A Passage to India and Burmese Days Essays

A Passage to India and Burmese Days Essays

Throughout the novel A Passage to India, by E.M. Forster, and Burmese Days, by George Orwell, the authors use race, culture, economics, and liberal humanism to discuss various colonial issues. These issues include controversies, power structures, injustices, and the idea of syncretism between the colonizers and the colonized. A Passage to India focuses largely on using culture and liberal humanism to explore issues of colonialism while Burmese Days mainly uses race and economics to explore these topics. While the novels use different methods of exploration, both novels very successfully take on the task of discussing the very colonial issues of controversies, power structures, injustices, and syncretism.

One way that we can explore ... Show more content on Helpwriting.net ...This idea only further enforces power structures, as Europeans come to believe that, without them, Indians would be incapable of completing small details and, therefore, unable to do any large, important task correctly.

Along with cultural misunderstandings, religion is a major theme in Forster's novel. This starts very early on in the novel when Aziz and Mrs. Moore meet for the first time in the mosque. Though Aziz had just finished talking with his friends about never being able to be friends with a European, especially a woman, the instant connection he has with Mrs. Moore seems to dissolve this feeling (21). It seems as though, through her respect of him and her openness to speak with him and be civil, the mosque becomes a sort of jumping off point for Aziz's friendship with Fielding later on in the novel. The fact that this instant connection happened in a religious place should not be overlooked. I believe that the location of their meeting symbolizes the supposed idea that religion can transcend all differences.

Religion also facilitates the idea that, especially through Hinduism, everything can be united in love. In a way, this is similar to the idea of liberal humanism in which, if everyone is treated as an individual and approached with intelligence and goodwill, even those

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