An Analysis of Realism in A Passage to India, a Novel by E. M. Forster

M. Forster was an English novelist who presented his remarkable ideas and satirical terms through his masterpiece-A Passage to India. Nevertheless, as Forster was born in the transition from the realism and modernism era, people find it hard to define the artistic feature of A Passage to India. The debate about it never ends, and the most appreciated result is that A Passage to India is a realistic work. I agree with the latter one, cause the life experience of Forster contributes to his artistic features.

Realism in A Passage to India is realism in literature, which attempts to represent familiar things as they are. In this novel, I capture familiar life experiences between Forster and the characters he created.

M. Forster was born in 1879 and lived to be ninety-one years old. His childhood was spent among women, his father, who was a professional architect, having died in Forster’s babyhood. After his father’s death, Forster and his mother moved to a country house.

Young Foster was educated at a public school in Kent, where he received great bitterness. He began attending King’s College at Cambridge in 1897. It was Cambridge that enabled him to get the freedom of thought, which formed the foundation of his liberal humanism. He traveled to India, setting his great novel A Passage to India, which was ultimately published in 1924.

At the beginning of A Passage to India, the pursuit of Forster in treasure and true love was implied in the characters’ personalities. After Forster graduated from university, he searched his for a career in various ways.

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On his first visit to India in 1912, Forster encountered the interest in British imperialist deeds aboard. From my perspective of view, he was curious about exotic India.

Forster first described the views and environment of the fictional city of Chandrapore, where Adela Quested, and her elderly friend, Mrs. Moore first arrived in India. It was described that “By day the blue will pale down into white where it touches the white of the land, after sunset it has a new circumference-orange, melting upwards into tender purple.” Through the words, the feelings of originality and novelty when Miss Quested and Mrs. Moore firstly arrived in Chandrapore are vividly shown.

Forster implied his first impression of India through the perspective of Miss Quested and Mrs. Moore, enabling us to be attracted by the splendid scenery.

On the other hand, He chased a charming driver named Addo, a trolley man. Their relationship lasted about two years until Addo got married in 1919.

The reserved Adela was in desperate need of true love, and she met the Indian named Aziz. When Adela first arrived in India, she was a blooming girl, who wanted to be protected and embraced by a reliable man. She was acquainted with Ronny Heaslop, the son of Mrs. Moore, also the city magistrate. Then she met Aziz, and she wanted to make friends with him or even marry him. Nevertheless, Adela and Aziz with different religions sex, and politics seemed to be the last couple in the world to combine.

Forster imagined that Miss Quested was fragile and found it hard to express herself. He captured the complicated feelings of being in a relationship. Adela was in the hesitation about choosing Ronny or Aziz. Later, she chose to accuse Aziz of assaulting herself in the Cave and tried to chase Ronny, but she failed to win Ronny’s affection. Forster conveyed his loss of leaving his lover Addo by throwing the light of

“When they argued about it something racial intruded-not bitterly, but inevitably, like the color of their skin.”.

After his first visit to India, Forster joined the Red Cross in Egypt during World War I, where he viewed the cruelty and implacability of the great disaster. In Egypt, the British replaced the independent-minded Khedive Abbas II with his uncle, Sultan Hussein Kamel, whom they regarded to be more malleable and controllable. Facing the aggressive glory and bloody treasure, Forster realized that the potential diplomacy would never be offered to any weak country. It was less glorious and glamorous for him to show the great treasure. What’s more, the blood and flesh appeal that red in Egypt reminded him of the supreme right of a human being alive. It was hard for him to come up with the famous saying that goes that“All men are created equal”, but he used his ironic ask that “So you thought an echo was India; you took the Marabar caves as final?” to show the implied truth.

During his experience in Egypt, Forster was in an environment of rampant panic and anxiety. His feelings of the unfairness to India got stronger when he secondly visited India in 1921. Instead of showing the power of the Great British, he chose to distinctly expose the prejudice against Indian and special privileges for the British.

As a liberal humanist who belonged to the British middle-class, Forster could not see through the nature of realism and imperialism. But he noticed that British colonialism in India was slowly falling and descending to its failure. Thus, I greatly appreciated by facticity of his writings. Thanks to him, we get vivid and genuine views of the previous history.