will believe him. Except Fielding. He denies his own culture to support Aziz and the Indians. At this point in the book everything comes to a head. Both cultures are at war with one another. The English are using this as an excuse to over power the Indian culture as well as the country. The Indians are furious because it is automatically assumed that they are guilty, and that there will not be a fair trial for Aziz, an upstanding citizen. They are using Aziz’s predicament as an excuse to fight against the English’s hold on their country.
Miss Quested was hurt in the caves and is absolutely terrified. Ronny attempts to defend her honor against the Indians, but Mrs. Moore is unsupportive. She says that Aziz wouldn’t attempt to harm Miss Quested, and that she has to be mistaken. The incident of the caves has deeply shaken her and she wants to return home. Shortly before the trial starts she boards a ship back to England.
At the trail, both culture arrive as well as much of the town. Miss Quested stands up to tell of the incident and panics. She said that she does not know what happened and that she has made a mistake. Aziz is set free, and chaos breaks loose. The Indians riot against the English, and many English buildings are burned down. As the trail has ended we learn that Mrs. Moore, while traveling back to England, has passed away. She represented the civility between the English and Indian cultures, and her death severed any hope of a joining or understanding. Fielding joins Aziz in celebrating but finds that he is rejected by the Indians. He has betrayed his own culture but is also not accepted by the Indian’s pushing him into isolation. Leaving the riots he stumbles upon Miss Quested wandering through the streets. She has also been rejected by the English, and Ronny has broken off their engagement. Fielding finds her bravery at the trial impressive and they speak of life. My favorite quote of the book happens at this point:
“A friendliness, as of dwarfs shaking hands, was in the air. Both man and woman were at the height of their powers– sensible, honest, even subtle. They spoke the same language, and held the same opinions, and the variety of age and sex did not divide them. Yet they were dissatisfied. When they agreed, “I want to go on living a bit,” or “I don’t believe in God,” the words were followed by a curious back wash as though the universe had displayed itself to fill up a tiny void, or as though they had seen their own gestures from an immense height– dwarfs talking, shaking hands and assuring each other that they stood on the same footing of insight. They did not think that were wrong, because as soon as honest people think they are wrong instability sets up. Not for them was an infinite goal behind the stars, and they never sought it. But wistfulness descended on them now, as on other occasions; the shadow of the shadow of a dream fell over their clear-cut interests, and objects never seen again seemed messages from another world.”
Fielding and Miss Quested connect on the same plane of isolation from their cultures, and form a bond. Miss Quested travels back to England. Mr. Fielding attempts to protect her because with her false accusation, Aziz has the right to sue her for every penny she has, and with her broken engagement to Ronny, that would leave her desolate, sending her into poverty. After consulting with Aziz numerous times, Fielding convinces him to not sue Miss Quested, even though the Indian culture is calling for her blood. This decision causes a severance between Fielding and Aziz. Their friendship is torn apart and Fielding leaves the country.
Aziz dwells on his hatred of the English and of Fielding. He received letters from Fielding over the years informing Aziz of a new found love and marriage. Aziz reads the line “I am to marry someone whom you know…” And instantly forms the conclusion that Fielding has married his sworn enemy Miss Quested. This idea sprouts into his head and his hatred of everything English grows. He ends up taking a job far off into the rural countryside that is far away from any Englishmen, and he burns any letters he receives from Fielding.
Years pass until one day Fielding returns to India to visit his silent friend Aziz. Aziz attempts to avoid him, but fate would have it that they run into one another. Much to Aziz’s embarrassment, Fielding has not married Miss Quested but Mrs. Moore’s daughter instead! He still clings to his hatred of the English and Fielding because of his pride until he meets Mrs. Moore’s son. He finds her son to be irrevocably like her, and finds himself treating him in the way he would have treated Mrs. Moore.
Aziz lets go of his anger and hatred when he realizes that his life has returned full circle. His actions towards Mrs. Moore’s son parallels the way he met her so long ago in the mosque. His love for his deceased friend overrules the norm his culture dictates. Meeting with Fielding, they become friends once again, but agree to never meet from that day on. They wanted to hold onto such a fragile companionship before their cultures caused another dispute that was eventual.
Forster did an incredible job weaving together such different ideals using symbolism. I cannot even begin to pick out a worthy example of how well written both cultures are because the entire book is so well written. Cultural fiction is not something I’m overtly interested in but I did enjoy Forster’s writing style. His passages causes you to think, and that might be the reason it took me so long to complete this book. I continuously had to skip back to previous pages because his symbolism and ideals tied into one another so well.
This book captures the essence of human nature, and displays how insignificant and significant we are as individuals and as a culture. I would recommend reading this book if you’re willing to dive head long into eastern culture, and explore how one small instance can snowball into a colossal disaster.
Overall I would rate this book a 7/10, and I am going to go check out the movie tomorrow to see just how accurate it is, and whether they were able to capture the message behind the drama.
After I’ve posted this I will have already started my next book in this series: Ragtime by E.L. Doctrow. Bear with me, because I am not giving up on this list, and many more reviews are yet to come.
onehundredbookchallenge 