Treatment of Human relationship in 'A Passage to India' and 'Seize the Day'

Treatment of Human Relationship in the Modern WorldAs Depicted in ‘A Passage to India’ and ‘Seize the Day’

3/28/2014

Name: Toufiq-Ul-Alam;ID: PG07-20-14-006;

Course Code and Title: ENG-3513: 20 th Century Fiction;

Instructor: Assistant Prof. S.M. Minhazul AnwarMridul;

Program: M.A. English Final, Department of English,

State University of Bangladesh

Table of ContentsOne............................................................2Two............................................................4Three.........................................................12Four..........................................................16Bibliography..................................................17

Name: Toufiq-Ul-Alam; ID: PG07-20-14-006; Course Code and Title: ENG-3513: 20th Century Fiction.Instructor: Assistant Prof. S.M. Minhazul Anwar Mridul. M.A. English Final, Department of

English,State University of Bangladesh.

One

Man’s sons are part of one reality

Since all have sprung from one identity;

If one part of body is hurt, the rest

Cannot remain unmoved and undistressed;

If you’re not touched by others’ pain, the name

Of “man” is one you cannot rightly claim.

-Saadi

And in fact I have no doubt that every man's perception of wherehis true interest lies... would long ago have brought the whole world to adoptUtopian lows, were in not for one single monster, the prime plague andbegetter of all others—I mean Pride. Pride measures her advantages not by whatshe has but by what other people lack. Pride would not deign even to be made agoddess if there were no wretches for her to sneer at and domineer over. Hergood fortune is dazzling only by contrast with the miseries of others, herriches are valuable only as they torment and tantalize the poverty of others.Pride is a serpent from hell that twines itself around the hearts of men,acting like a suckfish to hold them back from choosing a better way of life.Pride is too deeply fixed in human nature to be easily plucked out.

-Thomas More

As far back in time as eight hundred years, an Iranian poet,Saadi wrote the poem Bani Adam and now it brightly shines on theentrance of the United Nations building in New York, UnitedStates (Zaufishan). The immortal words of this medieval poet havesurvived the test of time for the spirit of human unity theycarry and travelled many thousand miles from the Persian Gulf tothe Coasts of Atlantic Ocean. Saadi’s words stand as the monolithof human morality and enlighten the path that the humans of the

modern world can follow. In a world devoid of spirituality andnotorious for its treatment of human relationship, these wordsshould very well have been the maxim. But is it really the case?

Time and again, ‘Wise men’ from various parts of the world havethought and fought hard to establish a harmonious bond among theinhabitants of the mother earth. Although their words, written orspoken, have been praised and applauded duly, did not have anyeffect on the humans who, by their social or national privileges,belong to the dominant group in this world. More in his Utopiaexplains through the words of Hythloday that the real cause ofthis discrepancy is ‘pride’ in supremacy. According to More thissupremacy comes from taking sadistic pleasure in others’weaknesses. As humans are the most feared predators, it comes tothem as an impulse to use that weakness to their own advantage.

In the novels, A Passage to India and Seize the Day, the writers, E.M.Forster and Saul Bellow respectively, try to explore the variousfacets of human relationship. These two novels give us apanoramic view in the tensions that prevail in the relationshipsamong the most complex of creatures, the humans. Both of thenovels were written in the 20th century, but they belong towriters from two different social, cultural, national, religious,and geographical affiliations and affinities. As a result theywere able to unravel various mysteries pertaining to the humanbonding.

A Passage to India was written during the colonization period ofIndia, in other words during the time of British India. It waspublished in 1924 and has, as a matter of course, the backdrop ofBritish Raj of that time. With a very linear flow of story thenovel weaves very complex relationship among the people of thisstory. Among the loci mentioned in this novel, one that is veryobvious is the relationship of ‘colonizer-colonized’, of whichone is the dominant and the other is the subordinate group. TheName: Toufiq-Ul-Alam; ID: PG07-20-14-006; Course Code and Title: ENG-3513: 20th Century Fiction.

Instructor: Assistant Prof. S.M. Minhazul Anwar Mridul. M.A. English Final, Department ofEnglish,

State University of Bangladesh.

other scopes of exploration are ‘men-women’, ‘Indian-AngloIndian-British’, ‘Muslim-Hindu’, ‘Muslim-Christian’, ‘Hindu-Christian’, etc. affairs. Apart from these various other complexrelationships are also depicted, for instance, the intra-British/Anglo Indian/Indian relationships. The writer also madean effort in showing the inter-person or inter-classrelationships. In other words E.M. Forster left no leaf unturnedof the memory of his stay in the British India to elucidate thetopic of this discussion.

On the other hand Seize the Day was written, in 1956, with a post-world war and post-modern Capitalist American society as asetting. These seemingly critical tropes have their own way ofshaping the human relationships, as they have definite andadverse influences on this particular creature. The modern worldhas seen many wars and the two world wars have certainly taken atoll on the societies of humans. This post-war/modern societyfaces demons like existentialism, capitalism, industrialism,absurdity, etc. which threaten to aberrate the human nous pushingthem to the brink of a psychological meltdown. As a result thepeople of these ‘Wasteland-ic’ societies bear resemblance to ‘J.Alfred Prufrock’ or characters of ‘The Waste Land’. No one caresfor no one; people vainly boast their materialistic achievements;hypocrisy, infidelity, unfaithfulness and extortion overshadowthe harmony of human bonding. Saul Bellow took great care toillustrate the life of a single man who lives amidst all thesocial adversity and later finds an affinity but to a lifelesscadaver. The human folly and emptiness are laid bare in front ofthe naked eyes by the story teller.

In the following sections many of the scopes of humanrelationship, that are available in the two celebrated novels,will be tried and discussed.



Two

The European nations that established their colonies in manyparts of the world had a single motive behind theiraction-‘reform’. As the European empires developed in military,political, economic and technological power, education andknowledge, their zeal to propagate and reform grew as well. TheBritish Empire was not any exception. Their advancement in theaforementioned fields gave push to the invention of many novelideas such as ‘civilization’, ‘humanity’, etc. As a result thisisland nation, like many other European empires, unconsciouslygave birth to other antitheses of these ideas like ‘savagery’,‘native’, ‘primitive’, etc. (Ashcroft, Grifiths and Tiffin).

These ideas manifested in the attitude of the ‘colonizer’ BritishRaj toward the ‘colonized’ India and Indians. It will be unjustto generalize that British Raj carried the composite feelings ofeach and every denizens of the Great Britain, rather it became anentirely separate entity in exercising power and dominance overthe so called ‘Indians’. Any British newcomer to this ‘primitive’and ‘Oriental’ land would either belong to the ruling ‘Anglo-Indians’, or become an ‘Indian’. In the first section ‘Mosque’ ofthe book A Passage to India we see Mr. Turton hinting to a subtlediscrimination even among his own kind, the English people:

“The long and short of it is, Heaslop’s a sahib; he’s the type wewant, he’s one of us.”

This particular disposition of Mr. Turton regarding hiscountrymen confirms the validity of the aforementioned statementand establishes the stereotype called ‘Anglo-Indian’. Thiscertain scene took place at the very beginning of the sectionwhen Mrs Moore and Miss Adela Quested were discovering a very new



India in their own ways. While both of them came from the sameisland nation, they brought to India the same openness andnaivety which the mainstream British people showed. Mrs Moore hada romantic moonlit ‘Chandrapore’ evening on the way back from themosque to the club with Dr. Aziz. We see her observant andrespectful to the creed and customs of an entirely differentreligion- she had put shoes off before entering the mosque. Itwas not an action forced by her prior knowledge of the customs ofthe religion, rather engendered from her own respect to God andHis houses on the earth, it did not matter to her whether itbelonged to the mighty British Raj or the ‘natives’:

“Madam, this is a mosque, you have no right here at all; youshould have taken off your shoes; this is a holy place forMoslems.”

“I have taken them off.”…

“That makes no difference. God is here.”

The other newcomer to the Anglo-Indian community, Miss AdelaQuested wished to see the ‘real India’. She expressed herintentions to the other ladies in the ‘Chandrapore Club’ but theyreplied her with answers typical of the Anglo-Indian colonists.When the Principal of the Government College Mr. Fieldingsuggested seeing the people of India, these ladies clearlyestablished the fact that they do not dim the people of India asworth seeing or discovering, as if they have found and figured itall out. Their relation to the people of the land is somewhatcondescending. The very fact, that Miss Quested was very eager todiscover the people of India, made her the deplorable one. To oneof the ladies at the club being a nurse to any ‘Native State’ wasvery unbecoming of a British lady:

“I really do know the truth about Indians. A most unsuitableposition for any Englishwoman- I was a nurse in a Native State.”



By uttering such words she violated the very essence of a veryhonorable profession called nursing and the ‘Hippocratic Oath’she took while learning about the trade. The Hippocratic Oathdemands from practitioners that they be indiscriminate whiletreating ‘humans’. To make this oath more secular ‘HippocraticOath’, in 1960s, was changed to ‘utmost respect for human lifefrom its beginning’. But the backdrop of the novel was 1920s whenit was still a divine profession and every practitioner had tobear the God as their witness while take this oath. Therefore, itwas not at all right for a nurse to discriminate just because itwas an ‘Indian’ native. But that was not the end. Mrs Callendarmade it sure that Mrs Moore and Miss Quested knew that ‘native’Indians did not have any right to even breathe. The vindictivetone of her words set the mode of her relationship between the‘colonizer’ and the ‘colonized’:

“Why, the kindest thing one can do to a native is to let him die,”

Just because Miss Quested was not agreeable to their remarks,‘Anglo-Indian’ Mrs Turton sneered to even her name and put herinto the same category of British as Mr. Fielding; it is evidentthat this did not bore a fruit too sweet for Adela:

“Miss Quested, what a name!”…that Mr Fielding wasn’t ‘pukka’, andhad better marry Miss Quested, for she was not ‘pukka’.

This exposé of this typical behavior pointed to only oneconclusion: the Anglo-Indians did not have a very congenialrelationship with the people, British or Native, who did not takea liking to the likes of them. It is very clear that there was agulf between the people who were working for the BritishGovernment and who were not. Baseless suspicion and generalizedhostility toward the inhabitants of the land doomed any remainingprospect of bridging the chasm between the Natives and the Anglo-Indian Sahibs/Memsahibs. Although the collector Mr Turton hadfound a way called ‘the bridge party’ for this very purpose, itName: Toufiq-Ul-Alam; ID: PG07-20-14-006; Course Code and Title: ENG-3513: 20th Century Fiction.



was not really arranged in the very spirit of promoting peace andharmony between these two different types of people; it wassimply a way to make the guest Indians amuse the hosts with theirpresence. Ronny Heaslop’s ‘dictatorial and scratchy’interrogation of his mother made it clear that not even a mothercan have good relationship with her son once he had become anAnglo-Indian. His annoying hubris turned him into a man full ofhatred, and vengeance; he became blind and lost the clarity ofhis judgment and he needlessly kept trying to find faults with DrAziz once he became aware of his mother’s encounter with theyoung ‘Mohammedan’.

The discussion thus far gives a very transparent picture of therelationship between Englishmen and Englishwomen. We haveobserved Ronny’s attitude toward his mother- dictatorial. Apartfrom this there are many occasions we have seen that Englishwomenwere being belittled by their male counterparts:

Miss Quested learned it with anxiety,…She tried indeed to discussthis point with Mr Turton, but he silenced her with a good-humoured motion ofhis hand,

We see an unblemished dismissive relationship between Mr Turtonand Adela, although Adela was fairly new and unknown to him. Thegallantry, chivalry, and civility, for which the English men wereso famous, were altogether absent here. Disregarding the factthat Englishmen were so very susceptible to even a simple remarkfrom a native, the gesture of Mr Turton here was enough tosocially offend an Englishwoman. In the scene where Ronny wastalking with his mother about the impudence of Dr Aziz, simplybecause he asked her about her shoes in the mosque, he blatantlyheld Dr Aziz in his baseless suspicion. Although his mother wastelling to forget whatever conversation took place between herand Dr Aziz, Ronny, too, dismissed her saying:

Nothing’s private in India.



This made it clear as day light that the colonizers did not thinkthe colonized natives should be given their due right to privacy.The reason perhaps was somewhere else:

“India isn’t home,” he retorted, rather rudely…

Englishmen, as depicted in the novel, unmistakably had a dominantrelationship with Englishwoman. But it was not just because itwas India, in England, too, male had the dominance over female intheir society. In the early 20th century, the theme of femaleoppression in the patriarchal English society was gravelyobserved in the works of prominent writers- Katherine Mansfield,Rebecca West, Dorothy Richardson and Virginia Woolf. In thisnovel the nature of ‘men-women’ relationship was, more or less,directly and subtly hinted. Although a strong movement for thefemale independence was going on in England, in British India,the position of women under the control of men was as primitiveas ever. In her writing Woolf had suggested that even if thewomen were as capable as the men, they eventually would have beenforced to assume the role of domestic wives and motherhood in amale dominant society (Webster). Consequently, it did not matterto people like Turton and Ronny to be rude to women, althoughthey did not tolerate when someone else would act the same way tothem. Therefore, it can be concluded that the relationshipbetween the Anglo-Indian and the rest was marked by shrewdhostility from the former’s part.

It can be observed that the native Indian society is divided intoa few classes. These classes can be decided based on who getsinvitation to the Chandrapore Club and who does not. On this noteDr Aziz can be quoted as saying:

Indians are not allowed into the Chandrapore Club even as guests.

But the situation can be reversed if the ‘sahibs’ of the clubsent invitations to a select group of people who belong to



various communities of the society. Although people like MahmoudAli thought this invitation as a mere product of obligationaroused from being seated in a privileged position as that of MrTurton, influential ‘Mohammedan landowner’ like Nawab Bahadur sawit as a gesture of graciousness. On the other hand Ram Chand, aHindu, thought that it would be cheap for Nawab to attend suchinvitations and a commotion was stirred up. From this littleencounter we observe a subtle clash of interest between a Muslimand a Hindu. Mahmoud Ali did not object to Nawab but Ram Chanddid. Although Ram Chand exhibited impudence by directly objectingto his opinion, Nawab Bahadur observed a very polite and humbledisposition. Time and again he would try his best to help thepeople around him regardless of their social, national,religious, or cultural kinship. He did have any prejudice againstanyone. But his effort would do very little to cut short thedistance between these social classes.

However, the bridge party was never a success. The reason was,again, the typical Anglo-Indian disposition. The Englishmen notonly were too haughty to actually socialize and bridge anythingat all in particular, but also somewhat successfully propagatedthis spirit to the Englishwomen as well:

“You’re superior to them, anyway. Don’t forget that. You’resuperior to everyone in India except one or two of the ranis, and they are onequality.”…Her manner had grown more distant since she had discovered thatsome of the group was westernized, and might apply her own standard to her.

This extract shows how successful the Anglo-Indian males were ininfecting their women by their sense of racial superiority. It isa matter of great surprise to see the very English people actingin such a way while measuring up their relationship with humansfrom another land, when they were supposed to be authenticChristians. It is very ironic to see how the Anglo-Indians treatthe natives while the biblical justice is all about restorationof human relationships. According to the New TestamentName: Toufiq-Ul-Alam; ID: PG07-20-14-006; Course Code and Title: ENG-3513: 20th Century Fiction.



reconciliation among the people will make them more human(Marshall). Hence, it is clear that the English people who werewith the British Raj, were not even considering natives ashumans, let alone establishing any kind of relationship withthem.

On the other hand, for newcomers to the Anglo-Indian society, MrsMoore and Miss Quested, this bridge party was enjoyable and theywere eager to know about the culture and customs of the country.They were courteous and friendly toward the native lady guests;and the Indian ladies, too, reciprocated to their humblecuriosities. As more time passed by the distinction between theEnglish and the Anglo-Indians grew prominent. There was also thisclass that was not fully Anglicized and this class was gratefulfor the presence of the high officials. The relationship here ismerely business rather than emotional; there was no scope ofhumanizing the relationship.

The attitude of Ronny made Adela think again about the futurewhen they get married. She found Mr Fielding to more like aromantic Englishman than an Anglo-Indian although he had beenliving in India for quite some time. The wall that grew betweenRonny and Adela was impossible for them to cross till the end. Toher Mr Field was more agreeable because he had no prejudiceagainst the Indians and it was he who suggested seeing the peopleof India if Adela were to see the ‘real India’. The wall thatbroke Adela and Ronny apart, surprisingly brought Adela, Fieldingand the rest of the Indians very close together. The system ofBritish Governance was the devil at work that nipped the prospectof a harmonious relationship among the Anglo-Indians and theIndians off. There another side of Englishwoman in India, forexample, Miss Derek. Her relationship with both the Indians andthe Anglo-Indians was somewhat neutral and she stood by no onebut herself; she was the type that would simply exploit whatevershe would get her hands on and she would rather be amused thanName: Toufiq-Ul-Alam; ID: PG07-20-14-006; Course Code and Title: ENG-3513: 20th Century Fiction.



empathize with any particular side. But of all the English womenof the novel, Mrs Moore showed what can be supposed as the truespirit of humanism:

“Because India is part of the earth. And God has put us on theearth in order to be pleasant to each other. God…is…love.” ...“God has put uson earth to love our neighbours and to show it, and He is omnipresent, even inIndia, to see how we are succeeding.”

The domestic relationship of the Indian Mohammedans was a mixtureof bitter and sweet. We see three particular Muslim families;families of Dr Aziz, Hamidullah and Mohammed Latif. Dr Aziz andHamidullah were friends; Hamidullah’s wife was Dr Aziz’s distantaunt; Mohammed Latif was a distant cousin of Hamidullah. Therelationship between Aziz and Hamidullah was so close that hewould be invited for meals to his friend’s house. They would talkfreely and share the pains of their hearts and they would tellhow much the British people used to offend them. Mahmoud Ali, thevakil, was also their friend and would be invited to share mealstogether often times. Hamidullah Begum would talk about mattersas personal as marriage with her nephew. We see the MuslimIndians to have a very cordial, sympathetic, compassionate, andhomely relationship with each other, in general, although therewould always be some exceptions. On the other hand the nature ofMohammed Latif’s relationship with his distant cousin would bevery uncommon to the eyes of Westerners. In the East somefamilies would have one or two very unprivileged relatives wholack the financial independence everyone else has. As a resulttheir more influential and comparatively richer relatives wouldtake care of them. Mohammed Latif and his wife were therepresentatives of this specially unprivileged class. They had tostay separated as one family can support only a single person.Hamidullah was very tolerant to this man. Mohammed Latif wasunabashed with his seemingly shameless existence, neither he wasworried about his wife who lived very far away from him in the



same manner with another family. He would not visit his wife ashe could not afford the journey for free. Once a person starts tolive a life like him he would lose his compassion and theshamelessness will devour his love. This is the only way hisrelationship with his wife can be explained. Dr Aziz had threebeautiful kids who stayed with their grandmother. He would sendmost of the money to them so that they could live a happy lifewhile he lived a poor life. Dr Aziz was a man touched with theWest’s modernity and could not believe it possible to live hiswhole life with a person he never knew before marriage. This ledto a very unhappy marriage between him and his wife. Although hewas loved, he did not realize it until the unfortunate demise ofhis wife. Now he kept a very private picture of his wife. Theonly English person who was fortunate to see this picture was MrFielding who Aziz considered as a brother to him and despite theconservative custom of purdah he showed his wife’s picture toFielding. His wife loved him and it was so much more than justphysical attraction but Aziz could not understand it. When hiswife died after the birth of their second son, he understood whatit was. He at last, though too late, understood that marriage wassomething which makes a man happy as husband and wife spent moretime together. The inauspicious death of Aziz’s wife made himfall in an eternal love with his wife; it was love which no otherwoman can ever substitute. The relationship between Dr Aziz andhis servant was kind and humorous; in the scene where Dr Azizcaught a fever and had to be abed, he noticed some flies in hisroom. This made him anxious that his reputation would bejeopardized if any guest would come to visit him. Theconversation that took place between him and his servant wasreally very comic:

“Look at those flies, brother”;…

“Huzoor, those are flies.”

“Good, good, they are, excellent, but why have I called you?”Name: Toufiq-Ul-Alam; ID: PG07-20-14-006; Course Code and Title: ENG-3513: 20th Century Fiction.



“To drive them elsewhere,” said Hassan, after painful thought.

“Driven elsewhere, they always return.”

There was this Dr Panna Lal, a peer of Dr Aziz. Theirrelationship can be assessed based on who responded faithfully tothe English Bridge party. While Dr Lal attended the socialfunction, Dr Aziz did not; in fact he avoided the party alongwith its attendee Dr Lal. It was clear that both had an inverserelationship going on between them. It was a subtle hint that theHindus and the Mohammedans did not quite go well together. Onehad difficulties understanding the other. Dr Aziz did not keephis promise and kept Dr Lal waiting but never apologized to him;on the other hand Dr Lal did not try to understand Dr Aziz’ssituation- the day of the party coincided with his wife’s deathanniversary. This gives us a premonition of future conflictbetween the two religious groups- Hindu and Muslim. A communalhostility is to be observed between these two religious groups.They had their individual pride and sense of supremacy over theother and though it to be the right of one to show dominance overthe other. On the eve of Muharram ‘so called’ Mohammedans wouldmake paper towers and to pass it through they would try to cutdown branches of ‘Peepul’ trees which were sacred to the Hindus.This insensitive action of one would give birth to violent riots.Although they belonged to the same motherland, their induratenature would never allow to them be in harmony with each other.

The usual nature of relationship that we have seen so far betweenIndian and Englishman does not work when it was about Aziz andFielding. They had a fine camaraderie between then; they wouldmeet for tea and Aziz would take a seat on Fielding’s bed in avery casual manner. Fielding found it very easy to establish goodrelationship with the Indians, but he could not do the same withthe Anglo-Indians:



Still, the men tolerated him for the sake of his good heart andstrong body; it was their wives who decided that he was not a sahib really.They disliked him....He had discovered that it is possible to keep in withIndians and Englishmen, but that he who would also keep in with Englishwomenmust drop the Indians….He had found it convenient and pleasant to associatewith Indians and he must pay the price.

This solidifies the fact that a prominent distinction was therein the relationship between the English and the Anglo-Indians.Fielding liked the way Indians would become so familiar andfriendly within seconds. He became one of them.

Among the Hindus the class division was maintained without anexception and it was viciously discriminatory. Although weobserve that there are classes in any society regardless ofreligion, the classes of castes observed among the Hindus werelike no other religion on this world. Professor Godbole belongedto the Brahman caste and as a strict policy he would remain indistance from the ‘outcasts’ or the untouchables, for example,the ‘pankhawala’ in the Courtroom. His relationship with the restof the world was like ‘catching fish without touching water’. Heloved to keep himself neutral and in harmony with everything,although as a matter of fact it is virtually impossible to be inharmony with everyone and keep a high moral ground and offendabsolutely no one. In the end he was for nobody but himself. Hewould keep good relation others as long as his own interest wasnot threatened. He observed a distance from the people who didnot belong to his caste or religion, but he had no problem beingin intimate relation with the families of Hindu Rajas.

There was this Mr Harris, the chauffeur of Nawab and a Eurasian.In the scene where Ronny, Adela and Nawab were returning from thePolo game and had a car accident, Mr Harris was left in the darkand middle of nowhere by all the three privileged men and woman.By sheer chance, they were saved by Miss Derek and gave them alift. But helpless Mr Harris was completely ignored, and none ofName: Toufiq-Ul-Alam; ID: PG07-20-14-006; Course Code and Title: ENG-3513: 20th Century Fiction.



the three even gave a second thought about him. Earlier in theessay we saw that Nawab Bahadur was a very kind person, but hisattitude towards his chauffeur made us reassess the truthfulnessof the claims of graciousness and kindness he used to make. Wesee a hypocritical side of him here. Humans are inclined to showtheir true color when they are put into a great deal of stressand danger. With a hypocrite of a Nawab and an all too self-righteous Englishman Ronny and a Memsahib Adela, Mr Harris faceda great social dilemma; he failed realize his relationship withthe society:

They sped off, and Mr Harris, after a reproachful glance, squatteddown upon his hams. When English and Indians were both present, he grew self-conscious, because he did not know to whom he belonged. For a little he wasvexed by opposite currents in his blood, then they blended, and he belonged tono one but himself.

The English Missionaries seemed to never understand how toestablish any permanent relationship with Indians. During famineMr Graysford and Mr Sorley were able to convert some people. Butthey traded the faith of the Divinity with worldly material-food.It was relation based on give and take. But the fact theEnglishmen failed to recognize was that Indians were not reallyspiritually deprived; they simply did not have food. Perhaps theIndians had more faith in their religions than these twoEnglishmen could ever apprehend. As a result, when the famine wasover, those converts reverted back to their old selves. Therelation between the missionaries and the poor Indians weresimple based on needs.

The relationship among Indians, Anglo-Indians or English, is mostcertainly overshadowed and infected by suspicion, distrust,rumor, and hostility based on blind judgments. Time and again itwas proven in the novel A Passage to India. The only thing which wascommon among the Indians and the Anglo-Indians were generalizehatred to each other. This hatred was infectious and the reasonName: Toufiq-Ul-Alam; ID: PG07-20-14-006; Course Code and Title: ENG-3513: 20th Century Fiction.



for many misunderstandings in the relationships we have seen sofar. Miss Adela and Mrs Moore both held Dr Aziz in very highregards. But Adela was very quick to jump to a conclusion in theharassment in the caves of Marabar Hills and pressed charge ofsexual abuse against Dr Aziz, a fairly serious and damnable one.It is very surprising to see how fickle her conviction aboutAziz’s purity of Character was. She did not even give it a secondthought before speaking ill of a person; suspicion got better ofher. After that it was just easy for the Anglo-Indians to crucifyhim. Just because an Englishwoman pressed charges, no onebothered to investigate the veracity of the accusation made. Theydid not even consider that she could have made a mistake. But DrAziz was stripped off of all his goodwill and honor and wassocially disgraced. On the other hand, just because Anglo-Indianspressed a charge against Aziz, the local people of Chandrapore,who knew Aziz, was convinced that it had to have been aconspiracy of the English and indiscriminately they condemnedeverybody, although Mrs Moore and Fielding were two who were surethat the whole thing might have been a mistake. But thissuspicion did not end there. Dr Aziz, in the course of the story,wrongly suspected that Mr Fielding betrayed him and married Adelato get money from her; and he bore an animosity and grudgeagainst a perpetrator who never existed. Mr Fielding was anuncommon man of purity and he kept sending letters to Aziz toclear up any confusion he may have had. It is just as E.M.Forster writes in his novel:

Suspicion in the Oriental is a sort of malignant tumour, a mentalmalady, that makes him self-conscious and unfriendly suddenly;

The novel ended in a melancholic tone as no race on the greatland of India could ever overcome the perennial disease of humanmind- suspicion.



In the following section we shall try to discover how this themeof human relationship is treated by Saul Bellow in his novellaSeize the Day.



Three

Unreal City,

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,

I had not thought death had undone so many.

Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,

-T.S. Eliot

T.S. Eliot in his The Waste Land speaks of an unreal city, engulfedby gloomy morning fog, where people are like crowd of undeadzombies-moving but devoid of human emotions. The only humanattribute they have left is that they breathe which, too, isheavy and labored. Tommy Wilhelm, the hero of Seize the Day by SaulBellow, was a citizen of New York, a post-modern metropolis whichresembles London. The characteristics of human relationshipsdepicted in the novella have overtones of spiritual deprivation.We see people simply occupying the physical space and living justfor the sake of living. Bellow speaks of a city where people arelike rag doll puppets controlled only by their self-interests.Bellow writes:

On Broadway it was still bright afternoon and the gassy air wasalmost motionless under the leaden spokes of sunlight and sawdust footprintslay about the doorways of butcher shops and fruit stores. And the great, greatcrowd, the inexhaustible current of millions of every race and kind pouringout, pressing round, of every age, of every genius, possessors of every humansecret, antique and future, in every face the refinement of one particularmotive or essence-I lobor, I spend, I strive, I design, I love, I cling, I uphold, I give way, I envy, I long,I scorn, I die, I hide, I want.

In the course of our discussion we will see that distrust,foolishness, self-destructiveness, infidelity, extortion,Name: Toufiq-Ul-Alam; ID: PG07-20-14-006; Course Code and Title: ENG-3513: 20th Century Fiction.



exploitation, irresponsibility, insensitiveness, and antipathyoverpower the humanistic emotions. The protagonist of the novellawas Tommy Wilhelm, a socially, emotionally, and financiallytroubled man in this mid-forties. Although he himself was a partof this very city and the society, he was like a fish out ofwater. Every single moment of his life was like a burden to hisown existence. He gasped and labored for freedom, for some mentalspace; he thought the society would spare him the pain he hadcaused to himself and his family and parents, but his folly andnaivety did not allow him to recover from his seemingly endlessmisery.

Unlike A Passage to India, the human relationships in Seize the Day doesnot have numerous layers of interconnections. They arestraightforward and can very easily be traced back to Tommy.Hence, the relationship is mainly between Tommy and the society.The society will be represented by various characters playingvarious roles in the story.

The very first notable relationship was between Tommy and hisfather. It is very true that the way Tommy behaved in his youth,disobeyed his parents, dropped his studies changed his name, andkept allowing himself to be cheated was beyond scope of the word‘disappointing’; but that did not change the fact that Dr. Adler,his father, was still alive. It was alright for Dr. Adler, as afather, to punish his son for his wrong doings but to a certainlimit. In this case he crossed the boundary and acted no betterthan his son, it was as if a child was taking revenge on anotherchild. Dr. Adler did not really reprimand his son with anauthoritarian voice, rather he was giving simple advices. In asense it was an evasive technique adapted by him to avoid thehassle of paying for his son’s mistakes all the time. On theother hand, Tommy was a shameless naïve idiot who did not knowwhen to stop; he did not know how to learn from mistakes and hekept blaming his father for not being sympathetic to him.Name: Toufiq-Ul-Alam; ID: PG07-20-14-006; Course Code and Title: ENG-3513: 20th Century Fiction.



Although he was saying that some soothing words would have givenhim the encouragement to get back up on his feet, in the end hewas always running into trouble and in short of money. He nevertried to learn about himself and the people around him. He alwaysregretted that his father did not reciprocate to his sufferings.In the end neither the father nor the child grew up. Dr. Adlerwas epitome of callousness:

“I don’t want to listen to the details,” said his father. “And Iwant you to understand that I’m too old to take on new burdens. I’m just tooold to do it. And people who will just wait for help- must wait for help. Theyhave got to stop waiting.”

Dr. Adler could have given some help followed by stern warning toTommy not to be reckless again. But he never did something likethat; his attitude toward his son was rather like a third partyneutral observer who can only comment on a situation but did nothave the power to change it.

There was not much written about the relation of Tommy with hismother and sister. Although he missed his mother very much, hehad quarreled with his mother, went against her every will anddropped out of school to enter the show biz in Hollywood spentsome important years of his life in wild goose chase. His motherhad passed away in her fifties and his sister was not in goodterms with him. It was broken family. Except for the legal tiesthere was no sign of humanity left in among the family members.

Tommy had a failed marriage in his account. For some reasons heleft his wife Margaret, but that vindictive woman did not let himgo. It was not that she stayed faithful to his husband aftertheir separation, rather she would go out with other men. But shedid not give Tommy the divorce he wanted. As Tommy did not have ajob and was not a prolific money earner, she understood that thedivorce settlement would not hold a good prospect for her. She,therefore, found it more profitable to work him off; she made



Tommy pay for her tuitions for the degree which she would neveruse and the children whom she would never allow to meet theirfather. She not only exploited a weak man in hardship, but alsocruelly deprived a father of his right to be with his children.She ruthlessly kept exploiting Wilhelm and as the story hinted,she intended to keep Tommy work for her and pay for her wantonrelationships with other men for the rest of his mortal life.Without a divorce Tommy could not move on to make new start inhis life and marry the girl, Olive, who he loved so much.Margaret, in way, not only viciously destroying Tommy but alsovindictively oppressing Olive; because, without the divorce shewould not be able to get married and get the social honor ofbeing a respectable wife to the man she loved. Tommy’s words ofdistress were lost on Margaret. She held two human lives hostage.

Tommy Wilhelm was a genius for taking the worst possibledecisions in his life even after a long hard thinking and gettinginto bad company. Apart from his mistake with Margaret, he had towaste two precious treasures of a human being, time and money,with two different humans who later he discovered to be absoluteand bona fide evil- one was Venice Maurice of Kaskaskia Films andthe other one was Dr. Tamkin the pseudo-psychiatrist. With Venicehe wasted his precious school years ans some more and Dr. Tamkinconned his last seven hundred dollars of his savings away fromhim. Both of them gave him high hopes and he was suspicious aboutboth of them, yet he simply set his foot into the traps laid outfor him. Venice gave his all high and mighty words but laterTommy found him to be the leader of a ring of prostitutes. Dr.Tamkin was the last and the greatest of all mistakes he made inhis whole life. Even after so much suspicion he stretched hisneck under the guillotine of Dr. Tamkin and gave him the power ofattorney of his last seven hundred dollars. The society evenagain heartlessly squeezed him off. Dr. Tamkin was a human too.Although his earnings came from conning people, he should have



left Tommy with at least something because Tamkin knew how badTommy’s situation was. But in the end he did not.

There is this Mr. Rappaport who had investments in the market. Hewas an old man and did not have an heir to the fortune he made.Yet he shamelessly kept using a man in distress, Tommy, withouteven giving him a free advice.

Rubin and the German bank manager who wore the most correctoutfit were two people who knew. Their job was to know, know andto know some more. But their knowledge did not do any good toanyone. Tommy’s anxiety was very much evident when he was givingthe power of attorney to Tamkin over his last bit of saving. Yet,the manager with so much knowledge did not ask even once thereason why he was doing so. He could have asked Tommy if he werealright with the arrangement he was about to make. If the managerhad any human qualities left in him, he would have at leastwarned him about the problems that were involved in that kind ofarrangements. Although it was entirely Tommy’s fault, it did notmean that the manager should just keep his lips shut foreternity.

In the end we see that the relation of Tommy with the society helived in was that of mutual loss. He lost, lost and lost somemore until got some sort of solace within the proximity of a deadman. Perhaps, the corpse reminded him about a future which wassure to come one day. The only fault of Tommy was that he wasself-destructive. What he needed was a savior who would catch himby hand and guide him to the right direction forcefully. Thepeople of the society, being too preoccupied with theirindividual pleasure, profit, and prospect, did not bother sparingtheir precious penny or moments for a man who was sure to loseagain. Alas! There was no Messiah in the post-modern world:

…where the sun beats,



And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water.



Four

The human relationships in the modern world suffer heavily fromhuman folly, baseless suspicion, distrust, falsehood, spiritualdepravity and an absence of universally accepted moral standardfor the human beings. In this world and time, people do not tendto believe in religion. Science and critical reasoning rule thehuman psyche; and as a result it is almost impossible to find anethical standard which will satisfy the humans. Jonathan Swift inhis An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity wrote that disbelief is theconsequence of presumptuous pride in reasoning, and immorality isthe consequence of disbelief. He argued that there people mustnot indulge themselves in excessive reasoning but follow religionwhich can be their guide to a moral standard. But in the war torncapitalist modern society people find every religion, definitionof God absurd. Although Søren Kierkigaard vied for the religioussolution to the problems of the modern men, in his book A JoyfulWisdom Nietzsche opposed him with a shocking theory that God isdead. With this he did not mean real God rather the belief ofmodern men of an eternal existence called God is dead; andconsequently we have lost all the foundations of truth and moralvalues (Lavine). Will the humans, then, keep suffering from theblights of modernity? Perhaps, they will not.

In A Passage to India and Seize the Day, there are undertones ofreligious piety. We see Dr Aziz, Mrs Moore, and Professor Godboleas representatives of Islam, Christianity and Hinduism. In Seizethe Day we see Tommy Wilhelm’s laborious effort to clutch to hisfaith and in the end he received a redemptive solace in theaffinity of a dead man’s body. Perhaps, Tommy, a modern man, wasthinking that the only inevitable truth in the life of a human isdeath; perhaps with his tears he was regretting his past mistakes



or perhaps he was grateful that he was still alive with so manypossibilities. As long as he was alive he can fight through allthe difficulties and rise from the ashes like a Phoenix. Throughthe lives of the central characters, perhaps, the writers areurging the modern humanity to go back to the bosoms of theirreligions where they will find the answers to the questions theyhave all been looking for.



Bibliography

Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Grifiths and Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back. New York: Routledge, 2002. Book.

Bellow, Saul. Seize the Day. New York: Penguin Books, 1956. Book.

Forster, E.M. A Passage to India. Cambridge, 1924. Book.

Lavine, T.Z. From Socrates to Sartre: the Philosophic Quest. New York: Bantam Books, 1984. Book.

Marshall, Dr. Christopher D. The New Testament and Human Rights. 2014.Webpage. 25 March 2014. <http://www.isaiahone.org/the-bible-human-rights/new-testament-human-rights/>.

Swift, Jonathan. "An Argument Against Aboloshing Christianity." The University of Adelaide, 5 March 2014. Webpage; Property of Public Domain in Australia.

Webster, Roger. Studying Literary Theory. 2nd. London: Arnold, a member of the Hodder Headline Group, 1996.

Zaufishan. Iranian Poetry 'Bani Adam' Inscribed On United Nations Building Entrance. 17 September 2011. Web page. 23 March 2014. <http://www.zaufishan.co.uk/2011/09/iranian-poetry-bani-adam-inscribed-on.html>.



Treatment of Human relationship in 'A Passage to India' and 'Seize the Day'

Documents

Transcript of Treatment of Human relationship in 'A Passage to India' and 'Seize the Day'