From Fission To Fusion

Edward Morgan Forster is a famous English novelist and essayist in the first half of 20th century. The title of his masterpiece A Passage to India is from the long poem "Passage to India" by Whitman, the American romantic poet. Forster describes in this successful novel different people, different nations, different beliefs and mutual conflicts, so as to express his hope of eliminating fission and realizing fusion among races and human beings.Symbolism is one of the profound techniques Forster uses in A Passage to India to connect Indian climate, the atmosphere and people's feelings together. The three parts of the novel Mosque, Caves and Temple, which are symbolically parallel to the three seasons of India: the cool, the hot and the rainy, form the main frame of the novel. Besides, the events, the objects or even the animals in this novel all imply deep meanings and express Forster's philosophical ideas, through which he reveals the goodness and badness of humanity, and predicts the bright future of human beings.This thesis focuses its discussion on Forster's symbolic descriptions in the novel, through analyzing its characters, events and environments, and also plainly interprets the religious ideas of the story.