The Marabarmystery In A Passage To India

Adela 's visit and Mrs. Moore 's experience in the MarabarCaves, what actually happened in the caves and how it affected their mind, and the implications of this momentous event - these issues are very crucial to a deeper understanding of E. M. Forster 's A Passage to India. No one who has entered the caves in A Passage to India has escaped unscathed. This fate has attended not only Forster 's characters but also nearly every critic who has written about this novel. Stronger echoes than those heard by Mrs. Moore, stranger hallucinations than those suffered by Miss Adela, have been raised in the minds of critics when confronting the Marabarmystery. Several noteworthy evaluations of this novel have been made, but we do not seem to be any nearer the solution than when those two Englishwomen emerged from the darkness of the caves into the sunlight and chaos nearly a century ago.

What do the caves signify? What do they, in fact, represent? The strangeness of the Marabar Caves themselves , their role and function, their effect upon the characters, and the placing of their entity, their significance or the lack of it in the total novel - these are

She becomes confused about "what dwelt in the first of the caves? Something very old and very small. Before time, it was before space also. Something snub-nosed, incapable of generosity - the undying worm itself. Since hearing its voice, she had not entertained one large thought; she was actually envious of Adela."( p.223) Perhaps, she becomes more conscious about her impending death and envious about Adela’s forthcoming conjugal life with her son Ronny. For the reason unknown - thought of other people’s happiness made us envious naturally.This is very much humane. The feeling of “Void” in the caves makes her feel the void/ sunyata within - that what would happen after this earthly life; her constant thought