Illusions and disillusionment in A Passage to India - Essay Example

E.M. Forster in his A passage to India creates a world which is full of illusions. The characters cherish certain illusions in their life around which all their hopes lie. These illusions involve different social and religious myths. In this hostile universe faith is an illusion which is unsuccessful to solve the problems faced by modern man. Crews relates that in Forster’s novel “ Romantic love, God’s love , and friendship are exposed as futile. Adela Quested cannot love. Mrs. Moore’s Clapham-style Christianity fails her.

Aziz’ belief in friendship shatters” ( qtd in Koponen 39). Hence, the writer has knitted his story around the theme of disillusionment from the cherished beliefs and dreams. Loss of faith The novel’s pervasive theme seems to be loss of faith. Mrs. Moore’s disillusionment with her faith after the cave’s incident shows that the characters have been brought from the world of illusions to the world of disillusionment where all faiths are exposed as hollow. The ambit of disillusionment encompass all religions including Christianity and Islam.

The writer though has portrayed Hinduism with a bit of superiority, yet that faith has also left its disciples in a situation of skepticism .Mitra finds out the causes of writer’s obsession with the theme of “ loss of faith” and traces its origin in the post world scenario which made the poets like T.S.Eliot show a disillusioned world sans religion and other human values. Forster according to Mitra, “ was sensitive to the decline of spiritual values , the hatred that had crept into the people of different cultures and creed, the overall loss of faith” (66). Mrs. Moore experiences disillusionment after the incidence of Marabar caves where she realizes that echoes are not some Delphic response rather they are the offspring of “ human consciousness” and they only respond when human mind/conscious projects” them.

She gains the ultimate realization “that life never give us what we want at the moment we consider appropriate” (Forster 9). Similar instance of this realization occurs “when what the cosmic forces reflected was only the echo of what Aziz and Fielding projected” (Murtaza and Ali 267). The geographical setting also enhances the thematic content of the novel. On their way to caves the travelers experience “ a spiritual silence which invaded more senses than the ear. Life went on as usual, but had no consequences, that is to say, sounds did not echo or thoughts develop.

Everything seemed cut off at its root, and therefore infected with illusion” (Forster 60). Loss of faith is limited to the domain of religion. It is also experienced in social domains as well. Friendship Aziz’s concept of friendship amounts to a mythic belief in the holiness and strength of this bond and its power in bringing people close together. Aziz alludes to Friend “as a Persian expression of God”. Both Aziz and Mrs. Moore declare each other their friend. Though this friendship between and Indian and a British isolated Aziz from his own community.

But even this friendship is “undermined by betrayal, often due to the disdain of the members of British Raj for Indians” (Koponen 41). The disillusionment comes when Aziz finds the hollowness of his illusions. The friend whose companionship Aziz boasted of did not bear “ witness in his favor, nor visited him in prison” ( Koponen 41). The rulers and the rules could never be attached in the bond of friendship and the result is Aziz’ final cynicism in the fidelity of his friends for whose sake he has to suffer the ordeals of social stigma and jail.

The initial illusory belief in friendship is now tinged with rationality