LECTURE 29NOVEL II

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SYNOPSIS

Discussion on Characters A Conclusive Talk

REVISION LORD OF THE FLIES… Characters Themes Symbols Contextual background and summary line

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CHARACTERS

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Hobbies include riding horses, waxing nostalgic about the Mughal Empire, and reading and writing Urdu poetry. Peeves include trekking to dark and mysterious caves.

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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.

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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.

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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“.

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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."

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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CONCLUSIVE TALKA PASSAGE TO INDIA

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Mr. E. M. Foster SirThinking Teasers\ A Musical (4 mins) A comprehensive note of his services and a list of questions that arise in the minds of readers while going through the Writer’s histroy

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LORD OF THE FLIESrevision

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Lord of the FliesIn A Nutshell

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Narrative’s Characteristics48

The story is presented in…

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Major Conflict…50

Rising Action…51

Climax52

Falling Action 53

Themes

 

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Symbols56

CONTEXTUAL BACKGROUND AND SUMMARY LINE

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Contextual Background

William Golding was born on September 19, 1911, in Cornwall, England.

Although he tried to write a novel as early as age twelve, his parents urged him to study the natural sciences. Golding followed his parents’ wishes until his second year at Oxford, when he changed his focus to English literature.

After graduating from Oxford, he worked briefly as a theater actor and director, wrote poetry, and then became a schoolteacher.

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In 1940, a year after England entered World War II, Golding joined the Royal Navy, where he served in command of a rocket-launcher and participated in the invasion of Normandy.

Golding’s experience in World War II had a profound effect on his view of humanity and the evils of which it was capable.

After the war, Golding resumed teaching and started to write novels. His first and greatest success came with Lord of the Flies (1954), which ultimately became a bestseller in both Britain and the United States after more than twenty publishers rejected it.

Contextual Background59

The novel’s sales enabled Golding to retire from teaching and devote himself fully to writing.

Golding wrote several more novels, notably Pincher Martin (1956), and a play, The Brass Butterfly (1958). Although he never matched the popular and critical success he enjoyed with Lord of the Flies, he remained a respected and distinguished author for the rest of his life and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983.

Golding died in 1993, one of the most acclaimed writers of the second half of the twentieth century.

Contextual Background60

Lord of the Flies tells the story of a group of English schoolboys marooned on a tropical island after their plane is shot down during a war.

Though the novel is fictional, its exploration of the idea of human evil is at least partly based on Golding’s experience with the real-life violence and brutality of World War II.

Free from the rules and structures of civilization and society, the boys on the island in Lord of the Flies descend into savagery.

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As the boys splinter into factions, some behave peacefully and work together to maintain order and achieve common goals, while others rebel and seek only anarchy and violence.

In his portrayal of the small world of the island, Golding paints a broader portrait of the fundamental human struggle between the civilizing instinct—the impulse to obey rules, behave morally, and act lawfully—and the savage instinct—the impulse to seek brute power over others, act selfishly, scorn moral rules, and indulge in violence.

Contextual Background62

Golding employs a relatively straightforward writing style in Lord of the Flies, one that avoids highly poetic language, lengthy description, and philosophical interludes.

Much of the novel is allegorical, meaning that the characters and objects in the novel are infused with symbolic significance that conveys the novel’s central themes and ideas.

In portraying the various ways in which the boys on the island adapt to their new surroundings and react to their new freedom, Golding explores the broad spectrum of ways in which humans respond to stress, change, and tension.

Contextual Background63

Readers and critics have interpreted Lord of the Flies in widely varying ways over the years since its publication.

During the 1950s and 1960s, many readings of the novel claimed that Lord of the Flies dramatizes the history of civilization.

Some believed that the novel explores fundamental religious issues, such as original sin and the nature of good and evil.

Contextual Background64

Others approached Lord of the Flies through the theories of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who taught that the human mind was the site of a constant battle among different impulses—the id (instinctual needs and desires), the ego (the conscious, rational mind), and the superego (the sense of conscience and morality)

Contextual Background65

Still others maintained that Golding wrote the novel as a criticism of the political and social institutions of the West.

Ultimately, there is some validity to each of these different readings and interpretations of Lord of the Flies.

Although Golding’s story is confined to the microcosm of a group of boys, it resounds with implications far beyond the bounds of the small island and explores problems and questions universal to the human experience.

Contextual Background66

Plot in detail…

In the midst of a raging war, a plane evacuating a group of schoolboys from Britain is shot down over a deserted tropical island.

Two of the boys, Ralph and Piggy, discover a conch shell on the beach, and Piggy realizes it could be used as a horn to summon the other boys.

Once assembled, the boys set about electing a leader and devising a way to be rescued.

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Plot in detail…

They choose Ralph as their leader, and Ralph appoints another boy, Jack, to be in charge of the boys who will hunt food for the entire group.

Ralph, Jack, and another boy, Simon, set off on an expedition to explore the island. When they return, Ralph declares that they must light a signal fire to attract the attention of passing ships.

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Plot in detail…

The boys succeed in igniting some dead wood by focusing sunlight through the lenses of Piggy’s eyeglasses. However, the boys pay more attention to playing than to monitoring the fire, and the flames quickly engulf the forest.

A large swath of dead wood burns out of control, and one of the youngest boys in the group disappears, presumably having burned to death.

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Plot in detail…

At first, the boys enjoy their life without grown-ups and spend much of their time splashing in the water and playing games.

Ralph, however, complains that they should be maintaining the signal fire and building huts for shelter.

The hunters fail in their attempt to catch a wild pig, but their leader, Jack, becomes increasingly preoccupied with the act of hunting.

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Plot in detail…

When a ship passes by on the horizon one day, Ralph and Piggy notice, to their horror, that the signal fire—which had been the hunters’ responsibility to maintain—has burned out.

Furious, Ralph accosts Jack, but the hunter has just returned with his first kill, and all the hunters seem gripped with a strange frenzy, reenacting the chase in a kind of wild dance.

Piggy criticizes Jack, who hits Piggy across the face.

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Plot in detail…

Ralph blows the conch shell and reprimands the boys in a speech intended to restore order. At the meeting, it quickly becomes clear that some of the boys have started to become afraid.

The littlest boys, known as “littluns,” have been troubled by nightmares from the beginning, and more and more boys now believe that there is some sort of beast or monster lurking on the island.

The older boys try to convince the others at the meeting to think rationally, asking where such a monster could possibly hide during the daytime.

One of the littluns suggests that it hides in the sea—a proposition that terrifies the entire group.

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Plot in detail…

Not long after the meeting, some military planes engage in a battle high above the island. The boys, asleep below, do not notice the flashing lights and explosions in the clouds.

A parachutist drifts to earth on the signal-fire mountain, dead.

Sam and Eric, the twins responsible for watching the fire at night, are asleep and do not see the parachutist land. When the twins wake up, they see the enormous silhouette of his parachute and hear the strange flapping noises it makes.

Thinking the island beast is at hand, they rush back to the camp in terror and report that the beast has attacked them.

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Plot in detail…

The boys organize a hunting expedition to search for the monster. Jack and Ralph, who are increasingly at odds, travel up the mountain.

They see the silhouette of the parachute from a distance and think that it looks like a huge, deformed ape.

The group holds a meeting at which Jack and Ralph tell the others of the sighting. Jack says that Ralph is a coward and that he should be removed from office, but the other boys refuse to vote Ralph out of power.

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Plot in detail…

Jack angrily runs away down the beach, calling all the hunters to join him. Ralph rallies the remaining boys to build a new signal fire, this time on the beach rather than on the mountain.

They obey, but before they have finished the task, most of them have slipped away to join Jack.

Jack declares himself the leader of the new tribe of hunters and organizes a hunt and a violent, ritual slaughter of a sow to solemnize the occasion.

The hunters then decapitate the sow and place its head on a sharpened stake in the jungle as an offering to the beast.

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Plot in detail…

Later, encountering the bloody, fly-covered head, Simon has a terrible vision, during which it seems to him that the head is speaking.

The voice, which he imagines as belonging to the Lord of the Flies, says that Simon will never escape him, for he exists within all men. Simon faints.

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Plot in detail…

When he wakes up, he goes to the mountain, where he sees the dead parachutist. Understanding then that the beast does not exist externally but rather within each individual boy, Simon travels to the beach to tell the others what he has seen.

But the others are in the midst of a chaotic revelry—even Ralph and Piggy have joined Jack’s feast—and when they see Simon’s shadowy figure emerge from the jungle, they fall upon him and kill him with their bare hands and teeth.

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VISUALCLIP

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Plot in detail…

The following morning, Ralph and Piggy discuss what they have done. Jack’s hunters attack them and their few followers and steal Piggy’s glasses in the process.

Ralph’s group travels to Jack’s stronghold in an attempt to make Jack see reason, but Jack orders Sam and Eric tied up and fights with Ralph.

In the ensuing battle, one boy, Roger, rolls a boulder down the mountain, killing Piggy and shattering the conch shell. Ralph barely manages to escape a torrent of spears.

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Plot in detail…

Ralph hides for the rest of the night and the following day, while the others hunt him like an animal.

Jack has the other boys ignite the forest in order to smoke Ralph out of his hiding place.

Ralph stays in the forest, where he discovers and destroys the sow’s head, but eventually, he is forced out onto the beach, where he knows the other boys will soon arrive to kill him.

Ralph collapses in exhaustion, but when he looks up, he sees a British naval officer standing over him. The officer’s ship noticed the fire raging in the jungle.

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Plot in detail…

The other boys reach the beach and stop in their tracks at the sight of the officer.

Amazed at the spectacle of this group of bloodthirsty, savage children, the officer asks Ralph to explain.

Ralph is overwhelmed by the knowledge that he is safe but, thinking about what has happened on the island, he begins to weep.

The other boys begin to sob as well. The officer turns his back so that the boys may regain their composure.

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REVIEW LECTURE 29

Discussion on Characters A Conclusive Talk

REVISION LORD OF THE FLIES… Characters Themes Symbols Contextual background and summary line

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