The Persistent Echoes of E.M. Forster’s a Passage to India: Post-Colonial Literature in the Wake of Colonial Trauma

Abstract

This dissertation examines the function of echo in post-colonial novels. The impact of colonial traumas resulted in the formation of social and literary ripples, and as these ripples move outward, they dissipate or collide with one another, behaving as sound-waves. These sound-waves can then be captured in text as latent echoes, and re-sounded as authors respond to traumas and to one another. This work focuses on E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India as echoic and echoed, as a novel that is structured on mirroring and reverberation, as well as a work that continues to be echoed by other authors. Examining post-colonial works that echo and respond to A Passage to India, this work looks at the function of echo in novels such as Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable, G.V. Desani’s All About H. Hatterr, and Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger. Looking to the works of Judith Greenberg, Cathy Caruth, John Hollander, and Michaela Bronstein in discussing echoes and trauma, this is an exploration of the novel’s role in echoing generational colonial trauma. Seeking to better understand the function of echo and what is happening in Indian English literature over time, as either a reinscribing loop, or a means of dissipation toward healing.