A Passage to India

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   cybil Teacher
   High School - 12th Grade

   Even though Fielding and Aziz clearly want to be friends at the novel's end, a comment made by Aziz as well as Forster's symbolism in the final sentences of the book show that such a relationship is unlikely. From the beginning of the novel when Aziz and his friends discuss the question of friendship with the Anglos to Aziz's attempts to befriend the Anglo women visiting, Forster reveals an Indian's desire to be friends. Fielding, too, even goes against his own people to support Aziz during the trial. But at the end, after the bitter experience of the caves and the trial, Aziz declares to Fielding that until the British are driven out of India--whether by his generation or his children's--no such friendship can exist. The horses pull away as the men try to embrace as friends, and the final focus on the resistance of nature implies Forster's view that the British and the Indians cannot be friends.

   Sources:

   http://www.enotes.com/passage-india/part-iii-chapter-xxxv...

   http://www.enotes.com/passage-india/themes

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   Posted by cybil on Monday May 26, 2008 at 7:37 AM
   
   

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