Conflict and Reconciliation of Ambivalence and Hybridity in A Passage to India and A Passage to England

Abstract

The ambivalence for the attraction and repulsion shapes the colonizer and colonized’s duality sense for integrating each other’s way of life. It leads to create a hybridity sense, but this hybridity turns to mimicry. Forster’s A Passage to India portrays this sense through the character analysis. This novel exposes the ambivalent attitude of the Indians and the English to adopt the respective culture as the ruler and the ruled in India leading to hybridity sense. The development of events in the novel also shows some distorted sense in the character’s relationship and individual personality that creates a kind of tension. Chaudhuri, in his travelogue with his colonial experience, shapes his ambivalent attitude to integrate into the English traits. But his real experience with the West confirms his previous knowledge and he adopts his proper sense of hybridity by praising almost everything in western life and by showing the limitation of his country’s way of life. But his presentation in the travelogue makes a question of his stereotyped personality. The article initiates to explore reconciliation in this tension, applying the thesis-antithesis-synthesis technique through the comparative analysis of these two books.