We can read this book at several levels. Jung said somewhere that a
dream can be
interpreted at many levels, and every interpretation is right. (If Jung didn't say it, I did, and he would have said it.)
On the surface, Passage informs contemporary England of the state of
affairs in India. At the same time, it shows how East and West differ. It also leaves a record for later generations about English colonialism, the relations between Hindus and Muslims in India, social practices, and speech, and the historian may even infer quite a bit about the industrialization and technology of the early twentieth century.
In "Homo Aestheticus," Ellen Dissanayake says, "Behavior is, essentially, choice." To analyze Forster's book (or any work of art), we have to ask, why did the author choose these
particular elements to express whatever was in his mind? (A novel is more than Stendhal's mirror; it expresses what the author sees, and what the author sees is decided by what the author is.) Here we slip into deeper strata.
India, the dark, amorphous, timeless, ancient land, represents the unconscious, peopled by unknowable, unreachable, dark-skinned masses worshipping an accumulation of gods in a number of tongues. The identity of India as the unattainable contents of the unconscious is indicated by the very first conversation in the book, in which two Indians tell the third that they are dead, in "another and a happier world."
Adele Quested, the noble quest, is an intrusion from the known, civilized conscious. This female character goes past the outposts of light into the darkness of India, where, because she is introduced by aged Mrs Moore (more), she is escorted into the womb of the rock at the Malabar caves by dr Aziz (A through Z is everything). Dr Aziz may escort her because he is not a true denizen of the inner world (he is the third Indian, not "dead"), he is a modern healer who originated in Muslim Afghanistan: a bridge.
When Quested enters the cave, she is, or is not confronted by a shadow which may have been guiding her. In her struggle to avoid the union of male and female, conscious and unconscious, she loses her vision (her field glasses) and, because she rejects the shadow, the injuries she suffers (earns) are only skin-deep; her compatriots do not permit the cactus spines to enter her blood.
Since Mrs Moore, the prescient old woman, does not assert Dr Aziz's innocence, she dies as soon as she reaches the sea, the eternal, unfathomable depths of life and psyche.
Fielding, the educator, ego, wishes to befriend Aziz, but Aziz, wounded, enters deeper into polytheistic India, the unconscious which he hopes to unite, but the horses, the earth, the temples don't want it. Fielding never marries Quested. Although the book is titled A PASSAGE to India, practically the whole book takes place *in* India, and yet, passage is never realized.
Now it would be absurd to suggest that Forster sat chewing his pencil thinking, "What symbol am I to use to show the quest had only superficial results? Cactus, that's it!" The book succeeds because his mind was ordered and open enough to dredge up the effective symbol: effective for him, effective for us.
What I propose is that work which delves deep into the unconscious cultivates psychological growth and, by inspiring internal harmony, alleviates prs, if only by facing them. This is the standard I would raise to
distinguish good (
successful) art (art which succeeds in promoting psychological growth) and mediocre art, the product of shallow minds.
