Hamilton 1

Samantha Hamilton

Professor Kuskey

LTMO145B

3 March 2014

Open Caves: Symbolism of Caves and Fluidity of Interpretation in A Passage to India

Written in 1924, E.M. Forster’s novel A Passage to India tells the story of an Indian

Muslim physician in British India and the series of events that unfold after he is falsely accused

of committing sexual assault against an Englishwoman. The novel has a prevailing theme of

orientalism and East-West conflict, and is coupled with, among many others, a theme of

religious ambiguity. For example, the already present hostility between Hindus and Muslims in

India is combined with an oppressive British influence, which brings Christianity into the

conflict. In his novel A Passage to India, Forster’s symbolism of the Marabar caves dispels the

notion of religions worshiping different gods; he asserts that Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity

are merely three different ways of interpreting the same deity. Virginia Woolf also makes this

argument in her essay “Craftsmanship” about words. She asserts that, although there is a general

societal idea of a word’s definition, words’ meanings are ultimately determined by the person

using them. Forster and Woolf both make the argument that seemingly rigidly defined concepts

are actually not so rigidly defined after all — they are open to interpretation.

A Passage to India is broken up into three sections: the first being “Mosque,” the second,

“Caves,” and the third, “Temple.” Mosques are associated with the Islamic religion while Hindus

practice in temples, but what is the significance of the caves? The “Caves” section serves as a

transition from one religion into another, acting as a mediator between the two. Because caves

have no direct association to any particular religious or spiritual belief, the meaning of the
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section’s name is open to interpretation, and is, on the novel’s larger scale, a tactic by Forster to

establish the concept that “true” representation and perception are not set in stone. At the

beginning of “Caves,” the narrator describes the Marabar caves as being indistinguishable from

one another, and that “nothing, nothing attaches to them, and their reputation— for they have one

— does not depend upon human speech. They are dark caves. Even when they open towards the

sun, very little light penetrates down the entrance tunnel into the circular chamber” (Forster 124).

Abstractly, the meaning of the Marabar caves is so fluid and mobile that they cannot stand to

have attributed and attached significance. The caves’ reputation does not rely on human speech,

but on a force outside of human influence: nature. However, the caves are so dark that nature

itself – the sun in this case – cannot even comprehend the caves’ contents, thus adding to the

already present mystery. The narrator goes on to describe what happens when humans interact

with the caves. For example, when someone strikes a match inside one of the Marabar caves,

“immediately another flame rises in the depths of the rock and moves towards the surface like an

imprisoned spirit: the walls of the circular chamber have been most marvelously polished. The

two flames approach and strive to unite, but cannot, because one of them breathes air, the other

stone” (Forster 125). In this passage, the two flames (the match and the match’s reflection) are

separated by different worlds, the match being part of a world with human influence, and the

reflection a part of a world within the cave, untouchable by humans. The walls of the cave act as

a mirror, reflecting back whatever is held up to it. The cave is a visual reflector, but not

necessarily an auditory reflector. Regular caves have echoes that repeat back whatever sounds

are made while inside, however, the Marabar caves are quite different. The Marabar echo does

not replicate the original sound, but instead distorts it completely. “[The echo] is entirely devoid

of distinction,” the narrator describes. “Whatever is said, the same monotonous noise replies, and
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quivers up and down the walls until it is absorbed into the roof. ‘Boum’ is the sound as far as the

human alphabet can express it, or "bou-oum," or "ou-boum," — utterly dull” (Forster 147). The

cave acts as a mirror to human activity until a noise is made inside of it, such as the sound of

people talking. When people speak inside the cave (which is a metaphor for describing what the

cave represents), the cave refuses to replicate human communication in an effort to maintain its

mystery. Reincorporating the novel’s theme of spirituality and religion, the cave and its echo

symbolize the unseen’s unwillingness to be rigidly assigned a distinct definition or explanation.

Virginia Woolf explores this subject in her essay “Craftsmanship,” in which she writes about

words’ reluctance to give in to strict definitions. Woolf argues, “It is the nature of words to mean

many things” and that “in reading we have to allow the sunken meanings to remain sunken,

suggested, not stated” (Woolf 247-8). Just as Woolf believes assigning fixed definitions to words

takes away their value, Forster asserts in A Passage to India that by assigning gods certain

qualities and attributes, humans remove gods’ ability to be interpreted in multiple ways.

Although varying interpretations of God may conflict with one another, A Passage to

India exhibits multiple moments of religions meshing together. Religious crossover between

Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity occurs most prevalently at the end of the novel, during the

Hindu Procession of God festival. The entire event is a melting pot of intertwining, seemingly

chaotic moments. For example, the narrator describes, “Music there was, but from so many

sources that the sum-total was untrammeled. The braying banging crooning melted into a single

mass which trailed round the palace before joining the thunder” (Forster 284). The music’s lack

of delineation and distinction in this passage mirrors the lack of a clear definition of God.

Despite the chaos, the religious festival inspires each Hindu in attendance to act friendly towards

each other: “There was no quarrelling, owing to the nature of the gift, for blessed is the man who
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confers it on another, he imitates God” (Forster 290). The gift referred to in this passage is what

the narrator calls “God’s bounty” — God’s welcoming nature to all people despite what religion,

if any, they affiliate with. This harks back to the concept of the cave as a symbol for the general,

unaffiliated God. By spreading “the gift” of openness and treating everyone equally, the people

unconsciously endorse the idea of there being multiple interpretations for God. When Aziz and

Fielding reunite after two years and ride their horses together, Aziz even shouts, “’India shall be

a nation! No foreigners of any sort! Hindu and Moslem and Sikh and all shall be one! Hurrah!

Hurrah for India! Hurrah! Hurrah!’”(322). This passage shows antagonism toward foreigners, yet

a tolerance for other religions in India. The foreigners Aziz speaks against in this context are the

English in particular, which includes the major religious following of Europe, Christians. Despite

the hostility, the novel depicts Eastern and Western religions intertwining regardless. For

example, on Aziz’ and Fielding’s horse ride, the narrator writes, “They cantered past a temple to

Hanuman — God so loved the world that he took monkey’s flesh upon him — and past a Saivite

temple” (Forster 321). Forster here makes a reference to Bible verse John 3:16, “For God so

loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish

but have eternal life,” but appropriates it into a Hindu context, also referring to Hanuman, a

monkey-like humanoid Hindu deity. By combining two different religions, the novel shows that

abstract ideas, such as the concept of God, are interchangeable and their interpretations are fluid.

Virginia Woolf makes the same point about words in her essay “Craftsmanship.” When

discussing words’ varying definitions, Woolf writes, “[Words] mean one thing to one person,

another thing to another person; they are unintelligible to one generation, plain as a pikestaff to

the next” (Woolf 251). Woolf notes that while people’s interpretations of words may vary, they

share similar concepts. However, applying these interpretations, Woolf writes, requires a great
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deal of contemplation: “Undoubtedly they like us to think, and they like us to feel, before we use

them; but they also like us to pause; to become unconscious. Our unconsciousness is their

privacy; our darkness is their light” (Woolf 251). In this passage, Woolf argues that words are

most powerful when we are unconscious of their meanings. Although words like for us to think

about them and our utilization of them, when we don’t think about the meanings of words, their

mystery makes them powerful. This also applies to religions in A Passage to India because,

when humans blindly worship gods without questioning the religion’s values or asking

themselves why they worship the god in the first place, that is when their spiritual beliefs take

hold of them. In the same way that words like to be thought about before they are used, gods like

to be the subject of contemplation before a follower chooses to worship him/her. However, a

lack of contemplation leads to the gods’ mystery, and when humans are unaware of the potential

holds the gods have over them, the gods are in control, proving that human interpretations of

gods only matter to the humans themselves. As far as self-identification, gods broadcast the same

message to everyone: “boum.”

The prevailing concept in Forster’s novel A Passage to India is orientalism and the

clashing of East and West, but it also includes cultures clashing with themselves, as evidenced

by the conflict between Muslims and Hindus. Two of the three section names are directly

associated with these two beliefs, but the “Caves” section has no explicit ties to any religion.

Because “Caves” is the middle section, it acts as a mediator between two of the most commonly

practiced religions in India, bridging the gap between the two. However, Forster’s symbolic use

of the caves conveys that, though the beliefs and practices of the two religions are different, the

god they worship is essentially one and the same. Although there is no section named after

Christianity, Forster frequently makes biblical references, bringing in yet another belief system.
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The Marabar caves represent the crossover of multiple religions within the story, such as Islam,

Hinduism, and Christianity, establishing the idea that, although all three religions look at the

concept of God in different ways, they are all just different interpretations of the same god.

When describing the caves and their echo, the narrator illustrates, “A Marabar cave can hear no

sound but its own” (154). This is because the only sound the caves make is “boum,” and they do

not care to concern themselves with the sounds of petty humans. The caves suggest that humans’

interpretations of God may vary, but ultimately, God holds the power and conveys his/her own

message in one way; and that message, like the words of a language, as Woolf explains in

“Craftsmanship,” is entirely up for interpretation.

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Works Cited

Forster, E. M. A Passage to India. Orlando: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984. Print.

Woolf, Virginia. "Craftsmanship." Collected Essays. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World,

1967. 245-51. Print.