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Lecture 29 NOVEL II. SYNOPSIS. Discussion on Characters A Conclusive Talk REVISION LORD OF THE FLIES… Characters Themes Symbols Contextual background and summary line. Characters. Dr. Aziz.
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SYNOPSIS • Discussion on Characters • A Conclusive Talk • REVISION LORD OF THE FLIES… • Characters • Themes • Symbols • Contextual background and summary line
Dr. Aziz • When Dr. Aziz is introduced to us, we don't see him. We see the bicycle he throws on the balcony, and we see the servant missing the bicycle before it hits the balcony.
We know that he is "all animation" without being told exactly how he is being "animated." And we hear him calling out his friend's name before we find out his name, before we see his face, or get to know a single detail about his appearance or background.
The opening scene is just a wind-up for the rest of the novel, as it turns out. Impulsive, talkative, spontaneously affectionate, Aziz is the Energizer Bunny of the story, rushing into conversations and situations without really thinking too hard about what he's saying or doing.
And given the fact that he's so extroverted, it would probably be easy to assemble his profile on a dating site: widowed doctor, father of three, seeking casual relationship or companionship with attractive female.
Hobbies include riding horses, waxing nostalgic about the Mughal Empire, and reading and writing Urdu poetry. Peeves include trekking to dark and mysterious caves.
But despite the fact that Aziz talks so much, or perhaps because of the fact Aziz talks so much, you might find it hard to get a handle on who he really is. His behavior can seem so contradictory. Aziz can be incredibly friendly and out-going in one moment, and suddenly turn suspicious and rather nasty the next.
For example, Aziz seems to like Fielding. Yet he's so ready to believe the rumor that Fielding had an affair with Adela and that Fielding actually plotted to keep Aziz from suing Adela so that Fielding and Adela could enjoy her money together.
It's also hard to reconcile the high, romantic idealism that we see when he's contemplating his dead wife, for example, and a matter-of-factness about sexuality that can be hard to stomach, as when he makes plans to see prostitutes.Our difficulties with Aziz may have something to do with the fact that we learn everything about Aziz through the filter of a narrative that is dotted with the racial stereotype of the "Oriental“.
Of course, the narrative of A Passage to India isn't as racist as the Turtons or McBryde; it's enlightened enough to satirize these characters. But even when it's championing the Oriental/Indian, it still can sound offensive. This is usually signaled when the narrator suddenly stops talking about Aziz the individual, and leaps to all "Orientals."
Thus we learn, for example, that "[s]uspicion in the Oriental is a sort of malignant tumor, a mental malady, that makes him self-conscious and unfriendly suddenly" (2.31.88). Instead of Aziz just being a suspicious guy, the novel wants us to think that Aziz is naturally suspicious because he's Indian.
Be that as it may, the novel represents a sincere attempt to inhabit Aziz's mind, to show the effects of living as an Indian under British rule, and to show how the racism of a Turton or Callendar prevent them from recognizing not only Aziz's innocence, but also the validity of Indians' appeal for an independent nation.
Perhaps in the end the novel gives us the tools to critically examine itself so that we might finally read Aziz's last gesture to Adela not as the illogical, inconsistent gesture of an illogical, inconsistent Oriental, but as the expression of a generous spirit.
Cyril Fielding • Fielding, the principal at the local college, is your quintessential, tweedy English professor. Think Dumbledore without the beard and flowing cloaks, the Robin Williams guy in Dead Poets Society, or that other Robin Williams guy in Good Will Hunting. Sympathetic, wise, funny in a dad-humor kind of way, he's got just a touch of irritability that all good teachers seem to have because of their conviction that you – yes, you – are better than that.
It's this very human irritability that differentiates him from Godbole, who's too high up in the stratosphere to be troubled by the struggles of the puny individual. If Fielding gets irritable, it's because he cares.
Even though Fielding styles himself as the "holy man without the holiness," Fielding isn't as above it all as he makes himself out to be (1.11.64). The novel tells us that Fielding arrives in India having seen that, done that: falling in love, hitting rock bottom, picking himself up again. He views himself as beyond both the petty human emotions of jealousy and spite, and the lofty idealism of the "civilizing mission" of imperialism or Christian orthodoxy.
Fielding is basically an old-fashioned humanist: he believes that all human beings, regardless of race, are the same. Because of this, he believes that we could all get along if we could just have a rational discussion about things. According to him, education helps us do so by freeing us from our prejudices. Thus, unlike the other Anglo-Indians, Fielding is open to having friendships with Indians.
Because of his level-headed rationalism, Fielding doesn't get swept away with the rest of the Anglo-Indians who are howling for Indian blood when charges are filed against Aziz.
For much of the A Passage to India, you could say that Fielding is the voice of the novel; his thoughts and feelings seem closest to the third person narrator, and "Fielding" sounds like a pun on "Forster" ("Field"-ing and "For[e]st"- er, get it?). But the novel doesn't leave Fielding alone. Fielding sails off to England and falls in love. And marries.
No longer "traveling light," Fielding's views also change – according to the novel, they "harden" (3.37.19). No longer so even-tempered, he scoffs at Aziz's hopes for an Indian nation, and classes India with Guatemala and Belgium.
So is the novel saying that marriage always contaminates a bachelor? Is it confirming the stereotype that it's the women who make things difficult – not only empire, as Mr. Turton would claim, but also friendship? Or is Fielding's newfound conservatism a latent component of his humanism, brought out by the experience of marriage?
What do you think about these issues? The Fielding we get at the end of the novel certainly brings up some thorny questions about a character who seemed to speak and act with such moral clarity for most of the novel.
While we may be left with more questions than we had at the beginning, A Passage to India certainly gives us interesting conflicts to think about in the character of Fielding.
Mrs. Moore • When she first arrives in India alongside Adela, Mrs. Moore, like Adela, is appalled at the way that the British treat Indians. Unlike Mrs. Turton, Mrs. Moore is respectful, humble, and open to everyone and everything she encounters, from jittery Aziz to the teeny wasp on her clothes peg. The novel chooses Mrs. Moore as the voice of Christianity and universal love – "God...is...love," she tells Ronny (1.5.97).
She even enjoys brief celebrity as "Esmiss Esmoor": rumored to have been whisked away by the British because she would have proven Aziz's innocence, Mrs. Moore is set up by the Indians as a martyr, a Hindu goddess with her own little shrines around Chandrapore.
Does the novel let Mrs. Moore continue to be charming and loveable? Oh, no. The novel does the rough literary equivalent of throwing our sweet-little-old-lady to the wolves. Well, into a cave, to be more precise. Mrs. Moore's visit to the Marabar Caves turns her Christian love on its head. It exposes her to the meaninglessness of life and the mean-sidedness of human nature. It's an experience that saps her of her will to live, and she dies on a ship back to England.
Why would Forster pick such a fragile vessel for his message of universal love? Why reduce her credo to a sad typo – "God si love" (3.33.2)? Is there any way to reclaim Mrs. Moore – or Esmiss Esmoor – from the ou-boum of the cave?
Professor Godbole • You might say that Professor Godbole, an instructor at Fielding's local college, is the loopy guru of the school. He seems clueless and utterly oblivious to others' suffering, with a streak of silliness that is evident when he boogies down at the Gokul Ashtami festival in Part 3. Godbole's behavior seems at odds with his high caste – he's a Hindu Brahmin, and as such is at the top of the Hindu social ladder.
But as Godbole's name (meaning "sweet-mouthed") suggests, Godbole's behavior is really just an expression of his peaceful world-view, which emphasizes the unity of all things, from the highest Brahmin to the teeniest of wasps. Thus Godbole's antics are just another way of affirming the unity of life: both high spirituality and the lowest forms of humor are part of the cosmic order, and both have to be celebrated.
This big-picture way of looking at the world makes Godbole rather indifferent to individual suffering because he perceives individual suffering as just a blip in the cosmic flow, which is small consolation to the other characters
Ronny Heaslop • Ronny Heaslop, the City Magistrate, is, let's face it, a suck-up. Take Martin from the Simpsons, give him a British accent and broad judicial powers over Indians, and voilá, you get Ronny Heaslop. Ronny is so eager to fit in at the club, so eager to impress his superiors, so eager to get ahead, that he turns into a parody of an English administrator.
This posturing is transparent to his mother and Adela. Knowing Ronny in his younger, more intellectual days, people who are closest to him instantly perceive that the views he expresses aren't his own, but pat clichés he's picked up from his superiors.
It doesn't help that during the trial, he's really not concerned for Adela's well-being. He seems more interested in the fact that Adela's trial will bring him some great publicity as the sympathetic fiancé of a wounded Englishwoman.
Mr. Turton • As the Collector, Mr. Turton is the head of the British civil administration in Chandrapore. He's an experienced administrator who has swallowed the British imperial project hook, line, and sinker. It's not just about controlling the land, the people, the wealth for Turton: it's also about using the British Empire to "civilize" the Indians, by force if necessary.
At his best, Mr. Turton moderates the flagrant racism of his subordinates because of his belief that the British are the more advanced people, and must thus act accordingly. The Bridge Party is, after all, his idea, and if he's not exactly friendly, at least he's polite. At his worst, well, even at his worst, Turton uses his power to ensure that his subordinates don't persecute the Indians and that everything is done by the book.
He's not exactly the poster child for racial tolerance, but he's a good example of how the British civic ethic can prevent an individual from seeing his own worst prejudices.
Mrs. Turton • Mrs. Turton, in contrast with her husband the Collector, is viciously racist. It's hard to find another character more racist than Mrs. Turton in the novel – even the subaltern that shows up at the club in the meeting before Adela's trial at least acknowledges the possibility of friendship with Indians.
Mrs. Turton is constantly berating her husband and his subordinates for not cracking down on the Indians more ferociously. She exemplifies the unfortunate irony that while Englishwomen are regarded as the weaker, fairer, helpless sex in India, they can be fiercely racist because they don't have the education or the professional experience to keep them from entertaining their cruelest fantasies.
Mr. McBryde • Mr. McBryde, the police superintendent, is introduced to us as "the most reflective and best educated of the Chandrapore officials" (2.28.1). No wonder, then, that he gets along so well with Fielding. Like Turton, McBryde is an official committed to public service in the British Empire. His attitude toward Indian criminals is neither overtly racist nor tolerant; he views them more as scientific specimens that support his view of what he calls "Oriental Pathology." Here, McBryde is unfortunately a product of his time.
Apparently, you need a cool, drizzly London fog to be properly civilized because McBryde blames Indian criminality on the climate. The fact that he himself was born in Karachi, in what is now Pakistan, doesn't seem to change his mind. McBryde's scientific pretensions are neatly ironized when we later discover that he's been sleeping around on his wife.
Miss Derek • Miss Derek, a friend and frequent guest of the McBrydes, works for one of the Hindu princes in a nearby princely state. She's the party girl of the set – single and always game for a good time. Her habit of absconding with her employer's car comes in handy when she rescues Adela after her "rape" at the Marabar Hills. We later find out that the girl's been having an affair with Mr. McBryde.
Lord of the flies revision
