A Passage to India

With the introduction of the Marabar Caves, the motif of echoing recurs through the narrative. Adela hears an echo in her ears prior to the trial that only pauses when she is around Mrs. Moore and discussing Aziz’s innocence. However, when Mrs. Moore leaves and Adela has only the words of the English to surround her memory, the echo returns to her ears as a symbol of the imperialist and racist evil the English perpetuate in India.

The motif of echoing evil is materially grounded at the Marabar Caves, “because a Marabar cave can hear no sound but its own” (171). Evil works upon evil and instigates more evil in an accumulation of negative energy, inescapable and a product of imperialism. Fielding considers the nature of echoing as the perpetuation of the same evil, exploitative, and divisive actions taken up repeatedly by classes of men unable to fathom a different path.

As the Nawab Bahadur drives Ronny and Adela around the outskirts of Chandrapore, their car crashes into something unidentifiable. Ronny and Miss Derek pass it off as an animal, while the Nawab Bahadur keeps silent until away from the English. Then, he considers the encounter to have been a metaphysical one, their attacker the ghost of an old rival: “None of the English people knew of this, nor did the chauffeur; it was a racial secret communicable more by blood than speech” (106).