E.M.

Forster:Life and works

"The artist is the origin of the work. The work is the origin of the artist. Neither is without the
other "

MartinHeidegger

" E.M.Forster is for me the only living novelist who can be read again and again and who after
each reading, gives me what the writer give us after our first day of novel reading, the sensation
of having something "

-Lionel Trilling.

Edward Morgan Forster,was born on the first day of January, 1869, at Melcombe place in
London. His father was Edward Morgan Llewellyn Forster (nicknamed Eddie) and his mother
was Alice Clara Whichelo (nicknamed Lily). The baby Forster was to lily the most precious
object in the world. His father was an architect. But when Forster was twelve month old. i.e, in
1880, he lost his father.And after his paternal grand aunt's death Forster inherit 8000 pounds.

In January 1890, when Forster was eleven, he entered to Tonbridge school, at Kent.
Forster and Lily stayed at Rooksnest, where he and Lily had been living till 1893. Rooksnest was
attached to Forster's heart throughout his life;it was in it that his formative years began. "More
than innocence, more than growth, what he realised the decade in Rooksnest embodied for
him for ever was ordinary happiness , the house remained throughout his life an ideal, a
paradise." At Tonbridge his only friends were, Henson and headmaster Mr C.P. Hutchinson's
nephew Haworth. At the school itself he became a homosexual with Reginald Tiddy.

In 1897, Forster entered into King's College, Cambridge and stayed there till 1901.There
he took classic and studied under J.E. Nixon and Nathiel Wedd. Wedd told Forster that 'he had
been very badly taught at Tonbridge'. By taking his studies into serious Forster studied Milton's
Paradise Last, A Doll's House., Howell's The Rise of Silas Lapham, Omar Khayyam, some Kipling,
and a good deal of Robert Browning and Chritiana Rossetti. In King's college Forster developed
a more keen interes in the classic masters, particularly in Sophocles and Theocritus. For his
learning of the classics, Forster was most indebted to the 35 years old Classics teacher Wedd.
For his career of a writer he confessed, when he was eighty, to Wedd : "it was Cambridge that
first set me off writing. And in this room where I am now there was at one time my tutor, a man
called Wedd, and it was he who suggested to me that I might write."

While in the King's college Forster became a member of the 'Conversazional society'
in which G.E.Moore, agreat philosopher, was the most influencial member. His friend
H.O.Meredith introduce him to the society. Moore's influence on Forster was enormous, in his

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work principia Ethica, Moore upheld truth, beauty, and personal relation as the three highest
objectives of man's life, and rejected 'the mechanical amd socially divisive'. It allowed Forster
to question religion, the money-making ethic, conventional moral, without feeling impossibly
alienated from the society into which they had been born. Moore's philosophy was 'one´s
prime objects in life were love, the creation and enjoyment of aesthetic experience and the
pursuit of knowledge'. This philosophy influenced not only Forster but also Maynard Keynes,
the famous economist.

In 1901 Forster came out of the King's college by obtaining second class in Classics
Tripos and in History Tripos, but more than that, taking with him the spirit of the Cambridge
university. In the college Forster won a Latin verse prize and an English essay prize on the
subject "The Novelist of Eighteenth Century and their influence on those of Nineteenth". Thus
Forster completed his education.

After coming out from Cambridge university, he spent some time in Italy and Greece
with Lily. There he decides to write a novel on Italian culture and wrote A Room With a View.
Thoug Forster did not get any job the tour was very profitable because "Italy had warmed
Forster and given him a vision, and afterwards he would think of it gratefully as 'The beautiful
country where they say 'yes', and the place where things happen'". When they came back to
England Forster remain jobless, and it is necessity to him. So, he was doing some university
extension lecturing and was taking weekly classes in Latin at the working Men's college in
Bloomsbury. A don of King´s college, Reddaway wrote about Forster as a lecturer: "As a teacher
an examiner I saw a great deal of his work during the year which he devoted to History. His
powers as a writer and thinker are considerable, and there is even a touch of real and rare
distinction in some of his literary work".

In 1904, he completed his first novel Where Angles Fear to Tread. In 1905 he
decided to go to Nessenheide in Northern Germany, to be the tutor to three daughters of
Elizabeth Von Arnim, and came back to England at 1907. In 1910 October 18 he published his
book Howard End , which made him a celebrity overnight. During this time Forster had a
homosexual relationship with his friend Syed Ross Masood.

Since sometime after his friendship with Forster, Masood had been urging upon him
to turn to India, but he always remained indifferent. After reading Edward Corpenter's essay on
India. Forster's interest in India was sharpened. In 1912 came to India. Here he visited Delhi,
Lahor, Simla, Agra, Gwaliar, Chhatrapur, Jansi, Bhopal, Sanchi, Indore, Allahabad, Bankipore,
Buddh Gaya, Patiala, Jaipur, Hyderabad. In order to see real India as he said in A Passage To
India through Adella Quested. And came back to England in 1913, went with three unfinished
novel as he himself wrote in his dairy, they are Maurice, A Passage to India, Arctic Summer.

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 During First world war Forster got a chance to serve in Redcross as a Searcher, in
Alexandria, till 1919. After that in 1921 came to India for the aecond time to work as a private
secretory to Maharaja of Dewas. During this visit Forster participated in the festival
Gokulashtami, through this Forster understood that salvation can be achieved through love in
which spirituality and mundaneity mingle. In any case during January 1922 Forster resigned his
post and went to Egypt.

After spending time with Mahammed el Adl in Egypt , one of his homosexul partner,
Forster came back to England. During time in1922 Forster's Alexandria : A History and a Guide
was published. In may 1923 his Pharos and Pharillon was published. Forster was eagerly
working on A Passage to India since from 1922. Finally it was completed in January 1924.

After A Passage to India

In the 1930s and 1940s Forster became a successful broadcaster on BBC Radio and a
public figure associated with the British Humanist Asaociation. He was awarded a Benson
Medal in 1937. He was developed a friendship with Bob Bumkingham's family and with J R
Ackrley, the writer and the editor of The Listener. W, J, H . Sprott, Bejamin Britten , Siegfried
Sassoon, and Forrest Reid.

From 1925 until the death of Lily, Forster lived in West Hackhurst, Abinger Hammer,
finally leaving on or around 23 September 1946. On 14 April 1947 Forster went to USA to
delivered a lecture. From America Forster return to King's College.

In King's College Forster was elected an honorary fellow in 1946. He declined a

knighthood in 1949 and was made a companion of honour in 1953. In 1969 he was made a
member of order of Merit. Forster died in June 7, 1970, at the age of 91, at the home of
Buckingham.

His Works

It is true that compare to other writers Forster didnot write very much, but then it is
also true that he did not write very little. he is known for his five novels Beauman, a biographer
of Forster records Stephen Spender's opinion of foster as a novelist : " Sprnder, who consider
Morgan the best english novelist of this(20th) century said that 'he found the effect of knowing
Foster was that he became a kind of supplementary conscience tacked on to my own and
bringing what I imagine to Forsterian scruples to bear on my conduct'"

His Novels

1.Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905)

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 This novel is a social comedy of Anglo indian manners in ten chapters told by Foster's
characteristic third person narration The title suggests by a friend of foster's is taken from
Alexander Pope's essay on criticism the novel is set in England and Italy with the contrast
between the two countries and cultures a dominant theme.

The novel says much about foster's view of life as a whole that he should have chosen
to end his book by exposing the inadequacy of his hero's and heroine's love. He seems on the
whole to be indicating on essential sadness in life, a sadness which springs partly from the irony
of circumstances, partly from the difficulty,individual experience in trying to make a contact
with the real, partly from the difficulty inherent in the attempt to reconcile love.

The novel is about a Lilia a widow who later fall in love with a handsome Italian man
Gino, much younger than herself the main conflict in the novel is about Englishness and
italianess, and it portrays how love develop far beyond the boundaries.

2.The Longest Journey(1907)

This is a second novel by E.M.Foster, an invert buildingsroman novel following the

lame Rickie Elliott from cambridge to career as a struggling writer and then to a post as a school
master, and married to Agne Pembroke. In a series of scenes on the hills of wiltshire which
introduce Rickie's wild half brother Stephen Wonham.Foster attempt a kind of sublime related
to those of Thomas Hardy and D.H. Lawrence.

Trilling described the novel 'as perhaps the most brilliant, the most dramatic and most
passionate of his works', and it is almost certainly the most autobiographical but its
construction has puzzled many.

3. A Room With a View (1908)

This novel is based on the Italian theme, is a most lightest and most optimistic. Foster
started to write this novel as early as 1901, and exist in earlier forms referred to as 'Lucy'. The
book is about a young woman in the restrained culture of Edwardian era England. Lucy
Honeychurch's trip to Italy with her cousin, and the choice of she must make between the free-
thinking with George Emerson and the repressed aesthete Cecil Vyse. George's father Mr.
Emerson quotes thinkers who influenced Foster including Samuel Butler A Room with a View
was filmed by Merchant Ivory in 1985.

4.Howard End (1910)

Howard and was published on 18 october 1910 and faster with the publication of this
novel and with his two earlier novels almost overnight become a celebrity Howard End is an
ambitious "condition-of-England" novel concerned with different groups within the Edwardian

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middle class represented by the Schlegels(bohemian intellectuals), the Wilcoxes(thoughtless
plutocrats) and the Basts(struggling lowet-middle-class aspirants).

In this novel Faster explore the symbolic value of other objects and ideas including
money. Continually contrasting the seen with the unseen, the physical material world of the
Wilcox with the imaginative spiritual world of the Schlegels. Foster posit the possibility that
ultimately the universe has no meaning.

5.Maurice(1971)

This novel is written in 1913-14 published in 1971 after his death. It is a homosexual
love story which also returns to matters familiar with first three novels, such as the suburbs of
London in the English home countries the experience of attending Cambridge and the wild
landscape of Wiltshire the novel was controversial given that Fosters sexuality had not been
previously known or widely acknowledged.

These are very famous novels by Foster including A Passage to India which is later
discuss in my thesis.

SHORT STORIES

1.The Celestial Omnibus (and other stories) (1911)

2. The Eternal Moment and other stories (1928)

3.Collected Short Stories (1947) a combination of the above two titles, containing:

”The Story of a Panic”

”The Other Side of The Hedge”

”The Celestial Omnibus”

”Other Kingdom"

”The Curate’s Friend”

"The Road From Colonus”

”The Machine Stops”

”The Point of It”

”Mr Andrews”

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 ”Co-ordination”

”The Story Of The Cheesy Siren”

”The Eternal Moment"

3.The Life to Come and other stories (1972) (posthumous) containing the following stories
written between approximately 1903 and 1960:

“Ansell”

”Albergo Empedocle”

”The Purple Envelope”

”The Helping Hand”

“The Rock”

”The Life to Come”

"Dr Woolacott”

”Arthur Snatchfold”

"The Obelisk”

”What Does It Matter? A Morality”

”The Classical Annex”

”The Torque”

”The Other Boat”

”Three Courses and a Dessert: Being a New and Gastronomic Version of the Old Game
of Consequences”

"My wood”

PLAYS AND PAGEANTS ‘

1. Abinger Pageant (1934)

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2. England's Pleasant Land (1940)

FILM SCRIPTS

1. A Diary for Timothy (1945) (directed by Humphrey Jennings, spoken by Michael Redgrave)

LIBRETTO

1. Billy Budd (1951) (based on Melville’s novel, for the opera by Britten)

A Passage to India: A study

E M Forster secure his stage as one of the legend novelists in the history of English
literature. If a Forster would have written nothing besides A Passage to India even then,
perhaps, he would have occupied the same authoritative place in the field of English literature
that he enjoys after A Passage to India too. Among his six novels A Passage to India is a
masterpiece. Forster made his critics uneasy and caused them to feel how strangely elusive his
work is. Therefore according to Philip Gardner "one of the most common adjective the
reviewers and critics have applied to Forster's fiction is elusive I.A. Richard says Forster is "the
most puzzling figure in contemporary English letters". Particularly about A Passage to India
Brenda R Silver says it is "E M Forster's most enigmatic novel". F.R Leavis writes about the

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novel:"A Passage to India all criticism made is a classic: not only a most significant a document
or our age but a truly memorable work of literature". Whatever the critics said is all about A
Passage to India which made Forster to touch the acme of greatness.

Apart from all his mysterious narrative technique enigmatic ideas, A Passage to
India is a worthful document of the social and political situation of colonized India. The book A
Passage to India was published in 1924, and this was his best novel and most widely read novel,
while the book was a matter for controversy in England, it got success in America. Forster
himself wrote about the comparatively better success of A Passage to India in America than in
England:"A few years ago I wrote a book (A Passage to India) which dealt in a part with the
difficulties of the English in India. Feeling that they would have no difficulties in India
themselves the Americans read the book freely the more they read it the better it made them
feel and a cheque to the author was the result"

So here our main concern is A Passage to India, as a novel of great writer, as a novel
of much interest it has its own history, structure, theme, background as well as it creates
certain vibrations among the group of readers. Therefore through this thesis we can study all
those dimensions of the novel.

About the title A Passage to India

A literary text..... says at the very outset, what its title is. Perhaps the secrecy of literary
works begins with title themselves. Perhaps what makes a work 'literary' is in part that its title
remains enigmatic...... resists what Kermode refers to as 'the satisfaction of closure' and 'the
receipt of a message'. it is their readability and their resistance to being read that makes them
'literary'.

So here the title A Passage to India has its own significance as well as its own origin.
In his note to A Passage to India Forster himself wrote:"The title of the novel is from a poem of
Walt whitman's". The title of the poem is Passage to India the 'A' in the novel added by the
novelist

Here I am presenting an extract from the poem by Walt Whitman

Passage to India
Passage O soul to India!

Eclaircise the myths Asiatic, the primitive fables.

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Not you alone proud truths of the world!

Nor you alone ye facts of modern science,

But myths and fables of eld, Asia’s, Africa’s fables,

The far-darting beams of the spirit, the unloos’d dreams!

The deep diving bibles and legends,

The daring plots of the poets, the elder religions;

O you temples fairer than lilies pour’d over by the rising sun!

O you fables spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known, mounting to heaven!

You lofty and dazzling towers, pinnacled, red as roses, burnish’d with gold!

Towers of fables immortal fashion’d from mortal dreams!

You too I welcome and fully the same as the rest!

You too with joy I sing.

Passage to India!

Lo, soul, seest thou not God’s purpose from the first?

The earth to be spann’d, connected by network,

The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage,

The oceans to be cross’d, the distant brought near,

The lands to be welded together.

A worship new I sing,

You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours,

You engineers, you architects, machinists, yours,

You, not for trade or transportation only,

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But in God’s name, and for thy sake O soul.

.........................

.........................

Passage to more than India!

Are thy wings plumed indeed for such far flights?

O Soul, voyagest thou indeed on voyages like these?

Disportest thou on waters such as those?

Soundest below the Sanscrit and the Vedas?

Then have thy bent unleash’d.

Passage to you, your shores, ye aged fierce enigmas!

Passage to you, to mastership of you, ye strangling problems!

You, strew’d with the wrecks of skeletons, that, living, never reach’d you.

Passage to more than India!

O secret of the earth and sky!

Of you O waters of the sea! O winding creeks and rivers!

Of you O woods and fields! Of you strong mountains of my land!

Of you O prairies! of you, gray rocks!

O morning red! O clouds! O rain and snows!

O day and night, passage to you!

O sun and moon, and all you stars! Sirius and Jupiter!

Passage to you!

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Passage, immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins!

Away O soul! hoist instantly the anchor!

Cut the hawsers—haul out—shake out every sail!

Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough?

Have we not grovell’d here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes?

Have we not darken’d and dazed ourselves with books long enough?

Sail forth— steer for the deep waters only,

Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,

For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,

And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

O my brave soul!

O farther farther sail!

O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God?

O farther, farther, farther sail!

Whitman wrote this poem on the occasion of the completion of Suez canal and
Pacific railroad in 1868. The Suez canal and Pacific railroad connected to the west with the east,
and the novel being an importuning for an entent between the Anglo Indian community and
the native Indians, the title of it is very appropriate. The 'passage' urged for both in the poem
and in the novel is not merely of the body but also of the soul.

The poet's prophecy was that the opening of the Suez canal and the Pacific railroad
was only symbolical of the future mutual merging of Nature and Man, of continents, of
elements and of oceans. The opening was symbolical of the voyage to 'more than India'
because the voyage towards the East and not so much a geographical voyage as it was a
spiritual one. the poet says that the purpose of the passage will not be trade or transportation

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only, but also the enlightenment of the soul. The passage will be from The teeming spiritual
darkness to the land of the old occult 'Brahma' and 'Junior Buddha'. It is for this reason that the
'Passage to India' is actually 'Passage to more than India'. In A Passage to India as we shall see,
the ultimate message is of spiritual Union of sympathetic fusion of the west with the east, of
the Anglo Indian with the Indians; the message is of cementing the two divergents.

Historical setting of the novel

The history of the writing of A Passage to India throws back to 1912-13 because
Forster visited India in 1912 -13, and after he returned to England he started to write the novel
A Passage to India in April 1913. It is a peak time of British colonisation in India. During his first
visit to India Forster meet Maharaja and other those who are stand as a model to the
characters in the novel A Passage to India. At his first visit the novel was partly drafted

In 1921 Foster received a call from Maharaja of Dewas, who asked him to take up
the vacant post of secretary and in response to the call he came to India for the second time in
1921, and he went back to England in 1922. Foster told his mother: "another attraction is that I
have began a novel on India and would finish it—it is stuck now because all the details of India
are vague in my mind"

After being kept in abeyance for about ten years the novel was taken up again in the
aftermath of Forster's second trip to India in 1921. During the second trip Forster had has his
unfinished manuscript with him. For the sake of A Passage to India the trip was a success.
During this period Forster enjoyed social interaction and got affection and admiration from all.
He also had an intimate glimpse of India, and with with its creative life affirming chaos, the
gokula astami festival deep and his understanding of Hinduism and gave him the inspiration
needed for the final section of the novel.

Boehmer holds that A Passage to India remains 'a historically important novel for its
scathing exposition of a social and ethical classification under the Raj'. After nearly a decade
Forster worked carefully around two years. It came out in 1924 and immediately elicited mixed
reaction. Over all it also reached out for beyond the specific 'historical', 'social' moment.

Themes
Theme is the statement that the text seems to be making about subjects. Chambers
Twentieth Century Dictionary (1981) writes that the theme is "a subject set or proposed for
discussion or spoken or written about". English word 'theme' derived from the Greek word
thema which means 'to place'. The "theme of the work is not its subject but rather its central
idea, which may be stated directly or indirectly. For example the theme of Othello is jealousy.

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It is not easy task to identify the theme or themes of this so complex novel A Passage to India.
Nevertheless Benita Parry, in her article Passage to More Than India, has given us a hint about
the possible theme of the novel. She has written: "....... A Passage to India is so difficult and
intricate a book, critics who will continue to debate its meaning. But it does seem important to
single out, as I have tried to one important feature that the book is an interpretation of India,
traditionally a land of mysterious and muddles, and an interpretation of its impact on those
who live in it and on the aliens who come to it". But we can find some important themes as
below.

1.India
There any central theme in the novel around which the other themes revolve like satellites.
Forster himself gave a hint to the central theme of the novel in a letter to his friend Darling,
written on 15 September, 1924. He wrote in that letter: “King’s [King’s College, Cambridge]
stands for personal relationships, and these still seem to me the most real things on the surface
of the earth, but I have acquired a feeling that people must go away from each other
(spiritually) every now and then, and improve themselves if the relationship is to develop or
even endure. A Passage to India describes such a going away-preparatory to the next advance,
which I am not capable of describing. It seems to me that individuals progress alternately by
loneliness and intimacy, and that legend of the multiplied Krishna (...) serves as a symbol of a
state where the two might be combined. The ‘King’s’ view over-simplified people: that I think
was its defect. We are more complicated, also richer, than it knew, and affection grows more
difficult than it used to be, and also more glorious’” (Furbank, II, 124). But in a letter to
Dickinson, written on 26 June 1924, Forster wrote something different. He wrote that the
theme of A Passage to India was India. He was explaining to Dickinson the necessity of the cave
episode in the novel, which some readers had objected to. He wrote to Dickinson about the
cave episode, whereby he made it plain that the theme of the novel was India: “‘It’s [the cave
episode is] a particular trick I felt justified in trying because my theme was India. It [the cave
episode] sprang straight from my subject matter. I wouldn’t have attempted it in other
countries, which though they contain mysteries or muddles, manage to draw rings round
them’” (emphasis added) (op. cit., H, 125). In a letter to William Plomer, written in 1934, Forster
restated what he earlier said to Dickinson about the theme of the novel A Passage to India: “‘I
tried to show that India is an unexplainable muddle by introducing an unexplained muddle—
Miss Quested’s experience in the cave. When asked what happened there, /don’t know’”

So we find that there are more than one themes in A Passage to India. But the themes of a
novel can be divided into two categories: dominant or main theme or themes, and subordinate
or secondary theme or themes. Marjorie Boulton, in her The Anatomy of the Novel, writes that
“It would be too rash a generalisation to say that every serious novel has some dominant

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theme; but ‘it is often both possible and helpful to find one”. Now, if we accept Boulton’s
contention, then we may raise the question: what is the dominant theme of A Passage to India?
Critics certainly would not agree to consider a particular theme of this novel to be its dominant
theme, but if we take Forster’s statement, mentioned just a while ago, that his theme in the
novel was India (“my theme was India”) to be an honest confession, then we may say that the
dominant theme of the novel happens to be India, and that the themes of friendship, cultural
conflicts, psychological distance between the colonisers and the colonised, and, in a wider
sense, the theme of human life in its entirety, are all the secondary themes of the novel. Oliver
Stallybrass says that A Passage to India was adjudged by most early critics to be a political
novel, but such critics, as Leonard Woolf, L.P. Hartley and John Middleton Murry, think that
though the novel grew principally out of the relation between the British colonisers and the
colonised Indians, the novel (like Shakespeare’s Hamlet) soon went beyond its normal bourne
and reached out to the limitless cosmic region. Stallybrass writes that some critics of the novel
“did notice something transcending the social and political problems of a particular group of
people [of India] at a particular moment of history. Leonard Woolf, for example, inverting a
sentence about Mrs Moore, felt that ‘beyond the remotest silence there is again an echo;’ L.P.
Hartley saw the book [A Passage to India] as ‘intensely personal and...intensely cosmicg’ while
John Middleton Murry, heading his review ‘Bou-oum or Ou-boum?,’ concluded that Forster
spent most of the last fourteen years ‘not in writing this very fine novel, but in wondering
whether there was indeed anything on earth, or in the heavens above, or in the waters under
the earth, worth writing about.’ Such comments,...hint at what Forster himself has more than
once explicitly confirmed, namely that ‘the book [A Passage to India] is not really about politics,
though it is the political aspect of it that caught the general public and made it sell. It’s about
something wider than politics, about the search of the human race for a more lasting home,
about the universe as embodied in the Indian earth and the Indian sky, about the horror lurking
in the Marabar Caves and the release symbolized by the birth of Krishna. It [A Passage to I ndia]
is-or rather desires to be--philosophic and poetic...” (Stallybrass, 25). Therefore, let us say that
the dominant theme of the novel is “‘the search of the human race for a more lasting home,
about the universe as embodied in the Indian earth and the Indian sky, about the horror lurking
in the Marabar Caves and the release symbolized by the birth of Krishna’” and that the
dominant theme is philosophical (or spiritual) and poetic, all other themes of the novel being
peripheral, satellitic.

2. Friendship
The novel is, in fact, about the possibility of the growth of friendship or amity between the
two peoples, or two races, or two nations-the governing or colonising English and the governed
or colonised Indians. Diana Neill, in her A Short History of the English Novel, writes about A
Passage to India: “The novel presents a masterly study of racial antagonism‘two great races

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with different heritage and history, neither desiring to understand the other, and one of them
in the wrong place’” (Neill, 349). But Forster, in this novel, has not been interested only in the
antagonism between the two races, or two peoples, he has also been interested in the
possibility of friendship between the two different races or peoples-the English and the Indians,
on the individual level and on the level of the group. It may be pointed out here that the matter
of friendship was of immense value to Forster. In his short autobiographical essay ‘I Believe,’ he
has been over-enthusiastic or almost idolatrous about friendship: “...if I had to choose between
betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my
country” (George Allen and Unwin, 43). A Passage to India begins with Aziz and Mrs Moore
becoming fast friends on the spur of the moment, and it closes with no possibility, in the
foreseeable future, of a sort of friendship between Aziz and Fielding, suggesting that in the
proximate future the English and the Indians could not even dream of coming to terms with
each other. The friendship that grew between Aziz and Adela also ended in a fiasco, in the
middle of the novel, due to their mutual misunderstandings. But, near the end of it we see the
misunderstanding fizzling out and, though by then Adela, back in England, remained far away
from her former friend Aziz, their once clouded friendship began to dimly shine, like the sun
from behind a nimbus: he called her a friend of his, and she reciprocated his gesture of amity by
expressing her love for him. In the penultimate chapter of the novel we hear Ralph telling Aziz
that Adela still loved him: “‘In her letters, in her letters. She loved you.’” And in the closing
chapter of the novel (chapter 37), we learn that Aziz had written a “charming letter” (which he
carried with him) to be sent to Adela, in which he virtually adulated her: “He [Aziz] wanted to
thank his old enemy [Adela] for her fine behaviour two years back: perfectly plain was it now
that she had behaved well.”

So much about the problem of a friendship or personal relationship at the level of

individuals, but there are problems of a friendship are an amity between two groups of
individuals belonging to two different culture as well.

3. Hindus and Muslims

We must be cautious about searching after a single theme in A Passage to India, for, as
we have already said, the novel is very complex, having in it the possibility of coexistence of a
multiplicity of themes. The Indian scenario of the subtle and complex relationship between the
Hindus and the Muslims is yet another theme of the novel, a subordinate theme though it is.
Among the Indian characters of the novel, Muslims constitute the majority. In fact Forster’s
acquaintances in India were mostly Muslims, and he had less knowledge about the Hindus than
about the Muslims, and so this is very natural. In A Passage to India, the story is really
dominated by the Muslim character of Aziz as well as by other minor Muslim characters. Leonel
Trilling justly writes: “Aziz and his friends are Moslems, and with Moslems of the business and

15
professional class the plot of the novel [A Passage to India] deals almost entirely” (Trilling, 1959,
131). Hindu characters, on the other hand, except Professor Godbole, are fewer than Muslim
characters, and are of lesser importance; but, yet, Hinduism is certainly a major theme of the
novel. Leonel Trilling again writes: “But the story is suffused with Hinduism. It is Mrs. Moore
who carries the Hindu theme; it is Mrs. Moore, indeed, who is the story. The [Hindu] theme is
first introduced by Mrs. Moore observing a wasp” . Leonel Trilling then writes: “The presence of
the wasp, first in Mrs. Moore’s consciousness, then in Godbole’s. Mrs. Moore’s acceptance of
the wasp, Godbole’s acceptance of Mrs. Moore-in some symbolic fashion, this is the thread of
the story of the novel as distinguished from its plot. For the story is essentially concerned with
Mrs. Moore’s discovery that Christianity is not adequate”. Thus we see that there is a
multiplicity of theme in the novel, each theme ineluctably interwoven with others. The
component themes of A Passage to India are related with Indian problems, international or
inter-cultural problems, problems of friendship between persons of divergent cultures and
climes, problems of amity or harmony between two different religions, and with the possibility
of communion with the spiritual Absolute or ultimate divinity and the possibility of the
universal love flooding the earth, being emanated from the divine spiritual Absolute. It is for
this reason that Leonel Trilling is quite correct when he says that A Passage to India “is not
about India alone; it is about all of human life”.

Thus Forster interweave a number of strands of ideas into the several themes of the
novel, which together eventually lead to the complex and ambivalent thematic of the novel.

Plot
In 1959 Forster said, “Proust has shown me a little what it is to be both delicate and deep as a
novelist” (Dowling 84). Forster was attracted by both the authors, and is supposed to have trod
the midway between tradition and innovation. Although he had expressed his indebtedness as
a novelist to Austen, Butler and Proust in the same breath, it was Proust who attracted him
more than the others. About Proust, Forster, says: he “offers his work as the symbolist autotelic
artifact.” Forster himself was considerably influenced by Proust’s narrative technique. In his
diary (7 May 1922) he notes: “Have made careful and uninspiring additions to my Indian novel,
influenced by Proust.”

Forster believed that the ultimate field of action for the arts was that of the “unseen” and had a
strong inclination towards the ‘musical’ which, he hoped, would help him grasp and project his
vision of the “unseen” in a more effective manner. “Perhaps it only could be done through
music. But that is what has lured him on.” Forster has repeatedly highlighted his belief in the
close link between the visionary power of the writer and the expressive evocative power of the
musician. In Aspects, Forster indicated what he meant by using the device of music in the

16
literary context; it meant for him the rhythmic recurrence of motifs, themes, images, ideas,
phrases, or the direct insertion of a song, prophetic in its tenor and suggestion.

Thus the ‘human plot’ is throughout supplemented by another, a ‘verbal plot.’ The symbols and
rhythm are the most exquisite as well as the most prominent features of this ‘verbal plot', but
the interwoven themes as well as the characters contributed it is in subtle ways.

Now, let us see the plot of A Passage to India, and here we cannot do better than fully quote
what Leonel Trilling, in his E.M. Forster, has written as the plot of the novel: “This, in outline, is
the plot [of A Passage to India]: Adela Quested arrives in India under the chaperonage of the
elderly Mrs. Moore with whose son by a first marriage Adela has an ‘understanding.’ Both
ladies are humane and Adela is liberal and they have an intense desire to ‘know India.’ This is a
matter of some annoyance to Ronny, Mrs. Moore’s son and Adela’s fiance, and of amused
condescension to the dull people at the station who try to satisfy the ladies with elephant rides-
only very few" people try to know India. Both Mrs. Moore and Adela are chilled by Ronny; he
has entirely adopted the point of view of the ruling race and has become a heavy-minded
young judge with his dull dignity as his chief recognized asset. But despite Ronny’s fussy
certainty about what is and is not proper, Mrs. Moore steps into a mosque one evening and
there makes the acquaintance of Aziz, a young Moslem doctor. Aziz is hurt and miserable, for
he has just been snubbed; Mrs. Moore’s kindness and simplicity soothe him. Between the two a
friendship develops Which politely includes Adela Quested. At last, by knowing Indians, the
travellers will know India, and Aziz is even more delighted than they at the prospect of the
relationship. To express his feelings he organizes a fantastically elaborate jaunt to the Marabar
Caves. Fielding, the principal of the local college, and Professor Godbole, a Hindu teacher, were
also to have been of the party but they miss the train and Aziz goes ahead with the ladies and
his absurd retinue. In one of the caves Mrs Moore has a disturbing psychic experience and
sends Aziz and Adela to continue the exploration Without her. Adela, not a very attractive girl,
has had her doubts about her engagement to Ronny, not a very attractive man, and now she
ventures to speak of love to Aziz, quite abstractly but in a way both to offend him and disturb
herself. In the cave the strap of her field-glasses is pulled and broken by someone in the
darkness and she rushes out in a frenzy of hallucination that Aziz has attempted to rape her.
The accusation makes the English of the station hysterical With noble rage. In every English
mind there is the certainty that Aziz is guilty and the verdict is foregone. Only Fielding and Mrs.
Moore do not share this certainty. Fielding, because of his liking for the young doctor, and Mrs.
Moore, because of an intuition, are sure that the event could not have happened and that
Adela is the victim of illusion. Fielding, Who openly declares hi5 partisanship, is ostracized, and
Mrs. Moore, who only hints her opinion, is sent out of the country by her son; the journey in
the terrible heat of the Indian May exhausts her and she dies on shipboard. At the trial Adela’s

17
illusion, fostered by the mass-hysteria of the English, becomes suddenly dispelled, she recants,
Aziz is cleared, Fielding is vindicated and promoted, the Indians are happy, the English furious”

There may be a multiplicity of incidents or episodes in a novel, but there must be a unity
or singleness of plot in it, the divers incidents or episodes making the single structure of the
plot. But the unity or singleness of the plot does not preclude it from being thought to have
three overlapping parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end.

The story of outline

Faster had indeed the reservation about the conventional place of 'story' in the novel. What
Forster offers here is more like the facade of a story. Two British ladies, one young and the
other old, come from England to India during the colonial days before the first Great War. The
younger lady, Adela Quested, has come to see India, where her betrothed, Ronny Heaslop, has
been working for the ‘empire.’ She wants to ‘see’ the place before she settles down here. Mrs
Moore, who is Adela’s friend as well as prospective mother-in-law, has come to India with no
such definable purpose. But coming here she is thrilled by the bright night-sky, the shimmering
river. With her intuitive sympathy Mrs Moore can overcome racial and cultural barriers at ease.
Thus she strikes an instant friendship with Dr Aziz, a young Muslim doctor, on their first
meeting inside a mosque.

However, Mrs Moore and Adela, with their liberal-humanistic mental and temperamental
make-up find it hard to adjust with their clan here--a set of haughty, alien rulers of India, who
live in their exclusive cocoon at the ‘British’ part of Chandrapore. The two newcomers try to
reach out to the Indians. But their attempt is frustrated owing to the mutually exclusive ways of
life, which is maintained both by the rulers and the ruled.

At this turn, a tea-party is thrown in the honour of the two ladies by Fielding, a non-conformist
Englishman, who teaches in the local college of Chandrapore, and Who has some Indian friends.
It is during this party t at Dr Aziz, on a momentary impulse, casually invites the two ladies to the
Marabar Caves. Aziz does not know what the caves are like; he has never visited them. It has
been only mentioned that the caves are ‘extraordinary.’ Godbole, a Hindu professor in
Fielding’s college, who seems to know a lot more, does not enlighten them any further.

It appears soon that neither the host nor the guests were very keen about the invitation to the
caves. But the ball had been set rolling, and they had to execute the plan, even if for the sake of
politeness and social consideration only. Aziz takes great care to make the picnic a grand
success. He plans elaborately, spends a lot, even to the extent of requisitioning an elephant. It
seems indeed a success, but only until they reach the caves.

18
Once they enter the caves everything is changed for the two outsiders. For Mrs Moore the cave
has been a terrible experience; the darkness, the stench, the suffocation, and above all a
terrifying echo nullify for her all the meaning of existence, even God or love. With all her values
and faith being suddenly drained dry of any meaning, she “sat motionless with horror.” She has
no more any energy to go further, to think, or even to write a letter. The cave has forced on her
a crisis of faith.

For Adela, on the other hand, it is a crisis of conduct. When Mrs Moore, after her first cave,
cannot go ahead any more, Adela, out of politeness, accompanies Aziz. But, on entering a cave
all by herself, she has a sudden feeling of being assaulted by someone. She runs scampering
and stumbling down on the other side of the hill and is escorted by another English lady who
had been incidentally passing by. Aziz escorts the rest of the party back to Chandrapore, happy
at the completion of a hard task, and is immediately arrested on the charge of assaulting Adela
in one of the caves.

Bitter hostility follows Aziz’s arrest, and the latent mistrust, suspicion and hatred between the
British residents and the local Indians flare up to mad proportions. The only sane voice to be
heard at this moment is that of Fielding, the non-conformist, liberal, humanist Englishman who
refuses to subscribe to the collective ego. Finally, it is the day of the trial. In the meantime, the
two communities, the British and the Indian, have drifted wide apart; mutual hostility has
reached an all-time high. The entire city gears up for the trial.

During the trial, Aziz’s lawyer, Ali, bluntly accuses the city magistrate of suppressing evidence.
He claims that the magistrate has deliberately packed off his mother, Mrs Moore, because she
was favourably disposed towards Aziz. As Ali shouts out “Mrs Moore!”like an invocation, the
name is picked up by the eager crowd jostling inside the court room and gathering outside, and
then the echo of the name is carried like wave through the crowd, like the echoic reverberation
of some mystic mantra or hymn,-“Esmiss Esmoore.”

The infinitely repeated syllables-“Esmiss Esmoore”-act on Adela in a strange way. They restore
Adela to her clarity, dispel her confusion, and she acknowledges her mistake. As a result, Dr Aziz
is unconditionally acquitted. A great victory procession is taken out. Celebrations take place in
the Indian camp. After this Adela’s engagement with Ronny breaks off as a matter of course.
She goes back to England. In the meantime, Mrs Moore has already died on her way back to
England. Thus the story seems to have come to a close with the end of the second section.

However, another section is added, in which Dr Aziz appears in the native state of Man; after
his embittering experience with the British, Aziz has chosen to quit British India and take a job
in a native state, where he now lives with his three children. Aziz’s old friend Fielding, now
married, comes to Mau as state guest, along with his wife and brother-in-law who happen to be

19
Mrs Moore’s children. The misunderstanding which had taken place between the two friends
and had kept them apart over the last two years is cleared up as they reunite under sheets of
rain in the warm shallow water of the local river during the immersion ceremony of Lord
Krishna.

This is followed by one more chapter, the last one in the novel, in which Aziz and Fielding, are
seen taking their last ride together along the hilly tracts of Man. The estranged friends are now
reconciled\ once more, “friends again, yet aware they would meet no more".

Narrative Stucture of the Novel

The structure of the novel has been carefully planned along an elaborate pattern of
three. Forster used this pattern in most of his novels. In the case of A Passage to India this
pattern also followes to a particular rhythm. Structurally the novel is clearly located in three
different space, they are masque, caves and temple.

1. Masque
The first eleven chapters of the novel come under this part through this chapter Foster
told about the location Chandrapur mainly introduced some important characters Aziz,
Mrs,Moore and Adela Quested.This part serves to bring different people closer to each other in
a bridge party as well as in the party. in the very beginning of this chapter we came to know
that there is a question about the friendship between Englisher and Indians.

The ‘Mosque’ section already combines the requisites of realistic fiction-its locale, time and
setting-and the evocative symbolic dimension which is the unique feature of this novel; at the same time
it serves as the introduction to this elaborate three-part structure, the first part of the three-part
symphony. It forms the first segment in the multi-layered tripartite pattern of friendship-hostility-
renewed friendship, love-separation-union, good-evil-good, mundane-extraordinary-transcendence,
spring. summer-rain.

2. Caves
For Indians caves or mountains are associated with spiritualism and ascetic. The
Indianess shows the caves are made for meditation, enlightment. Here in the novel Forster
brilliantly makes use of such common things about a mountain and give a turn to the track of
whole story. from the chapter 11th to 21 chapter are come under the part of caves in this
novel. Critics like Boehmer interpret the cave as 'a complex figure of infinity', the word cave in
Indian context present a banch of terror and mystery.

During his first visit to India Forster visited the Buddhist sites of bodhgaya and
Barabar Hills in January 1913. He was a supposed to say later that the case were "not all that

20
remarkable" until they got into his books; and he improved them. The description of this trip
includes even the elephant ride, the 'Crow's swing', the tents, the breakfast, and the caves with
the echo.

Forster made his caves darker than the original devoid of any decoration as he
intended to use them as a structural and symbolic device. A pivotal point in the structure, in
order to mean something more. As Forster himself said in an interview:

The marabar caves represent an area in which concentration can take place. A
cavity.... They were something to focus everything up.

3.Temple
Temple part is a shortest part in the novel, from 33 chapter to the end. In order to
wash away the chaos of the cave section Forster wrote this phase with a description of Hindu
festival Krishna janmashtami. Forster himself says about this part:

" It was architecturally necessary. I needed a lump or a Hindu temple if you like a mountain is
standing up. It is well placed; and it gather up some strings. But there ought to be more after it
the lump sticks out a little too much".

In an unpublisher piece of reminiscence called "three countries" Forster said that

the three parts represents his three personal introduction to the three communities: the
Muslims the Anglo Indian and the Hindu. But in his notes to the Everyman edition of the novel
he wrote that the three section into which it(A Passage to India) is divided masque, caves,
temples also represent the three reason of the Cold weather the Hot weather and the rains,
which divided the Indian year.

The structure thus presents a frame for the interwoven themes, but at the same
time it is a much more than that. The structure is made to correspond to the themes of the
novel, and become part of the rhythmic schema of the novel as well. The structure helps the
reader to focus on the 'Pattern' of the novel in the sense of Forster would have used the term.
Furthermore, this pattern does not offer an easily definable, happy or unhappy resolution.

Symbols in the novel

E M Forster is one of the few writers such has Franz kafka, Herman Melville, William
Golding, John Millington Syngy, Maurice Maeterlinck ,use symbols the most as tools in their

21
novels. Symbolism is called an equipment for living. Literature become artistic by the use of
symbolism it gives enjoyment to the readers. According to S T Coloridge:"A symbol is
characterized by a translucence of the special in the individual or the general in the especially
or of the universe in the general". The Oxford companion to the English language explain the
term 'symbol' as something that represent something else such as a drawing of a heart has
traditionally been regarded has the seat of emotion and especially of a love while the arrow
indicates being stricken or wondered.

Although Forster was not too happy with the term 'symbol' and preferred the more
flexible, vibrant device of rhythm, still he elaborately used symbols to make a meanings in this
novel. In the case of A Passage to India E M Forster used number of symbols. Major symbols are
masque, the cave, the temple, the sky, the sun, the echo and so on. The novel A Passage to
India itself may be said to be structurally and in its purport symbolic. However the most
widespread symbol of the novel are: Masque, Cave and Temple, which well correspond to the
three headings of the three blocks of the novel.Reuben A Browser writes in this regard "The
main symbol of A Passage to India are named in the title to the three part of the novel:
Masque, Caves Temple. Each is more or less closely related to a corresponding variant:
Arch,Echo and Sky. Each conveys a generalized impression of a salient object or event in the
narrative, an impression that stands for and is inseparable connected with various large
meanings.

1. Mosque

Brower says that "The mosque comes to symbolise the possibility of communication
between Britons and Indians and more generally the possibility of understanding relationship
between any two persons. And in every instance this larger meaning always implies its opposite
or near opposite and ambivalence finally suggested by the first description of the mosque"

2. Cave

The caves of the second part of the novel are a symbol with elusive befuddling but
profound significance. The cave symbol is Central to the novel and bear a wider range and
deeper layer of a meaning. There are twelve caves at least in Marbar hills and according to the
people the best ones are on the Kawa Dol. A Passage to India Bankipore has been the model
of Chandrapur and the Barabar hills and the Barabar caves have been the templates of the
Marabar hills and the Marabar caves.

The cave of India may be taken almost as an identifying mark of her. In A Passage to
India Forster has just been hit upon the very right symbol of India—the cave symbol, which is
related to all the autochthonous people of India: Hindu, Buddhist and Jain. The caves are bland,
and yet they signify much; they signify the fundamental spiritual nature of India, according to

22
which all is but "boum", and according to which "Everything exist, nothing has value" — all is
void, all is one and void. Norman Douglas in his classic Old Calabria writes about the
significance of the caves of India "cave-worship is older than any god or devil. It is the cult of a
feminine principle— a relic of the aboriginal obsession of mankind to shelter in some Cloven
Rock of Ages, in the sacred womb of Mother Earth who gives us food and receives us after
death".

It may be mentioned here that Forster's ever first impression of an Indian cave was
accompanied by the idea of sexuality, perhaps due to the feminine contour of the caves, and
that in the earlier version of A Passage to India he gave an actual sexual significance to the cave
incident. In that sense Adela's name was went about the cave incident. But only in the final
version did Forster completely change his mind and turned the sexual significance into a
spiritual meaning. This is why in the final version nothing tangible happens in the cave, or what
actually has happened are not even Adela knows.

But the Marbar caves mean much more than muddledom or mystery—the muddledom or
mystery of India that are revealed itself before Adela through her experience in the cave.

The Marabar caves has been variously interpreted by critics as R.J. Lewis observes:
"For Forster, the caves represent an India entirely separate from that of the British or the
Indians—they symbolize the timelessness of the Indian earth as its enduring qualities, for the
Marabar hills are pointedly described as 'imemorial' and 'older than anything in the world'.
Lewis further observes, "the Marabar is the ultimate embodiment of the in significance of a
human beings in an ominous landscape that mocks their notions of self-importance".

However in the long run this enormity too seems but illusory. The description of the
intense days of the trial and the excitement of the victory procession is wounded up with the
ironical observation, "The Marabar Caves had been a terrible strain on the local administration:
the altered a good many lives and wrecked several careers, but they did not break up a
continent or even dislocate a District". Incidentally, to Ronny's limited mind it seems a
troublesome problem that "the Marabar Caves were notoriously like one another", and as a
solution he decides, rather funnily, "indeed, in the future they were to be numbered in
sequence with white paint".

3. Sky

In the brief opening chapter of the novel we have an elaborate a reference to the sky;
indeed nearly half of the chapter devoted to the sky, which hangs over Chandrapore—both the
chaotic Indian part of the town as well as the British Chandrapore or 'Civil Station' with its neat
pattern of 'sensibly' planned bungalows and roads intersecting each other at right angles. The
two Chandrapore have nothing common between them accepting the "overarching sky" which

23
seems to hang over both in the form of a huge "done".Then we are introduced to the subtle
changes of the sky during daytime, though reminded that the "core of a blue" remains
unchanged through the diunal and nocturanal circle.

The "overarching" sky, this insufficiently illuminated huge arch a vision of a

macrocosmic sky is replicated at the entrance point of the mosque as described in chapter II.
From his position inside the mosque Aziz as a glimpse "into three archads whose darkness was
illuminated by a small hanging lamp and by the moon". This is as it were, the microcosmic
image of the macrocosm that the sky represents. Both the sky and arch suggest, by enacting the
idea of a great curve including everything under it, the sense of infinity as well as the harmony
of an inclusive order. The view of the arcades seems to soothe Aziz's mind in its perturbed
condition and it is under these arcades, that the wonderful 'understanding of the hearts' will
take place.

The sky is further perceived as "strong" and "enormous", and it derives strength
from the sun, whereas the size is a determined by the position of the human veiwer on the
earth. So seen from Chandrapore, the expanse of the sky—"endless" in every direction is
"interrupted" towards the South by "a group of fists and fingers" suddenly thrust up from the
soil. Thus the sky symbol is introduced at the very opening of the novel as an image evoking and
conjuring the sense of an immeasurable, infinite, mysterious order which holds and includes
everything under its great arch.

Where has the first chapter of the novel give an elaborate description of the sky,
and the last sentence, indeed the last day, of the novel has been reserved for sky, 'No, not
there'. This 'there' is the earth, the limited, finite aspect of life. Yet, there is at least one
moment—this is during the days of Krishna festival_ when the two seem reconciled; as Aziz,
riding along the outskirts of Mau, looks down from above into the 'great Mau tank', "which lay
exposed beneath him..... Reflecting the evening clouds, it filled the neither world with an equal
splendour so that Earth and sky leant towards one another, about to clash in ecstasy".

The very difference in the respective ways Mrs Moore and her son look up at
the same moonlit sky, brings out the essential difference of the two, the insensitiveness of one,
and the imaginative aesthetic adequacy of the other regarding the mysterious beauty that
surrounded and looked over them. While one looks at the moon without 'seeing' it, the other is
thrilled by it into a mystic intuition of a 'kinship' with the world.

The sky is sensible, and reflects the moods of the characters of the novel. The
personified sky had the prescience that her joy would soon turned into horror, and so, as the
narrator tells us in the chapter 14, "As she spoke the sky to the left turned angry orange". The
sky was not biased or partial to either the English or the Indians. The sky was also capable of

24
thinking and meditating.however it may be that Foster created the symbol of the sky taking a
cue from what whitman poem passage to India has the following lines of it suggest

Passage to more than India!

O secret of the earth and sky!

O day and night, passage to you!

O sun and moon and all your stars! Sirius and Jupiter!

Passage to you!

3. Earth

The earth in its various forms of mud, dust, dirt, frustrating stretches of plain land and in
its extremely hardened manifestation— the rocks, brings out one of the strands of the
intricately and musically interwoven texture of the novel.

In the first chapter the earth, in the form of a distant rocks, appeared to disturb the serene
expanse of the sky at the southern end of Chandrapore. "Only in the South where a group of a
fists and fingers are thrust up through the soil, in the endless expance interrupted". These are
the Marabar hills, containing the extraordinary caves. There is also the hint about the possibility
of leopards and snakes coming down from the Marabar hills. On the eve of setting out for the
hills, Aziz is worried like anything: "trouble after trouble encountered him, because he had
challenged the spirit of the Indian earth, which tries to keep men in compromise".

Earth, thus symbolises forces of hostility and division:it is the epitome of the finite in contrast
to the infinite sky, and chaotic concretized model in contrast to the elusive order of mystery.

4. Echo

The echo generated in the Marbar caves is another major symbol in the novel. While
the cave symbol occupies almost the whole length of the 'Caves' section, the symbol of the
echo occupies only about three pages of the chapter 14 of the Caves part of the book and it this
symbol carries with it a great significance. Like the cave symbol, the symbol of echo is also
hardly comprehensible, is rather mysterious. Before entering into the discussion on the
significance of the echo in the novel, I would like to present Thomas Bulfinch's opinion about
Echo in his work The Golden Age of Myth and Legend, he says "You shall forfeit the use of the
tongue with to which you have cheated me, except for that one purpose you are so fond of—
reply. You shall still have the last word but no power to speak first". Therefore, if Forster has
used the word Echo with the mythological meaning, the word then means 'replay' or mere
repetition without any originality, and Forster has perhaps done so.

25
 As the Marabar caves were unique, and unlike the other caves in India, so were the
terrifying echo of the Marbar caves. Miss Adela Quested, a physically weak, nervous girl,
experience with the echo long after she had run out of the terrifying cave in which she felt to be
the victim of Aziz sexual aggression. In chapter 24, we are told that when the English,
collectively, pulling up for a legal action against Aziz, Adela was perhaps imagine her cross-
examination by Mr Amritrao. It was then that she heard the echo. She said: "My echo has come
back again badly". She was offered aspirin but she refused, saying it was not headache. She
experienced a buzzing sound in her ears, After Aziz was set free but the court, as Adela
withdrew her case against him, we are told in chapter 24, Adela no more heard the buzzing
sound—the echo. She said: My echo has gone—I call the buzzing sound in my ears an echo. You
see I have been unwill ever since that expendition to the caves, and possibly before it'. She
thought she was suffering from 'hallucination' and from 'half-pressure', perhaps due to her
marriage jactitation and her wistful and oneiric thought about Aziz.

This the significance of the echo may be found in what the echo itself murmurs to the ears
of this frightened and fatigue Mrs Moore, after she came out of the only cave she entered into:
"Pathos, piety, courage—they exist, but are identical and so is filth. Everything exists nothing
has value". This is also what 'Boum' signifies—nullity. But the echo does not only signify nullity
it also signifies a panic and repetitiousness Adela heard the buzzing sound, the echo, when she
was absurdly afraid of being cross-examined by Amrithrao in the rape case against Aziz, and
after she withdrew the case, she no more hard it. Therefore we may perhaps say that the echo
symbolise a nullity or value neutrality in explicable panic under shattering repetitiousness.

Thus Forster's use of symbols as also his 'rhythms' reflect this ambition of 'expressing
the inexpressible' mystery, which obviously required a poetic, evocative language rather than
the transparent, well-define statement of prose.

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