Topic > A Clash of Cultures in A Passage To India - 4248

A Passage To India is a classic example of how different cultures, when forced to mix, misunderstand each other and what consequences arise from such misunderstandings. All of Forster's greatest works deal with the inability of human beings to communicate satisfactorily and their inability to eliminate prejudices to establish possible relationships. A passage to India is no exception. (Riley, Moore 107) To understand Forster's motivations, it is necessary to establish that he is a humanist writer. Harry T. Moore states: "Of all the imaginative works in English in this century, Forster's ranks highest among those which can properly be called humanistic." (Riley, Moore 107) His core belief is that individual human beings fail to connect because humanistic virtues, tolerance, good character, and sympathy are ineffective in this world of religious and racial persecution. However, he also believes that personal relationships can be successful, as long as they are not publicly exposed, because noble values ​​and impulses exist in human nature. "Life is not a failure but a tragedy especially because it is difficult to translate private decency into public." (Riley, McDowell 108) Forster is aware of the evil that exists in human nature. Forster believes that humans do not know enough to control that evil and takes on the humanistic responsibility to ensure internal and external order using reason. Forster relied on the individual's consciousness and sense of identification with others as equal components of the human race as the basis for maintaining that order. It also gives the individual social, political and metaphysical value and favors the individual when he is in conflict with society. (Riley, McDowell 108) It is for...... half of the article ......ia University Press, 1979.Riley, Carolyn, ed., Contemporary Literary Criticism. 4. Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research, 1975. Bradbury, Malcolm, "E.M. Forster as Victorian And Modern: 'Howard's End' and 'A Passage To India'," Possibilities: Essays on the State of the Novel (1973 by Malcolm Bradbury ; reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press), Oxford University Press, 1973. Riley, Carolyn, ed., Contemporary Literary Criticism. 3. Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research, 1975.Johnstone, J.K., "E.M. Forster (1879-1970)"" The Politics of Twentieth Century Novelists, edited by George A. Panichas (reprinted by permission of Hawthorn Books; 1971 by University of Maryland;) Hawthorn, 1971. Riley, Carolyn, ed., Contemporary Literary Criticism 1. Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research, 1973. McDowell, E. M. Forster, Twayne, 1969.