The Significance of the Title of "A Passage to India" by E.M. Forster


Introduction: The Source of the Title

“Passage O soul to India!
----
Passage to India!
Lo, soul! seest thou not God’s purpose from the first?            
----------
A worship new I sing,            
You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours,            
You engineers, you architects, machinists, yours,            
You, not for trade or transportation only,
But in God’s name, and for thy sake, O soul. 
--"A Passage to India" 
by Walt Whitman      
     

Walt Whitman in his poem "Passage to India" wants the soul to take a journey to India for further advance. The ‘passage’ that Forster explores is also a similar journey. Like Whitman’s cry: “Passage to more than India”, Forster’s novel is more than a historical novel about India; it is a prophetic work in which Forster is concerned not only with the path to greater understanding of India but also with man’s quest for truth and understanding about the universe he lives in. The title word of E.M. Forster's "A Passage to India" thus  signifies the journey of human soul beyond the cultural exploration and understanding between the British colonizers and the people of India. It represents at one the desire to bridge the gap between the East and West, or two different set of souls, as well as the challenges and complexities that arise in the process.

The Three Levels of Meanings

 Structurally, the novel "A Passage to India" has three constituent parts. The part, "Mosque" introduces the characters and sets the stage for their journey to India. It focuses on the initial interactions and the formation of relationships between the British and Indian characters. Part II, "Caves" explores the pivotal event of the Marabar Caves expedition and its aftermath. It complicates into the themes of misunderstanding, miscommunication, and the breakdown of relationships between the British and Indians. The final section, "Temple" examines the trial of Dr. Aziz and the impact it has on the characters. It highlights the complexities of justice, prejudice, and the consequences of colonialism in India.

 However, in the title word, ‘passage’ has three levels of meaning explored through three successive levels of the story – political and racial tension, symbolic landscape and religious festivals. At a purely narrative level the novel tries to build a passage between two countries, which are divided not only geographically but also racially and politically. Unity can be achieved if people of both the races practice the principles of tolerance, understanding and kindness. At this level the theme of the novel is friendship and love.

Even, the three levels of meanings can be observed at different parts of the novel. Firstly, on a surface level, it depicts the physical journey of characters traveling to India. Secondly, it explores the complexities of personal relationships and the clash of cultures. Lastly, it philosophizes into the deeper themes of colonialism, racism, and the search for spiritual connection and truth.

A Passage Vs Link

At a deeper level, the novel builds a passage between the achievements of the west with the wisdom of India, between the physical and the spiritual. The ideals of the West – normality, rationality, personality, exclusion – and the ideals of India – impersonality, inclusiveness and love – are juxtaposed. India is the home of rich spiritual heritage. India is a spirit; she is a mystery. The foreigner feel baffled and lost when they encounter this real India who manifests herself in the form of a shame, a mysterious wild animal, and the cave. Even the best representative of the highly cherished ideals of Western Culture, Fielding, feels that India is a muddle. In the face of this general opinion of the Westerners, Forster stresses that India is a spirit and to understand her one should regard her spirituality.

Karl and Magalaner says that the word ‘passage’ is the fictional attempt to connect to find the key, the link, between one way of life and another. In the attempt to blend human reality with transcendent reality Forster takes a leap from story telling to mystical philosophy, to contemplation on the ultimate truth of life and universe. It is a passage to the mystery and the muddle India is, and the mystery and the muddle the whole life, the whole universe is.

A Critical Survey

In fact, the title of this novel has received various critical interpretations and the exact meaning is still being debated. According to Benita Parry, the book is an interpretation of India, traditionally a land of mysteries and muddle, and an interpretation of its impact on those who live in it and on the aliens who come to it. On the historical level, the novel traces the passage undertaken by two sympathetic British ladies to ‘see the real India’, to bridge the gap between the East and the West.

Separation of race, sex, and culture religion exist and disturb mutual unity and understanding of humans. Yet, ultimately, human, racial, cultural, religious, political relations can be improved by giving up prejudice, arrogance, pride, and feelings of superiority or inferiority.

Conclusion

The world and human life can be bettered by mutual understanding, harmony and love. Church, Mosque or Temple alone is not the way to salvation. What are needed are a large heart and a broad perspective. Salvation can be attained; problems can be solved by uniting and fusing the three ways – the Karma Yoga of the Geeta, the path of love and devotion, and the path of knowledge. Emotion and intellect, head and heart must function harmoniously. Man must follow the Gyan Marga, the Karma Yoga and the Bhakti Marga. That seems to be the final message and central forces of the novelist in A Passage to India. The novel is, indeed, more than a passage to India – a spiritual search of one’s self and beyond.
 

References

1.MORAN, J. A. H. (1988). E. M. FORSTER’S “A PASSAGE TO INDIA”: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN THE CAVES. Modern Fiction Studies, 34(4), 596–604. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26283510
2. A Passage to India by Walt Whitman | Poetry Foundation. (n.d.). Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50978/a-passage-to-india
3. A Passage To India : Forster, E. M. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. (n.d.). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.463445
4. Parry, B. (1998). Materiality and Mystification in “A Passage to India.” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, 31(2), 174–194. https://doi.org/10.2307/1346197
5. Karl FR, Magalaner M (1959) A reader’s guide to great twentieth-century English novels. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy.

American English and British English : Comparative Study


 "We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language."
                           --   Oscar Wilde


American English is now a craze. It is obviously due to the fact that the Americans made a spectacular progress in the sphere of science and technology, in the sphere of trade and commerce, in the sphere of literature and athletics. Moreover, political power of America has assumed a formidable proportion. Naturally, the people of the world abroad, by and large, feel and urge to learn the language of the American people. But it is to be noted that American English and British English are fundamentally the same. Only in some respect, American English is a little different from British English. The points of divergence of American English from kings English can conveniently be grouped under three heads: pronunciation, spelling  & vocabulary, and idiom and usage.

On Humour and Pathos as used by Charles Lamb in his "Essays of Elia" particularly "Dream Children: A Reverie"


 “Some things are of that nature as to make One’s fancy chuckle while his heart doth ache” Wrote Bunyan. 

The nature of things mostly appeared to Charles Lamb in this way. Lamb does not frolic out of lightness of heart, but to escape from gloom that might otherwise crush. He laughed to save himself from weeping. In fact, Lamb’s personal life was of disappointments and frustrations. But instead of complaining, he looked at the tragedies of life, its miseries and worries as a humorist. Thus his essays become an admixture of humour and pathos. Examples of his keen sense of humour and pathetic touches are scattered in all of his essays. Let’s focus our discussion on Dream Children: A Reverie.

A Retrospective of Humble Rustics with the Universal Notes and Sentiments:Thomas Gray’s "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"


  Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard is one of the most famous elegies written in any language. It is not on the death of any particular person, friend or relative. One evening while Gray was standing at Stoke Poges Churchyard watching the graves of the poor, unknown peasants, an idea came to his mind, he wrote his elegy on the death of the neglected fellow citizens – A note of deep melancholy, and broad humanity runs throughout Gray’s elegy. It is a retrospective of humble rustics with universal notes and sentiments.

 After building an atmosphere of befitting evening landscape the transitional poet Gray in his poem Elegy proceeds further to elaborate the rude ancestors who lie buried in the churchyard and beyond recall at present. In fact, the Elegy runs thereafter with its true sense in perfectly elegiac mood with the reflection of these poor rustics. These are the rustics resting eternally and no morning hues, sounds or any such echoing songs sung by the poet could have the power to make them awoke. The children will no more greed them while returning home after day labors. The elegiac note permeates the entire atmosphere with the reference of these rustics, simple joys, sorrows and obviously referring to the irrevocable nature of death. Since the villagers are dead and buried in their graves, no worldly activities, which use to happen during their lifetime, will happen. With their death, this chapter of the family life is closed forever.

Dramatic Technique as Revealed in Vijay Tendulkar’s Play, "Silence! The Court is In Session"


“Effectiveness of assertion is the Alpha and Omega of style”. – 
Preface of Man and Superman, George Bernard Shaw.

The line bears ample truth in Tendulkar. He strives for this effectiveness of assertion in a variety of ways. Silence! The Court is in Session is his perfect creation. A multifaceted dramaturgic skill is employed here in this drama. Stage within a stage, importance of absentee character, the problem of identity and feminine assertion and above all the poetic language are accurately and effectively interwoven in his dramatic pattern.


Men That Keep Attention Swami Vivekananda – Life and His Writings


                                            Swami Vivekananda   
  (January 12, 1863–July 4, 1902)
                                 
“If you want to know India, study Vivekananda; in him everything is positive and nothing negative”.
                          ---- Rabindranath Tagore
             
 Rightly says Tagore, Swami Vivekananda is the very spirit of youth and dream.  His exemplary and distinguished life impacted considerably on the entire flow and direction of our cultural formation during a crucial time of our national awakening. Born and raised in an upper class kayastha family in Calcutta, Narendranath Dutta as he was then known was a brilliant student. He completed his studies at the famous Presidency College and Scottish Church College. Read More Men That Keep Attention In a few days he became a Westernized India but by the dramatic influence of Sri Ramakrishna he became an young man who was destined to change the future of India through learning, piety and dynamism. After his guru’s death, Swami Vivekananda founded Ramakrishna Mission to cement the goal of mass awakening. We will now study his far reaching and profound message through his works.


Prufrock is an Aging Romantic Entrapped by Rotting World of Pseudo- gentility: An Analysis of T. S. Eliot 's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"


Alfred Prufruck is the central character of T. S. Eliot’s famous poem The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock. He is middle aged dandy, a neurotic and tragic figure. The rottenness, the corruption and decadence of contemporary modern society is exposed with a rare poignancy here. Urban in setting, very often allusive, full of images symbols and references, drawn from various sources, the poem mercilessly exposes the boredom, inaction, restlessness of modem city life. What passes within Prufrock’s consciousness forms the narrative framework of the poem. In an unorganized and seemingly unconnected series of insights, memories and reflections the natural flow of the narrator’s  thoughts here it captures the total in decisions and doubts of Prufrock’s mind. With his mental and physical weakness, alternating between realism and fantasy, faltering within dreams, revisions, and revised opinions, alike the endless rounds of coffee and cigarettes in modern life, Prufrock has become coax, foggy, timid, hollow man, a boneless effigy of pseudo-gentility of modern world.

With telling images and far-fetched conceits and symbols indebted from metaphysical machinery from 17th century and 19th century French symbolist, Eliot tries to lay bare the mind of the protagonist Prufrock, a bundle of frustration, nervous-breakdown and indecisiveness. The poem begins with a beautiful metaphysical conceit, pointing to a striking parallelism between two dissimilar things:
                    “Let us go then, you and I,
                     When the evening is spread out against the sky
                      like the patient etherized upon a table”.
 The evening which is torpid and apparently light-less reflects the mental vacuity of the speaker stressing his constant hesitation marked by self pity and self disgust. The contrast between the wide stretch of the sky and the vigour and vitality of the patient reduced to living death caused by anesthesia virtually stirs the imagination of every reader. Not only that but Prufrock’s self is torn into two warring self – social and inner.

  Image Courtesy      
Oscillating and vacillating over the two extremes whether to declare love to the lady or not, Prufrock is virtually aware of his psychological barrenness, his growing age, bald head, futile measurement of modern life: “I have measured out my life with coffee spoon”. With an ironic tone Prufrock is less immediate with the love proposal, whereas Prufrock has only ‘wept and fasted’ ‘wept and prayed’ to prepare a face to face the declaration of love. Repressed by over scrupulousness and inaction, his is the abortive silence of ‘overwhelming question’ ends in murmuring ‘Do I dare? Do I dare?’

            Prufrock’s helplessness and his struggle to release himself from ennui and inertia is the ultimate spiritual crisis of the protagonist. He is the poor worm fixed to a wall by a sharp needle and wriggling to get freed. The merciless penetrating fierce eyes of the so called Michaelaholic ladies have cooled every spark of fire inside Prufrock. In such a boiling situation he can’t drop a question on the dining table as he might be served on a plate alike John the Baptist. With greater effort in moistening hope if ever he declares his love, they might instantly reply in negation “That is not What I meant, at all”.

            The unsung love story of Prufrock places the hero on unheroic terms, his timidity exceed further to neurosis. He is a timid and compares himself even to a crab:
      “I should have been a pair of ragged claws
       Scuttling across the floors of silent seas?”

Being a crab and roaming inside deep domain of unseen seas, the unheroic modern man can’t hear mermaid singing as they applauded the brave and adventurous Ulysses and mariners. Instead Prufrock malingers like a cat, undecided like Hamlet, reseals void soul of Lazarus, intrigues like Polonius. Prufrock thus stands a modern man who is spiritually bankrupt and creatively barren into the vast world of infertile waste land, the modern society.  

Key Points Discussed Here:

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" showcases an aging romantic, trapped in a decaying society of superficial refinement, where pretense and appearance mask the underlying decay of genuine emotions and connections.

👉The Frustration of Paralysis: Prufrock's internal conflict and self-doubt hinder him from taking action or expressing his true desires, resulting in a state of stagnation and frustration.
👉The Loneliness of Modern Life: Prufrock's inability to connect with others and his profound sense of isolation highlight the alienation and disconnection prevalent in a modern, urbanized society.
👉The Boredom of Routine Existence: The poem explores the monotony and repetitiveness of Prufrock's daily life, portraying a sense of ennui and longing for something more meaningful and vibrant.
👉The Decay of Tradition and Morality: The poem critiques the decaying societal norms and values, presenting a world of pseudo-gentility where appearances and superficiality overshadow genuine emotions and authenticity.
👉The Fear of Rejection and Mortality: Prufrock's fear of rejection and his obsession with his own mortality contribute to his hesitancy and unwillingness to seize opportunities and fully engage with life.

            Ardhendu De  

References
1. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot | Poetry Magazine. (n.d.). Poetry Magazine. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/44212/the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock
2. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - Wikipedia. (2010, July 9). The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Love_Song_of_J._Alfred_Prufrock

Reality and Romance in William Shakespeare's "As You Like It"


  • The multidimensional world of As you like It.
  • The conflicting world of reality and romance in As you like It.

  • The Court versus Arden in As you like It.
  “Though the ultimate world of Shakespeare’s comedy is romantic, poetic and imaginative, it is by no means unsubstantial and fantastic” – H. B. Charlton.

            In fact, the union of fantasy and realism is a peculiar characteristic of the comic world of Shakespeare. Though the world of his comedies is highly romantic and visionary, it is not cut off from the world of reality. Though the background and atmosphere are romantic, they are all built on the solid rock of realism. Shakespeare’s As You like It is a perfect blend of this singularity – a fusion of reality and romance, of courtly life and pastoral life of Arden, of actuality and imagination. As You like It is a juxtaposition of such variegated elements of life. The many-sided world in As You like It abounds in love making, gaiety, singing, wit, humour, pranks, harmless jesting, serenity, earnestness, and even pathos. It is the picture gallery of lovers, wise men, fools, pessimists, optimists, simpleton, escapists, materialists, conspirators, singers and many such.

A Model Question Answer Set For English Teacher ( Post Graduate ) Recruitment Examination IN West Bengal, India


Here is 30 short questions on Literary Topics & Grammar
                                                        

  1.  Fool, said my Muse to me, look in the heart and write – What kind of advice is given by the Muse to the poet?
Do you find any anticipation of romantic theory?

Ans. Poet Sidney wants to articulate his earnest love in the poetry of his own. But he can’t compose poetry worthy of its own and lacks the faculty of poetic articulation. Hence he steals others poetry to articulate his own verse. The poetic Muse here comes to guide his rescue and instructs him to introspect. Words spoken in the core of the heart must form the real poetry, she instructs.
            The line anticipates the romantic theory of poetry as if spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions forms poetry. Read More Poetry

  1. Briefly comment on the dramatic feature of Spenser’s sonnet No. 75?
Ans. Not only Sonnet No. 75 but Amoretti as a whole is unique by the virtue of its dramatic structure. The Sonnet No. 75 is a blend of lyric and dramatic. Here is the abrupt beginning, the conversational tone and the vigorous exchange which transform the Sonnet No. 75 into a miniature drama. But nowhere the lyrical grace is missing. Read More Poetry

  1. What is the significance of the title of The Good Morrow by Donne?
Ans. John Donne’s The Good Morrow is a poem that stands at the threshold of a new love universe. It is like a wakening from a nightmare. Earlier the canker of fear and jealousy, the fickle foundation of sensual delights were the nightmarish experiences. But now the lovers are nearly awaken soul and a sense of serenity comes to the lovers in their true union of minds. Thus the title words rightly bids good morning to the love’s new universe. 

"My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning: Analysis as a Dramatic Monologue


As you probably know that Robert Browning’s genius was essentially dramatic. His favourite form is dramatic monologue which though not invented by Browning was immensely popularized after him. Being a psychologist having his main idea to study the incidents that go to compose the development of the soul. Browning found this form to be extremely suitable to his purpose. His purpose is to throw light into the consciousness and so he frees himself from all the shackles that impede analysis. Thus to him dramatic monologue is a comprehensive soliloquy in which a certain critical moment in one’s person is taken and by permitting the individual to speak his character, the whole course of his existence are revealed in a brilliant search light. Now we will discuss his poem ‘My Last Duchess’ as a dramatic monologue and see how far it interprets the flow of speaker's conscience.


In ‘My Last Duchess’ the monologue is spoken in the presence of the ambassador of a foreign count whose daughter is being sought in marriage by the widowed Duke. The Duke is perhaps Alfonso-II, fifth Duke of Fenna. He married Lucrezia De Medici in 1558 when she was only fifteen. She died in 1561 perhaps by poisoning. Here the Duke is exhibiting the portrait of his former wife to the envoy. The basis of his character is the complacent egotism of the aristocrat who regards his wife as his properly. He cannot brook her graciousness and innocent gaiety and finally kills her.

5 Reasons Why People Love Rabindranath Tagore: First Asian Noble Laureate for Literature


A Prolific Writer: Rabindranath Tagore is a prolific writer, and he tries his hand successfully at almost all the major forms of literature. Born in an educated Bengali family he receives his education primarily at home and close to natural setting. He paces Bengali literature to its highest scale by his versatile genius.

Wider Range of Form and Mood: As Edward Thomas points out, even Victor Hugo couldn’t have claimed a wider range of form and mood than is evinced by Tagore who writes plays of every kind – tragic, symbolic, comic, and farcical, writing them in blank verse, in rhymed couplets, in prose, and who writes short stories too. Besides Tagore writes countless essays, sermons, criticism, articles on politics and education, even on psychology and economics. It must be kept in mind that all his works are written originally in  Bengali and are subsequently translated into English some by Tagore himself and the rest by other scholars.

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