E.M.Forster's Thought And Culture Study In A Passage To India

The best known and most widely read of E.M.Forster's novels, A Passage to India is the literary culmination of two sustained visits made by Forster to India in the early 1900s, it is also Forster's most complex novel, in which many secrets are arranged by the author that arouse critical responses of contemporary commentators. The richness, the depth of its characterizations, and its evocative prose style, it is considered as one of the most significant novels of the twentieth century, hi addition, the novel shows Forster's interest in experimental technique and subtly presents the alien culture Great Britain had tried to dominate. The novel may seem to be rather simple and open in its style and structure, but xvhile it's true that the novel itself is in fact extraordinarily complex in its use of recurring motifs, themes, symbols and images. Thematically, as his earlier novels, he is primarily concerned with matters of human conduct and especially with the dark places in the human heart which make for unhappiness and confusion not only between individuals but between races and nations. His thought of "only connect" is pervasive in the novel. Technically, Forster is a very old梖ashioned novelist but his use of satire and symbol is among the first-rate.This thesis takes Forster's thought and culture study as its main concern. It is an attempt to examine firstly its dual opposite theme梒onnection and separateness; then the different religions in India through the different characters analysis; finally the profound symbolic images that deepen the meaning of the novel. The thesis consists of three parts:Chapter 1 aims at approaching the dual theme of the novel through the focal question proposed at the beginning of the novel, "Whether it is possible to be friends with an Englishman?"Chapter 2 explores the three different religions in India so as to give an answer to the question proposed, since Forster here translates the question of cross-cultural friendship into a more vertiginous study of how cultures both issue and misread invitations.Chapter 3 offers a close-up study in Forster's use of spiritual and religious images as Forster conveys the complex aspects of his vision by using a set of symbols. Thus we can come to a conclusion at Forster's real attention hi writing the novel.