A Passage to India
E.M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster
(1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970)
 English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist.
 well-known for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference
and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society.
 travelled in continental Europe with his mother and visited Egypt, Germany
and India with the classicist Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson.
 Forster spent a second spell in India in the early 1920s. After returning he
completed his last novel, “A Passage to India” (1924).
 humanist, homosexual, lifelong bachelor.
Other works:
• What I Believe
• A Room with a View
• Maurice
• Howards End
• The Hill of Devi
Plot
Two English women, the young Miss Adela Quested and the
elderly Mrs. Moore, travel to India. Adela expects to marry Mrs. Moore’s
son, Ronny, a British magistrate from the Indian city of Chandrapore.
Adela and Mrs. Moore each hope to see the real India during their
visit, rather than cultural institutions imported by the British. The two
women are about to know India through an Indian doctor, Aziz. He offers
them the chance to visit the Marabar caves, being accompanied by a new
friend of the doctor, Fielding, and by a Hindu professor. The last two
happen to miss the train to the caves, but arrived there later .
During the visit of the caves, Adela is almost raped in a cave and
after she escapes, despite the fact she hasn’t seen who the guy was, she
accuses doctor Aziz of being the attacker.
After an exhausting process, Adela realizes that it wasn’t Aziz and
all the English people start to despise her. Aziz chooses to spend his life far
away from the English, near Hindu people and after a fight with Fielding,
he renewed the friendship with him.
Main Characters
Dr. Aziz – Indian doctor from Chandrapore, who tries to make
friends with Adela Quested, Mrs. Moore, and Cyril Fielding. He is a
character full of contradictions. He has an attitude of irony towards his
English superiors. Many of his characteristics are specific for Indians.
Cyril Fielding – The principal of the government college near
Chandrapore. He believes in educating the Indians as individuals. The
character most associated with Forster himself. He is Forster’s model of
liberal humanism.
Miss Adela Quested – A young Englishwoman who travels to
India with Mrs. Moore. She has an openminded desire to get to know India.
Mrs. Moore – An elderly Englishwoman who travels to India,
hoping that Adela will marry her son Ronny. She is a literar character, but
she then becomes a symbolic presence. She symbolizes the ideal spiritual
and race-blind openness that Forster sees as a solution to the problems in
India.
Ronny Heaslop – Mrs. Moore’s son, the magistrate at
Chandrapore. Briefly engaged to Adela Quested. The open-minded attitude
with which he has been brought up has been replaced by a suspicion of
Indians. Forster presents Ronny’s failing as the fault of the colonial system,
not his own.
Other Characters
Mr. Turton - The collector, the man who governs Chandrapore.
Mrs. Turton - Turton’s wife. She embodies the novel’s stereotype of the snobby, rude, and
prejudiced English colonial wife.
Mr. McBryde - The superintendent of police in Chandrapore. He and Fielding are friendly
acquaintances.
Major Callendar - The civil surgeon at Chandrapore, Dr. Aziz’s superior.
Professor Godbole - A Brahman Hindu who teaches at Fielding’s college.
Hamidullah - Dr. Aziz’s uncle and friend. Hamidullah was a close friend of Fielding
before Fielding and Aziz met.
Mahmoud Ali - A lawyer friend of Dr. Aziz who is deeply pessimistic about the English.
The Nawab Bahadur - The leading loyalist in Chandrapore.
Dr. Panna Lal - A low-born Hindu doctor and Aziz’s rival.
Stella Moore - Mrs. Moore’s daughter from her second marriage. Stella marries Fielding
toward the end of the novel.
Ralph Moore - Mrs. Moore’s son from her second marriage, a sensitive young man.
Miss Derek - A young Englishwoman who works for a wealthy Indian family and often
steals their car.
Amritrao - The lawyer who defends Aziz at his trial. Amritrao is a highly anti-British
man.
Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes:
• The Difficulty of English-Indian Friendship
• The Unity of All Living Things
• The “Muddle” of India
• The Negligence of British Colonial Government
Motifs:
• The Echo
• Eastern and Western Architecture
• Godbole’s Song
Symbols:
• The Marabar Caves
• The Green Bird
• The Wasp