Revelation of Identity in E. M. Forster’s Novel A Passage to India

Abstract

Revelation of identity in Literature is a plot device where a character's true, hidden, or significant identity is unveiled, often leading to personal reformation and new roles for the character, or prompting a larger conflict or epiphany within the narrative. These revelations can explore themes of self-discovery, alienation, and the human condition, as characters grapple with internal and external pressures to understand who they are.  There are several writers who concentrated their writing in revelation of identity.  They have explored varied identity in their works. James Joyce has dealt with fragmented self and cultural identity in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses. Virginia Woolf has examined inner identity and selfhood in Mrs Dalloway and Orlando. Franz Kafka has showed alienation and loss of self in The Metamorphosis. Toni Morrison has explored African-American identity in novels like Beloved. And, Salman Rushdie has written about cultural and postcolonial identity in Midnight’s Children. Apart from these writers, E. M. Forster deeply explores the theme of identity crisis, highlighted through the psychological and cultural struggles of both colonizers and colonized individuals. This paper highlights the problematic relationship between the colonizer and the colonized in a colonial context as manifested in Forster's novel, A Passage to India. The present paper is an attempt to look into the ways scholars of identity and selfhood have approached the implications of rational knowledge.