Storyweb: Storytime For Grownups

This week on StoryWeb: E.M. Forster’s novel A Passage to India. When I was a senior in high school, my favorite English teacher, Mr. Alwood, agreed to do an independent study with me. He selected four challenging novels he thought I was up to understanding and studying. I think back to those novels now and can’t imagine how a 17-year-old could really have been equipped – intellectually or emotionally – to appreciate them. But in my way, limited by life experience though I was, I did appreciate them. One of those novels was E.M. Forster’s 1924 book, A Passage to India. The novel hinges on an accusation of rape. One of the main characters is Mrs. Moore, a refined British lady who has come to visit India, still a British colony. Mrs. Moore is sensitive to the cultures and religions of others, and when she visits and enters a Muslim mosque reverently, she forms an unlikely but heartfelt friendship with Dr. Aziz, an Indian Muslim doctor in the town of Chandrapore. At first it seems that a bridge can be built betwe