| In 1924, E. M. Forster churned out A Passage to India, a popular and critical success in literary history. For more than eighty years, critics have read and interpreted it from considerably diverse perspectives of politics, religion, race and culture. Most of them believe that A Passage to India has more political intentions than anything else. However, Forster declared that the political moral is not the only purpose in the novel: "In writing it, however, my main purpose was not political, was not even sociological."[1] If the readers care to inquire what the main purpose is, it is essential to penetrate the vision to a wider range than politics for the arch beyond, half mystery, half muddle, which permeates the whole India, personal relations and the life itself.Forster is famous for his theme of 'only connect' in most of his novels, which got a perfect depiction in A Passage to India. In this mature and most brilliant book, the topic of 'only connect' is centered on by the cultural conflicts and alienation between countries, races or different classes to quest the connection between England and her colony. This novel is said to be a thorn at colonialism at early stages and Forster has pricked the reader at a thousand points to the colonialism, though its surface is delicately and finely wrought about a quest for a true friendship.A Passage to India is believed as a good literary text to postcolonial study concerning Orientalism, cultural status, ethnicity, hybridity, and so forth.Therefore, in the thesis we will take the view of Postcolonialism to search the implications or connotations conveyed by the author in my thesis.Chapter I serves as an introduction to the life of Forster and his works as well. We will take the first step into the life of Forster to avail the catch of the themes in his works and to obtain the trace of his inspiration of A Passage to India. Because of the complicated plot and a great lineup of characters, a review of the summary becomes necessary to better every examination into the novel.In addition, we can have more distinctive comments on A Passage to India from diverse perspectives, for the reason that this novel has ever been the focus of the critics upon its publication. So much ink has spilled on the novel with the ideas of religion, race, symbolism, modernism, etc. Any of them will not be given no glimpse with consideration of their incisive penetration and peculiar concept, which is so helpful for the readers to go deeply into the novel.Chapter II deals with a wider range of Postcolonialsm, one of the topicalities nowadays, in spite of the reservations and debates on it. As a cultural criticism at its most, postcolonial study will be so abstract to understand and that complex to accept without the literary texts as mirrors. We will take a retrospect to other texts by some noted writers for the concrete perception of Postcolonialism. The popular literary men such as Defoe would start the earlier step on the land conquered by the strong, Kipling would hurrah for the British Empire in his poems, and Conrad would be agonized with the dehumanization to the darkness (the uncivilized) by the light (the civilized). Meanwhile, acomparison with the real connotations in A Passage to India will come to a rise by itself.The definitions and theories related with postcolonial study will be fully displayed for more clarifications and for a good understanding. The Orientalism by Edward Said forms an important background for postcolonial study. Said argues that Orientalism can be found in Western current depictions of 'Arab' cultures. The depictions of 'the Arab' as irrational, untrustworthy, dishonest-perhaps most importantly-prototypical, are ideas into which Orientalist scholarship has evolved. A rejection of Orientalism entails a rejection of biological generalizations, cultural constructions, and racial and religious prejudice. It is an erasure of the line between 'the West' and 'the East', and of a dogma that degrades the marginal culture. We will get five po... |
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