Themes and Issues

Abstract

There is little action in A Passage to India. The two banner headlines ‘Indian doctor accused of assault on English girl’ and ‘Case against Indian doctor dismissed’ could be said to sum up the whole of its plot. Yet much happens in the realms of the mind and the spirit: friendships form and dissolve; connections are made and broken; the intangible soul of India is approached but remains at the last inviolable. To the readers of Forster’s earlier novels the basic outline is familiar: individuals and groups are set in opposition to one another and our interest lies in seeing how things sort themselves out